This afternoon I watched a blue heron fishing in the creek behind my home. It was an awesome and interesting experience for me. Awesome because being able to observe nature at work is … well … awesome. Interesting, because I also observed myself while watching.

You see, a heron spends a lot of time just standing still. Then suddenly, there’s a quick dart and a couple of swallows, and that part of the meal is over. When it moves, it moves very slowly, and then again there is the stillness.

I had a hard time watching the stillness. I even got out my binoculars to see if its eyes were moving during that stillness, but they weren’t. I knew something was going to happen soon and didn’t want to look away, but the stillness seemed like it stretched into agonizing hours! My mind was racing with the things that I “should” be doing. I had to argue with it to make it ok to just stand and watch - after all, how often does one get to see a heron fishing?

I liken this experience to my learning how to meditate. At first, even five minutes seemed like hours, and I was in constant conflict with trying to quiet my mind. Then a wonderful meditation teacher, Eicho Michi, told me to think of those thoughts as clouds passing in the sky above. Not to get attached to them, and if I did, release them and gently return to the stillness.

Eckhart Tolle writes in “Stillness Speaks:” Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. We’ve allowed ourselves to become so mesmerized with the need to DO that stillness is foreign. Yet stillness is our Truth. That heron taught me that in the stillness all needs are met. What you want is attracted to you.

Stillness is where all creation begins. Stillness is God.

SPIRITUAL MIND TREATMENT

God is infinite Self awareness, infinite Love. It is the centrepoint for everything that ever was, is now or will be. I live in the centrepoint and Divine Life radiates from me.

No longer am I mesmerized by the ways of the world. I choose today to spend more time in the stillness. I choose to stand at the point of creation. The whole world might be wobbling around me, yet my stillness lets me live my life in grace. This grace is reflected in the people and experiences around me, and it is good, very good.

Gratefully I celebrate the Law that honours my choices with ease. I celebrate the Truth that sets me free. I release these words knowing they are done now. And so It is.