From childhood, our life is a series of activities that occupy our time. Parents create a schedule for their infants and toddlers. As children, our life becomes a regiment of one activity after another. In school, we rush about to reach classes on our schedule. When we graduate, we take a job and we have a list of tasks to do. It seems our whole life is occupied in one activity after another. Thus, when we try to meditate, we find it almost unnatural to sit still and still our mind.
As a society, we seem to value activity. The more we are seen doing, the better it looks. Few people value sitting in silence. We think that if we sit still, we are not doing anything. We fear being labelled as lazy or incompetent. However, each person needs to take time from all their busy activities and be still. Being still has many purposes.
It is in the stillness that we come up with creative ideas. It is in the stillness that we solve a difficult problem. It is in the stillness that we have revelations. Scientists, musicians, artists, poets, writers, philosophers, and inventors often came up with masterpieces by sitting in stillness. From the stillness arose new ideas that revolutionized the world.
Similarly, stillness is where we find our soul and God. God cannot be found by outer activity; God can only be found within. Meditation requires stillness for attaining spiritual results.
Our life is like a train rushing along tracks of busyness. We are so used to being busy that it feels unnatural to stop our activities to sit in silence. Yet to solve a problem or create something new, we need to take time from our busy schedule to tap into our inner resources. Similarly, to achieve self-knowledge and God-realization we need to learn to sit in stillness.
When we sit in stillness it may look to others as if we are not doing anything. Yet, in stillness, we are doing the most important activity in life—finding our soul and God. Few people attain God in life. Why? They do not know how to do nothing. If they would learn to sit and do nothing, they would find everything.
It may be good for each of us to set aside some time daily to practice sitting in stillness. At our jobs, we can spend some time thinking about whether we are doing our work in the best possible manner and if not, how to make improvements. We may come up with a new and better way of doing things at work. If we run a household, we can spend some time sitting in stillness to reflect on how we can solve our family problems or make life for our family better. If we are involved in the arts, the stillness can help us tap into our creativity.
If we learn the art of sitting in silence, even for our worldly work, we will be able to transfer that ability to sit in silence for meditation. We will find we are less jumpy and restless. We can develop the ability to sit still for the longest possible time. We will be used to stopping our mind, to let our soul have its voice. When all is still, we find the soul’s voice is calling for us to find God. If we are still, we can hear the Voice of God, or the Music of the Spheres, the Celestial Harmony, or the holy Word.
We can balance our activities with times in which we are still. In this way, we can improve our meditations. By sitting still in meditation we will find that we can be the most productive because we can attain the state of finding God.
