“It is inner stillness that will save and transform the world.”
-Eckhart Tolle
Once upon a time, I gathered this as a quote that spoke to me. This promise of stillness and what it could make possible, not only for me but for the world, was something I wanted, yet had not encountered in such a profound and transformational way. As I write these words on this page, from my heart to yours, I have now tasted deeply this level of stillness and believe as well that it will save and transform the world. For it is out of stillness that everything as we know it once began and it is in its very nature to return to this space of stillness.
Sit with these words from Lao Tzu in the Tao te Ching:
Empty your mind of all thoughts
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.
Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.
In the summer of 2019, I mindfully closed a business, sold my home, purged my simple belongings down to a few small boxes of meaningful items (mostly from my travels around the world) and moved to a tiny Japanese house in Kyoto, Japan. It was an intentional decision with one purpose in mind…to step out of the world for a brief year of pause and silence.
Stillness.
I moved to Japan to allow every last fragment of my “self” to break completely apart, to sit in stillness with that, and simply be, until I allowed to rise to the surface, only those things that were truly worth holding on to.
Absolutely nothing else.
The simplest and purest version of myself. I was seeking to cultivate a way of “being” within myself, my true home.
Stillness, however one’s journey takes them to reach this place, is the absolute and only way to truly begin. It is only from this place of complete stillness that one can begin to be silent and hear the whisper of the soul.
There is a principal in Japanese culture known as “ma”. It can be translated as “the pause or emptiness between.”
Silent. Empty space.
