Attunement with Stillness

Reading this through very carefully you may be surprised by what you find.

As I start to write I feel sensitivity with my core centre, otherwise known as the gut, or solar plexus, somehow alive and active. You’ve heard of, or experienced, ‘having a gut feeling’ about something or someone, quite beyond thinking. Perhaps this awareness, this involvement, will bring about the words for this article. So, it would seem, I have to feel and to listen – attune – avoid thinking.

Maybe you can explore with me – through your own senses and feelings.

It’s important we first explore the nature of thinking, which normally goes entirely unquestioned. Observe how, right from childhood, we’re taught that thinking, reasoning and gaining knowledge is the means to accomplishing things throughout a lifetime. With these faculties we analyse and, inevitably, separate things, and then go on to identify with ideas/concepts/structures that seem to give us the most comfort, control and feeling of security and advancement.

Thinking produces an image or concept of a separate self. A structured self to build upon, preserve and protect – against all odds. This is the means to structured religions, politics, corporations, empires, all of which last for just a limited time, then die of stagnation through unsustainability. History is full of it. Most man made structure is self-centred, divisive, open to becoming stale, obsessive, fanatical, even sheer lunatical, in its unconscious, increasing need for control.

This state of affairs has existed over centuries and has been the direct means to the unceasing chaos, destruction, wars, suffering and pollution. Currently, we drift through our lives unconsciously programmed with thoughts and images, overlooking the fact we are composite beings, of body, mind, soul and core, life-giving energy, known as spirit. Little consideration is given beyond body and mind. Now, with a world population, apparently spiralling out of control, unless we change quite radically, it’s likely we are close to destroying ourselves, together with most other forms of life on this planet.

But how might that change actually proceed, in view of the natural law that things must breakdown and die before there can be regeneration, like the seasons? Note, a theme you will find running through this article.*

Consider, there is an everlasting Life force that is the undercurrent of energy creating and maintaining, in subtle balance, the whole universe, potentially consciously including ourselves. *A vibrant, rhythmic energy the nature of which is constant breakdown and regeneration, fluidity, like the waves on the sea. Maybe you can sense/feel this within you, right now? Fundamentally you are this flowing, all embracing life force.

Careful open minded observation, sensitivity to all within and around us, reveals that every item, every particle, every aspect of life is a vital part of a single, intimately interwoven, interacting, interdependent, flowing, subtle movement, or process – orchestrated by Life. View your physical body as representative of this. See how fundamentally important it is that each part must fulfil a certain role, for the whole to work, as it was designed, healthily. See that no part can ever be more important than any other.

Currently mankind has lost understanding that the part cannot be considered without awareness and respect of and involvement with the whole, hence the utter chaos within which we attempt to live today. See that here we are exploring things basically, fundamentally.

There is no thinking, no self when there is stillness! Although predictably, mind/thinking will reject this actuality, notably out of fear, to justify itself.

We ‘know’ this by virtue of our oft overlooked senses, which encompass sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste – capabilities that yield sensations that put us subtly in touch with ‘all that there is’, beyond anything image-in-able. That brings us into active conscious awareness and intimate involvement with all of Life. A point of consciousness that is ‘of the moment’, the only reality.

That enabled the occupiers of a small island in the path of a giant tsunami to ‘know’, without radio or TV, that to preserve their lives they must climb to the highest levels. And there they found the animals ‘knew’ too.

So many people find themselves yearning for some deeper, missing, indefinable, fulfilling otherness, this physical world distracts us from, that eventually we must find – the secret door into which – is stillness.

Carefully view the process of caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly. *At a certain point of growth the caterpillar, being sufficiently ‘in touch’ with Life, through its senses, ‘knows’ that it must surrender to the loss of its self, to give way to a greater process. It selects a safe situation in which to become still – gradually its outer skin splits open to reveal a shell which hardens and protects as the original caterpillar dissolves away. What was form becomes complete fluidity (the means to fundamental change).

A new energy pattern replaces the former, progressively forming the butterfly, which at a further point of ‘knowing’ breaks out of the shell to reveal a creature of indescribable, delicate lightness and transcendent beauty. Remaining in the physical realm for just a short while, reminding the world of the reality of wholeness of being, and being the reproductive vehicle for subsequent generations, before returning to more ethereal realms of being, of which it originated ……………….. as do we!

*Ancient mystical teachings which have surfaced in various locations over the past two and a half thousand years, initially in Eastern Asia and Greece, referred specifically, to the need to ‘die before you die’. Pythagoras, Parmenides and Empedocles were such teachers. Dying to this illusory, constricted world of self requires a continuous commitment to a subtle process that eventually returns us to our spiritual wholeness, like the butterfly, to actual all-encompassing symbiosis  – whilst still living physically  –  or a lifetime is wasted. This is a process that brings progressive resolution to all the ‘old stuff’ that we have long carted around.

*So, to put it as simply as possible – might the corruption and resultant chaos, still evident across the world, like the petulant child always needing its own way, to feel in control, be likened to a juvenile, caterpillar stage, only to find that now is the time to surrender to fundamental change, which requires growing up – ‘putting aside our childish ways’ – putting aside ‘the doubting and controlling mind’.

Commitment to a mature, selfless, humble, yet powerful, ongoing, regenerative process which is of the greatest urgency. A fulfilling role. An imperative next step for humanity. Each actively committed person making inestimable contribution to this profoundly, enriching, transformative time we are – (part of) – in parallel to the (meditative?) chrysalis stage – beyond which is ‘ascension of consciousness’. LIFE is waiting for your contribution!

To that end I am offering weekly one hour sessions, of transformative attunement with stillness for small groups. Regular groups attuning, contribute even more powerfully for the benefit of each other and for mankind – lying down – no effort – no poses – no attachment to – no identification with – anything. Local venues, between Totnes, Dartington and Ashburton, Devon.

Call me, Michael Brookman, on 01364 644 684 or email michael@natures-sway.co.uk

“Silence is the one great art of conversation”. William Hazlitt, philosopher. 1778 – 1830.

Oh, and who am I ? Well, for many years I’ve progressively explored the interwoven wholeness of the Life process, initially in organic commercial vegetable growing, then through practicing in herbalism, iridology, counselling and healing. In fact I’m a third generation herbalist, with an accumulated knowledge and understanding of some 120 years. Principally my work is to assist the discordant parts find greater harmony within the whole (healing).

P.S. Have you ever noticed how great musicians get lost in their music – that’s because  they have attuned so deeply that the music is playing them – or perhaps you have already recognised this – on the way to seeing that letting go, through inner stillness, inevitably we too become true, harmonious expressions of Life –  our goal on this planet.

P.P.S. There is a relatively new science called ‘Epigenetics’ – the most powerful, all-encompassing contribution possible is ‘Attunement with Stillness’.

See on YouTube ‘Introduction to Meditation’ and ‘Mindlessness, the simple, direct means to Meditation’ – simply type in ‘Michael Brookman Mindlessness’.