' Stillness within experience '...

Instead of trying to control our minds or environments by contracting or hiding in order to find this inner stillness, we must throw our senses wide open—listening, feeling, seeing—and become very wide and vast. we welcome all our experience, both that which is happening on the inside as well as that on the outside. When you welcome all of experience into your awareness, a certain type of stillness starts to emerge organically.

I’m pointing to a stillness that is directly related to this capacity to open to all experiences, not just those that are pleasant and comfortable. Even if you have a very busy mind, if you let go of judging your mind for being busy, even in the midst of the busyness, this stillness is there. Similarly, if you let go of judging the exterior situation—your world—for being noisy or chaotic, even for a moment, this true stillness is there. And when we arrive at this inner stillness and inner stability, our emotional being opens. It is only then that we begin to realize that so much of our instability is caused by our constant arguing with what’s happening.

Yet letting things simply be as they are is something that we're taught. In many ways we’re taught to be in a constant state of friction with, to be in battle with what is. we’re taught that the way to find happiness or peace is to always be trying to change what is, whether it’s changing your inner experience or trying to change the world around you. when we operate from this viewpoint, it puts us in a sense of future, where real freedom or real peace can be found in some time other than now. This leads to our deep-rooted belief that to find peace and freedom, we need to change our inner or outer environment.

To tell ourselves—to tell life—that it shouldn’t be the way that it is is a type of insanity. This insanity destabilizes us. It’s a bit like going up to a brick wall, telling it that it shouldn’t be there, and then continuing to walk into it. Every time you bump your head on it, you judge the brick wall for being there, and then you walk into it again, again bumping your head. Then you say it shouldn’t be there, at which point you condemn yourself for the pain you have in your head. It’s a kind of insanity to be constantly arguing with what is and thinking it should be different. It’s a way that we keep bumping into life. when we collide with life in this way, we always feel interior friction, and we can never find the inner stability for which we yearn.


~ Adyashanti ~
Falling Into Grace