Give Yourself Permission for Stillness

The Turbulent Noise

Monkey Mind

Our lives are dominated by incessant mental chatter. Anyone that’s ever tried meditating knows this.

The first time you sit in silence, you hope for a moment of peace. But what you get is a slew of racing thoughts.

It goes something like this:

I love this bed, it’s so comfortable. Is my neighbour ever not renovating his apartment? I need to buy pumpkin for dinner. Wow, I biked a lot yesterday. I can’t believe it was so hard to find a post office. No idea how I’m going to pack up my whole apartment when I mo–

Wait, I was supposed to be meditating.

Buddhists call it the “monkey mind,” invoking the image of a monkey jumping from one branch to another. 

Your mind similarly jumps from one thought to the next, often with no focus, no real coherence, no presence allotted to each individual thought, and no opportunity for empty space.

Whether we focus on the past, the present, or the future, this inner monologue continues without end.

Hurricane Mind

In modern society, our minds are not just like monkeys. They are also like hurricanes that have swept up information from countless external sources, often without conscious choice or control.

“We are drowning in information,” said biologist E.O. Wilson, “while starving for wisdom.”

Many people wake up and the first thing they do after switching off the alarm is to check their notifications. This has often been me.

Very quickly, I’d go from reading one direct message on Instagram to watching five reels, all on different topics. One would lead me to a longer video on YouTube. 

Maybe you don’t bombard yourself with educational content on social media, but you read the news daily and emotionally take on the disasters happening in distant countries.

It’s not just our mornings. As we go about our days, many of us gravitate towards our phones to alleviate the uncomfortable vacuum of solitude. 

On the way to school, while driving to work, during lunch, while cooking, as we go on walks, or exercise in the gym – nothing is done without simultaneous consumption of media. 

Music, audiobooks, podcasts, news articles, social media content… It’s endless.

Chronic Overwhelm

Although we learn a lot by being exposed to new inputs, it’s also the source of chronic overwhelm.

The mind is already turbulent, but we never stop piling on. We continue to do it even when it’s not bringing us joy. It becomes an impulse. An itch to be scratched.

Some of us never extricate ourselves from this loop because our mental chatter is just too much to handle. Maybe, in silence, your mind is filled with thoughts you want to run away from, or you don’t know how to regulate the heavy emotions that flood your body.

So you fill it with external inputs, hoping to drown out the noise.

But you don’t realize that only cranks up the volume.

Your mind is now tasked with processing gigabytes of new, often irrelevant, external information, on top of the inner monologue.

When you compulsively devour data, you are treating your mind like a landfill. Information cannot be useful when it lies like a heap of garbage, unprocessed, overwhelming the system, as you continue to hunt for more.

All this debris obstructs your way to the inner current of peace.

To the eye of the storm. 

The Current of Peace

Thomas Keating, creator of the contemplative prayer, writes in his poem “Stillness”:

Our true nature is stillness,
The Source from which we come.
It manifests within us
As a rising tide of silence,
A flowing stream of peacefulness,
A limitless ocean of calm
Or just sheer stillness.
The deep listening of pure contemplation
Is the path to stillness.
All words disappear into It,
And all creation awakens to the delight of
Just Being.

Many people refer to this inner place of peace as “stillness”. Yet, as we see in Keating’s poem, this state is often described with imagery of movement – the rising tide, the flowing stream. 

What spiritual teachers mean by stillness is a space of tranquility and serenity, not stagnancy.

The eye of the storm is not motionless. But compared to the raging winds in the periphery of a hurricane, the center is calm. Compared to the mental noise, the inner current of peace is still.

Think about the rhythmic rising and falling of the ocean’s waves as they envelop you, just like the breath that goes in and out of your lungs. That is stillness.

“Neither arrest nor movement,” poet T.S. Eliot writes in Burnt Norton. “The still point of the turning world,” he calls it, but warns “do not call it fixity” for “there the dance is.”

Peace is not about immobilizing your body, your mind, or your life. It is about finding the center of tranquility amidst the world's fluctuations.

This center is the foundation upon which everything else is built – emotional regulation, self-knowledge, a thriving relationship, your creativity, the ability to make meaning out of suffering... and so on.

Stillness is the beginning of self-mastery.

The Path to Stillness

“You can’t create inner stillness, you just notice it.”

– Adyashanti

This week, I felt overwhelmed.

Even though nothing in this article is news to me, I had stopped noticing the inner stillness. It was easy to find my way back, though, because I had years of experience.

Here’s how I would begin to notice the stillness for the very first time:

1. Simplify your life

One day you might become so proficient in the meditative arts that you are able to access stillness no matter the situation. But you can’t begin there.

To start, simplify everything. Remove unnecessary distractions. 

You could decide to do something extreme, like deleting your social media accounts and going on a 3 month internet-free hiking trip in the mountains. Maybe for some, this is needed. But you don’t have to do that.

Instead, create pockets of silence in the life that you already have.

Slow everything down. Do your dishes and your laundry without a podcast. Eat in silence. Read a book by all means, but then sit for 15 minutes by yourself to think about what you’ve learned.

You can always simplify regardless of the weight of your responsibilities. Don’t take on more than you mentally have to.

2. Begin a daily meditation practice

Meditation isn’t always about sitting cross-legged on the ground in silence. It can be done on a walk, while doing mundane tasks, while gardening or painting.

You are meditating whenever you are fully present and aware in the moment.

Because this is difficult for a beginner to do, you’ll start with a daily meditation practice. Sitting or lying down, observe your body, your breath, and your thoughts.

Keep coming back to the present moment.

With practice, you’ll begin to develop the skill of meditating when your senses are more stimulated. You’ll be able to meditate with open eyes. In louder surroundings. Maybe one day, while walking through a busy city.

For now, just focus on practicing the skill.

3. Become more present amidst fluctuations

Eventually, we're all hit by some sort of chaos. It's life.

You'll experience a challenging situation that spits you out from the center straight into the hurricane.

This is a great opportunity. Use the skill you’ve practiced to, once again, find the inner current of peace. You'll find that handling chaotic situations becomes easier.

Update me on how this process is going for you in the comments.

The Paradox of Life

In a tweet from last year, Dan Koe writes:

Focus your attention on the current of peace.

Live from that center.

You’ll weather disaster better.