Sakina

This is borrowed from the beautiful blog:  http://beautywelove.blogspot.com/

Imagine you are walking alone at night on a country road.  No people or cars or houses around, just enough starlight to see your way, the only sound the sound of your shoes on the road and the swish of your clothes as you walk.  You feel the stillness inside of things come close. You stop. Now there are no sounds, except the almost-never-heard hush of things being.

You sense the stillness on all sides and an identical stillness within you. It makes you uneasy, as if you are about to be extinguished.  You try to think, to establish yourself against the stillness, but the voice of your thoughts sounds thin, metallic.  You feel an irrepressible need to be distracted, to change the stillness and its overwhelming of you. You walk home thinking about plans for tomorrow.

But in the quiet of your room you realize what happened: you got scared.  You got scared of opening into the stillness, of allowing it to be.  It was a close call.  You see how throughout your life you have invited one distraction after another to prevent just this from happening.  Now you feel disappointed in yourself. So instead of turning on your computer or reading a book or getting something to eat, you sit down and invite the stillness back.

A phrase you once heard comes to you, from Psalm 46: “Be still, and know.” Be still. Be still.

You arrange your body as you have learned to do.  You sit in a comfortable, alert position, with your back vertical so you don’t slump or drift off.  You let your body be motionless, quiet.  The motionlessness of your body is a helpful friend; you know it is temporary, and in fact it is not really motionless – little shifts and sensations keep happening – but the relative stillness of your body reduces your identification with it, with the sense you are your body’s ambitions and memories and likes and dislikes.

Learning to sit still, to settle like this, is called by Tibetan lamas “the first motionlessness.” A quiet body at ease relaxes the persistence of thoughts.  Once the first motionlessness has been learned, they say, then it doesn’t matter if the body is motionless or moving, for the the ground of stillness is always available.  But for now you need this helpful friend, and you sit still.

Now you invite what the lamas call “the second motionlessness.” This is the still, empty openness “behind” each of your senses, the openness in which your senses arise.  You relax into that openness. To say it is not moving points to its nature, but that’s not entirely accurate.  It is not the opposite of motion, or of the visible, or of sound.  This motionlessness is not definable – it is not a sensation. Nevertheless it has an almost kinesthetic effect on you, as if it is vanishing you, as if the existing one you thought you were, the receiver, the photographic plate that records your experience, this”one,” becomes transparent. You begin to feel the same threat of vanishing you felt on the road, but now you relax and let it be.

  “The third motionlessness” comes now, unbidden.  It is the stillness of presence itself – the stillness of a clearness that is always here, behind and within everything. It is what allows everything to show up.  It is empty too not made out of anything, yet it is awesome and radiant in its presence.  It is without being an it.

You remember now how the phrase from Psalm 46 continues: “Be still, and know I am God.”

“God”  – this old, strange word that sounds like a judge and yet still resonates beyond that – could it mean – could it have first meant – this empty Presence without form, appearing as all form?  You realize you are trying to figure it out and you stop. Be still, and know I am God.  The knowing is not thinking. It is presence being present to presence.

You find yourself wavering here – one moment at ease in the clarity, and in the next thinking about it.  You hear the words again: Be still. Do nothing. Let be. Don’t fill anything in.  No need to figure anything out. Relax.

 

A sense of peacefulness opens in you, vast and without dimension.  This what Sufis call sakina – vast, peaceful tranquility without dimension – and suddenly you are smiling, your eyes are filling with tears – a joy – could it be called that? – a joyousness like praise and thankfulness together, love pouring forth from nowhere, the whole show showing up – mountain, sky, stars, bodies – from nothing, from stillness.

In remembering the Real, all hearts find joyous peace.

– Qur’an 13:28

~ Pir Elias Amidon

from Free Medicine

Christ Consciousness

Last webcast on lesson 11 of Way of Knowing with Sarita Premley. The guided meditation was very helpful  – I always am more present when I listen to them alone in bed afterwards – I get distracted by all the energy info coming in from the images/persons on the screen

So when Sarita asked, “What do you really want to KNOW this life “– there was direct transmission via images and impressions. First there was the idea of being of service – but what truly came up as something I really have WANTED, was this:

I want to KNOW myself as a sovereign soul/Christ/Self, and BE/radiate this state of Presence to others.

In my book When Fear Comes Home to Love where we explore certain fear-archetypes-traps and how to relate to them, there is an archetype I have called Bird – after the big painting I was “given” to “download” as a painter, where all the archetypes are present as figures. The main one that I and all my patients through 30 years have had and been driven by, is what we may call “The helper/therapist-archetype” the one that derives her/his worth by this work – to her/his own detriment.

I have worked diligently with its energy for years – and yesterday, after our webcast, I noticed that my whole house was filled to the brim by my neighbors’ energy ( those from Kosovo that I have talked about earlier.) It even SMELLED from them – a quite different smell than the familiar one.)

So now I was planted in the middle of the old pattern: I am one who always pick up others unconsciousness that they have split off, and hold it for them.

I did that for 30 years as therapist without finding out what to do about it and  almost always felt sick after sessions. “Giving it back” afterwards never really worked. Yesterday I saw the  seed -belief  – I NEED to do this as a survival mode – taking the others crazy-energy inside as a way of control it.– I truly believed it would save me from being attacked again, since I now had it inside already – but as Abraham reminds us, then I just hold a frequency that attracts more of the same.

So I saw the original choice and owned it, no problem – and affirmed that I WANTED this absolute KNOWING that I was this POWERFUL Christ Presence, WANTED to KNOW myself as That, FEEL myself as that.

And I came into this body in quite a new way – very anchored. It has lasted the whole day (included a visit to the Dental Hygienists who does rather painful work.)

I saw at night how the old identity was geared  to “help” only by taking over others garbage – and that it helped me feel very good and helpful and powerful ( but also VERY angry and filled with revenge-thoughts.) I know that believed I had no choice in this – and yesterday I was clear that I had: I could choose instead just KNOWING that my True Presence  is enough – TRULY! And being anchored in it will give me the necessary info about how to intervene or NOT.

I sat with that knowing for a very long time, confirming my choice again and again – THIS is what I desire. And what helped me was the KNOWING and bodily feeling that this IS my true identity.

From intellect into body-awareness – what a journey

It feels so very  good

Thank you Sarita and group – thank you thank you