Blaise Pascal (Pensee 139)
This forced social distancing may be causing a lot of us to squirm. Our minds might be racing with , "What do I do now?"
If we are stuck at home, not able to work, not able to socialize, not able to get lost in one busy project after another, as we are in the habit of doing, we fear we might go a little stir crazy, right?
We don't want to sit quietly in a room alone but atlas that is what we may have to do. Without all our outer world distractions and busyness we might find ourselves having no other place to run or to escape to. We are stuck with out very Self...the thing we have been trying to avoid for eons.
Yet, what a wonderful opportunity to begin solving humanity's real problems. This virus, as a gentle nudge , can take us closer to Self awareness and with Self awareness we can be healed ( or at least healing) cogs in humanity's squeaking wheel.
It is only through stillness and silence can we come back to clarity. It is there we can see the errors of our ways. We can discriminate what we thought was real from what is truly real. We can see that what we have spent most of our lives doing was running away from what we thought was the problem and can discover that the only real problem was the running away.
We ran away in out mind streams. We ran away in our incessant need to do. We ran away in our distracting and numbing activities. What the heck were we running away from?
We were running from the here and now...this very moment... because we feared and assumed it was not enough. We were always striving to get to the next moment in hope that it would be better than the one we were just not willing to sit in!
"I will be happy when..." "I can rest and be at peace then..."
When the only moment that really matter is this one...not the one we were running toward! This one...right here and right now. This is Life. Whatever is in it right now is Life and it does us no good to push it away, ignore it, resist it, struggle against it, numb from it with mind and body activity or use it as a stepping stone to get to the next moment.
And guess what? Who you truly are can be discovered in this moment. You are not the roles that lead you into one important action to another. You are not whatever thoughts or ideas you have in your mind. You are not a human "doer". You are a human being. You are the stillness, the quiet, the essence of this perfect moment that is Life.
When we sit in stillness and quiet we can realize that and connect to that Self that is us. We can heal. And instead of giving into collective panic, we can thank the pandemic for leading us towards the healing we really need.
I found this blurry and very imperfect video I did a few years back on the Buddhsit Gatha, Just Sit.
I swallow what is left of my prideful ego lol and offer it now in hope that it will help someone out there to just sit with Self for a while. To heal just a bit so the world can begin the healing it truly needs.
All is well.
me ( 2017) What I Learned from Blaise Pascal. The Wisdom Daily. http://thewisdomdaily.com/what-i-learned-from-blaise-pascal-about-the-power-of-stillness/
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