Cultivating Stillness

"Seek out a tree and let it teach you stillness." -Eckhart Tolle

One of the most powerful, but sometimes painful things can be allowing yourself to exist and be in a state of stillness. Sometimes stillness feels peaceful but it can quickly become overwhelming and uncomfortable for many. Like the expression, "the unbearable lightness of being," just allowing yourself to exist and be in a state of calm and spaciousness without any distractions can bring up a lot of discomfort and things you didn't realize were bothering you.

So how do you break through this? How do you cultivate the stillness inside yourself that you're needing? How do you allow yourself to become immersed in just a state of being?

In our modern world, it's probably something that needs to be planned. It probably needs to be a situation where electronics are put away, you are not in your usual environment, and you are taken out of your normal routine and cycles. Another word for it is "cycle interruption" where your everyday cycle and routine is interrupted and you aren't caught in the same loops and behaviors over and over again. Cultivating stillness means giving yourself that space to be still and understanding it's an investment in yourself. It can be 5 minutes a day, or a 2 week retreat where you actually leave your everyday life, but either way, the more you do it, the better it will be for you.

If you want to break the habits and cycles you are caught in, the first thing is to just stop the habits and cycles intentionally. Taking moments of stillness is a way to intentionally and consciously stop the habits, patterns and cycles that are hurting your life and start a new habit of feeling more peaceful and content naturally.