The Stillness & the Swirl
Sometimes, I want to crawl down so deep into my being to that place where everything stops, and it’s quiet and still. The swirl slows, and there is pure rest. I want to live in and from that place, which is the center of my being.
I also want to live in the swirl of joys and sorrows that is ordinary, miraculous, beautiful, challenging, and fascinating everyday life. I love my life, every corner of it, and I live in an ocean of joy and gratitude every day.
How to hold this balance – stillness or swirl?
When I sit each day in meditation, eventually, there comes a restlessness, that feeling of pulling myself toward whatever is next. Even if what’s next is simply adjusting my legs, and the pull is weak, it’s still there. Sometimes, the pull is so loud and strong that I can only sit in the feeling of that pull while it washes through me. Sometimes, I have to just get up and do the thing that’s pulling me.
The subtle pull is there even when I’m on a weeklong silent retreat. When this sit is over, there is walking meditation to do. Then there is lunch, and then there is going to my room, then sitting again. There is always something next.
I’ve sometimes imagined sitting at the bottom of a lake wearing a scuba tank (which I’ve never actually done) and listening to each breath, in slowly and out slowly, the long, deep rhythm filling my ears. Motionless. Silent. Still. Here in the center of my being.
In those rare moments when I do experience this level of stillness, it is, of course, fleeting. There is the next thing. Always change. Maybe this restlessness of mine isn’t bad; maybe it’s just impermanence moving through me. If I want to get to the center of my soul, perhaps the way there is to be restless, if restless is what’s here. Of course. I know this. But … sitting with restlessness is like tossing a hot coal from one hand to the other; there is the incessant pull to do something. Now. Can’t I crawl into a ball, shut the light, cover myself with a blanket, and just breathe? Part of me longs to do this.
Then I think about the life I love. All the things I love to do, and I want to go do them. I even love things like laundry and washing dishes, maybe because they are life, being alive.
This is what they call equanimity—the ability to be in the swirl of life (these 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows) AND live from that center of stillness. This is how we can be while doing.
Right now, I feel the pull to stop writing and go for a walk in the woods—to be in exquisite nature on an exquisite day and just be while I walk.
Have you felt this kind of stillness, or the pull toward it? How do you get there? Have you gotten there even while in the swirl?
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