The Growing Capacity to
Stand Tall and Stand Still
Note: Please go to the blog to read the comments (and to post your own). The comments really enrich the experience. Thank you. You can also read this message and all the previous ones on the blog. http://www.innerchristmas2010.blogspot.com
If in our souls, we stand tall and still what can we observe? Being tall we observe our surroundings. Being still we observe all movement. And we observe the experience of standing. We need to grow taller and more still and we need to stand more often and for longer periods of inner time - timeless time.
There is no word "stiller." Still implies an absolute. When I still my soul, I need to still my thoughts, my feelings, my will. Stillness is the absence of movement or the containment of all movement. What movement do you so identify with that you can neither release it nor contain it? What does that movement protect you from? If you were still, what would you feel, think, or will? Is there a part of your being that would speak to you in a voice you could only hear if you stilled all your other voices. Do you imagine the stillness, the growing stillness, being painful or peaceful? If the stillness grows will it move you through the pain of your emotions to the peace of your inner divinity?
Tall always allows for growth in our language because we witness the growing tallness of our children and the growing tallness of trees. Imagine the sunflower. Imagine Jack's beanstalk.
Now give thought to the verb, to stand. Will the real you please stand up? When do you take a stand? a practical stand, a spiritual stand, a moral stand? How does your soul stand out? or for? or behind?
Imagine standing on the strong shoulders of a giant. What could you see?
What if the shoulders belong to the giant whose name is "I."
From those shoulders, what surroundings can you observe? All the magnificent complexities and simplicities of your three worlds - the earthly world of time and space, the spiritual world of the absolute and the ephemeral and the world of self with its complex relationships.
Imagine...and if no answers to these questions appear, ask again and make up an answer. Have fun.
Tonight stand in your soul? What are you standing on?
Tonight experience growing stillness. What begins to vibrate your still self?
Tonight experience growing taller. What new vistas appear in each of your worlds?
Is this a time for wondering, focusing, naming poetically? Is it difficult? Feel the forces at your back and the ground reaching your feet. Align with your unknown truth. Embrace your feelings of ambivalence and note your emerging desires.
Tonight stand in your soul? What are you standing on?
Tonight experience growing stillness. What begins to vibrate your still self?
Tonight experience growing taller. What new vistas appear in each of your worlds?
Is this a time for wondering, focusing, naming poetically? Is it difficult? Feel the forces at your back and the ground reaching your feet. Align with your unknown truth. Embrace your feelings of ambivalence and note your emerging desires.
A friend and I have both been reading and working with these inner Christmas messages. Tonight, after having read the message earlier in the evening, I called my friend. We were talking of other things. And after about a half and hour, she said, "I need to be still."
ReplyDeleteI said, "What?"
"I think I need to be still."
So I had heard her correctly. "Have you read tonight's message?" I asked.
"No," she said, "why?"
I think it shows that there's a natural development to the path. Having read all the other nights, she came to the same point without having read it yet.
I really appreciate these messages. They're providing a framework for understanding some of my struggles. They're making me feel like I'm on a path. Thank you!
I so appreciate being able to focus in on something from a different perspective than I've thought of before... It felt good to move into my tallness, from the stillness... Here is what I wrote...
ReplyDeleteI always wanted to be tall… oh to have long legs and not stretch my five foot three and a quarter inches to five foot four… to be able to look most people in the eye…
When in Oaxaca, Mexico… I have actually had the literal experience of being taller than almost everyone around me. I loved it. I could stand at the back of a crowd and have no problem at all seeing the parade, heads beyond me… Dear friends there, come to my shoulder. I love having the experience of bending down to hug them. Unless you are below five foot four… you just cannot know what an incredible feeling this is, this being tall …
In feeling tall, there is a sense of power, an ability to see beyond what most can see… vistas are within reach… I feel sure of myself, and know I can take care of myself. In the stillness of this recognition, I feel as if I am the mountain. I am the vista. I am the attainable goal. And it all starts right here, in my being tall in my being, in my soul, in this moment of recognition…
For a pic and words I made a post for this evening: http://innerchristmas2010.blogspot.com/2011/01/9th-holy-night.html
Thank you Lynn
During the dark winter nights
ReplyDeletein the midst of the great emptiness
surrounded by stillness
I
experience space
for what it is
thrown back to myself
confronted
I meet
the power of life
I am really enjoying the sense of an unfolding design within the messages, the resounding in my soul of opportunity for new growth and perspectives, and the deep connection to these special nights (and days)!
ReplyDeleteOn the lighter side, in terms of tallness, I had a sense of trying to get onto the shoulders of some of those who have come before us like Goethe and Steiner. It seems like such a long way up! I can just barely imagine, reaching and reaching, up, towards their grand perspectives!
I wrote a haiku for these holy nights:
Holiday spirit,
Reveling through the season,
Brightening our lives.
Thanks you for these inspirations!
Joe Rising
These questions are so huge for me that I feel I will return to them month by month as believe I need to take more time and really live through each question.
ReplyDeleteThe Holy nights have helped me through my downcast feelings around this time ,I suppose these feelings are connected.Light and blessings to all reading this J