I AM STILL

Checking in...

I'm back from my "Presence through Movement" Retreat that was led by Kim Eng, Eckhart Tolle's teaching and life partner. She teaches ying yoga or the polarity that allows, opens, and surrenders unlike yang, which is the pusher and the doer. I've come back with new skills and ways to allow Life to work through me. This post is my calling at this present moment.

When I came home after the retreat, I barely had a minute to put my stuff down and go to the bathroom before my mom proceeded to tell me that she has questions for me. I asked her, "what kind of questions?" And as she was answering me and preparing my lunch, she mumbled that I never tell the truth. I did not react to her statement on either external or internal level because I have enough stillness and presence in me to not take statements like that seriously. Within minutes I learned that her comment was referring to my sister and had nothing to do with me at all. But even if it did, the comment still had nothing to do with me because nothing anybody tells us has the capacity to hurt us unless we let it. And I'm not talking about numbing what we're feeling or reaffirming to yourself, "I'm better than this and I don't need to listen to it." I'm talking about knowing and most importantly, feeling the difference between thoughts and who we really are - consciousness experiencing thoughts.

The truth that we are not our thoughts could not have been clearer to me than when I had to go silent for 24 hours on my retreat. There are other retreats that practice silence for 5 to 7 to 10 or more days and so practicing it for one day was a nice taste of what it's like listening to the mind chatter since there is no one else to listen to. Although, I've been listening or trying to listen to my thoughts for some time now, doing it for a consecutive period of time with nothing else to do really showed me how truly noisy my mind is. I went from, "this is fun" to "this is boring" to "losing myself in one of the mind-created stories" to "I can't believe how lost I've been all this time" to "How much more do I have to go?" "I don't have a choice, I might as well stay with it" to "Wow, my mind is getting quieter" to "I'm losing track of time" to "It's over."

And now my mind is back, but there's even more space between me and my thoughts. Thoughts are always there, but as Kim said on the first day of the retreat, "I am still."

How's life calling me to serve?

To be still and go with whatever arises in the moment.

Join in me in coming back to stillness, our home base, our home.

Thank you!