Unfortunately for our greedy egos, awakening to an enlightened perspective cannot happen without stillness. You might be one of those exceedingly rare individuals who awakens without the support of either a teacher or a regular stillness practice. But the Enlightenment that the mystics and sages speak about can only ever show up through stillness. As much as our egos would love to have it their way where they can manage the entire process of Awakening, authentic transformation, from the narrowness of the small self to the spacious Ultimate Life of the Big Self, happens only when meditative stillness becomes part of our more active lives. Sadly enough for our overachieving egos rushing to Awaken, meditation is the shortcut, since meditation is stillness, and stillness is the unbounded estate of Enlightenment.
In Nepal, I once heard a Tibetan teacher lament over how his western students were always interested in shortcuts to Awakening. The teacher told us that when he would explain that the fastest way to Enlightenment was meditation, his students would always look so disappointed.
“Why can’t you in the West just sit still and be quiet?” he asked with a chuckle. “Stillness and silence are the only way to Awaken to what’s real. It can’t be done with a pill.”
He paused for what seemed like minutes. Those of us in the audience knew that behind his smile he was very interested in making sure we heard his next point.
“Any shortcut or pill other than stillness merely desensitize us to the Truth,” he went on. “Pills make us less aware, not more aware. Because of this they don’t truly make us still. They just help people mistake being numb for being Awake.”
I loved his points. There was no way around it. Without stillness our climb up the Mountain of Spirit stops. Without stillness, there is no way to study the movement of the small self. Without studying the movement of small self, we will remain confined by it. This is what the Buddha called “delusion.”
“Study your mind, your ego, your self, whatever you want to call it,” the teacher said with eyes that seemed to be on fire. “Otherwise you won’t ever Know the open expanse of Awareness. To avoid this practice of stillness is to be busy wasting time.”
The teacher, at that point, laughed again. His smile showed tremendous love for the teaching and for us, but I could tell he wasn’t interested in people wasting his time either. It was a relief for me to hear the teaching hit hard like this. There was no evasion in his delivery, there was no riddle in his offering. His points were as clear as direct sunlight.
“Pay attention to what’s going on in your experience right now,” he continued. “Watch your self. Always.”
He then leaned slightly forward, rolling prayer beads in his hand. Every eye simply stared at the teacher, and a palpable stillness seemed to descend over the room. He then smiled again as we all recognized the booming silence.
“The whole point of a meditation practice,” he whispered, “is to continually expose an internal, still alertness to all that moves. That’s it.”
Conversations at the monastery’s lunch tables that afternoon were lively. I happened to like what he said. Others felt that his words didn’t seem so compassionate. I guess they were right if we think of compassion as making egos feel comfortable. This guy was going straight after our egos, doing his best to turn up the heat. He wanted our small selves exposed to the light of our deepest Awareness. I walked away feeling like it was important for me to engage a practice where I would just shut up and sit still.
When we eventually decide to sit still and shut up, we find that we can relax more deeply and we can let the stillness that begins to inhabit us inform each circumstance. We notice that there isn’t a separation between the consciousness of meditative awareness and the consciousness of everyday awareness. They are “not one, and not two,” as the Zen saying goes. In other words, we start to see that while the Big Self never moves, the small self is all that ever scurries in any direction. Yet the Awareness of both the Big Self and the small self is precisely the same. We can recognize this open Awareness regardless of any state that we’re in, no matter how active we are, since it is always present. It’s never not right here. As these words fill your experience, you are Aware of them, the imagery that they elicit, perhaps some resistance they provoke, maybe generate agreement, or some confusion. They are all objects of this Awareness. No matter how stormy or peaceful our life gets, the Awareness of life can be recognized.
Our work is to be this Awareness in all of our circumstances. Be deeply and totally conscious in whatever you do with your body. Witness your mind state in every situation, whether it is calling an employee to task, setting an unpopular limit with your child, kissing your significant other, or gazing at the miracle of a flower. Be aware of all of it. Teaching and practice show us that Spirit is all right here, right now, showing itself as this timeless and ever-present Awareness that we all share.
It is important to note here, once again, that living from this Awareness means that we see that the ego is not the problem. The ego is not wrong. It isn’t separate from the Universe’s divine nature. Its activity, on the other hand, clouds our potential to Awaken, always attempting to block the shine from our deepest Truth. As we’ve discussed, the ego is merely the protagonist on our own personal Stage of Mind. We tend to get caught up in the ego’s dramatic skill and then live out our circumstances as if the stage play were not only what is real but also what should define our lives. We are most likely to get trapped in this unconscious approach to life when the scripts for each circumstance are well written, since this is exactly the condition that leads us to live in denial.
This denial can show up in spiritual traditions as well. For example, any approach that advocates clinging to scriptural texts as the best way to awaken to Truth might well lead its adherents down a confused path. Attaching to anything religious, like anything else, is always at the core of ego’s mission. In essence, if ego is allowed to manage its own belief structure, we can rest assured that we won’t Awaken. The same thing applies if, instead of just being a witnessing presence, we are trying to adjust or alter the ego’s performance on the Stage of Mind. Manipulation and adjustment, in all its forms, comes from attachment, and attachment supports what is unconsciousness. If we are trying to manage anything the ego does, we are simply allowing the ego, with all of its limitations, to sneak into this process from the back door and, at least temporarily, scuttle our chances at realizing the unbounded Truth that stillness offers.
This is why our meditation practice is so important. By definition, stillness is the absence of movement. Any egoic activity, whether it is remembering, planning, judging, or manipulating, is simply movement. Any kind of doing, any kind of wanting, any kind of avoiding, any kind of adjusting, is simply movement. Movement of any kind, no matter how subtle or overt, denies stillness. In order to open to this stillness, we can recognize that the process of authentic realization involves not pushing or pulling anything, especially the ego. Rather than doing anything to the ego, practitioners only have to try to witness consciously its arising in their experience. We must be alert “to all that moves,” as my Tibetan teacher said. That’s it. When this happens, stillness begins to inform our internal life, the ego is metaphorically seen as “the man behind the curtain” who is manipulating an illusion of the Great Oz—and this shocking realization changes our world.
In this moment of insight, the Great Oz is seen as a simple charade of what’s real: a benign projection of the small self that we’ve come to call our “personality.” Although the personality can be very useful at times, it isn’t grounded in anything other than the ego’s many attachments to thoughts about how to stay in control of everything and fend off all threats. In fact, the personality itself is merely a psychological embodiment of a vast collection of self-authored scripts that articulate how things need to be in order to stay alive. Upon recognition of this state of affairs, we have a chance to realize that there is never a need to do anything to the ego. No need to control it or push it out of the way. We just have to see it for what it is: an illusory projection that constantly creates other illusory projections that center and source themselves from its attachments to things it perceives will keep it safe and full of pleasure. Once seen, we radically diminish the ego’s hold on our circumstance because it can’t control the Big Self. It is at this point that the Big Self, or Ultimate Life, or Spirit, truly begins to recognize its birth in all things. From this openness, there is a dis-identification with anything egoic for each of us. In this moment, the ego’s activity is deeply recognized as incomplete and thus an entirely new relationship with the ego evolves as we cultivate an ever-deepening Awareness in our practice of stillness.
It can be a surprise how often we can acknowledge that stillness underlies every aspect of living. Even in our busy schedules, we can “check in” with stillness. It’s a wonderful practice to simply ask yourself throughout the day, “Where is the stillness now?” With this practice of inquiry, we can find stillness with greater and greater regularity in ways that deepen our experience of spacious peace. This can be especially helpful when we find ourselves in the midst of conflict, panic, or pain, since the practice cultivates a calm mind. Calm minds always have a greater tendency toward responding to any situation with wisdom and compassion.
Awakening begins to offer itself whenever we do not indulge the ego’s habitual patterns of control. So learn to stop moving and begin to experience the part of you that is still, and then let this experience inform everything that requires movement. Don’t walk. Don’t run. Don’t even indulge the mind as it swings like a monkey from thought to thought. Just be still for a while. This is especially challenging for successful people who believe that their striving is what allows them to achieve their goals, and that the achievement of these goals is what defines them. But achievements are not a complete picture of who we are. Achievements are what the ego uses to prove its validity, and this is precisely the way ego must always and forever be. Always. This isn’t to say that striving is bad. It’s not. Neither is the ego, for that matter. But striving and ego are inseparable. So we study the habits of our ego-driven small self with our full meditative attention at every moment, and begin gently to let go of all the scripts associated with our behaviors. From this release, we engage life. That’s the work. But it requires endless supplies of fearlessness, since stillness and studied awareness will radically alter the ego’s sense of control over our lives.
