STILLNESS BY SUMAIRA FEROZ

 

Stillness

By Sumaira Feroz

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

-Blaise Pascal

When I look outside of the window I see countless darting eyes and swivelling heads that are walking, and running on the road and in the streets. I see doleful faces of men and women who are preoccupied with their thoughts. They seem so tired, gloomy and anxious.

It seems that they have been trapped with endless problems which have made them so consumed that they have forgotten to think about taking a break from the chaotic series of life, the break from the never-ending work and high responsibilities.   

In our restless life, we always ignore the inner voices that tell us we are missing something, we are rushing too fast. The voices pat our shoulders,  it is time to stop for a while somewhere, but we ignore and take it as a useless idea and prefer to keep running with loads of burdens and constant noises.

However, when our mental process starts to work slowly due to overwork and lack of relaxation, we need at that time a particular period of equanimity and stillness. I read somewhere that, “in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still”.

So stillness is an important part of our lives that we often ignore. If I defined stillness with the help of the English dictionary then, ‘stillness is to be steady while the world spins around. To act without frenzy. To hear only what needs to be heard.’

What I believe is stillness is that quiet moment when we meet with ourselves. In that specific time of quietness instead of feeling agitated, we feel beautifully balm and calm and forget all the pressures and demands. We start making room for gratitude or positivity which is essentially necessary for us to boost our self-confidence.

We forget all those worldly things that make us upset and worried. We just focus on the beauty of nature and shut down all those worldly matters that are dragging us into the gloom and making us tired and exhausted.

But, when we focus on the buzzing insects, birds cracking nuts, chirping robins, whispering, creaking leaves and other nature’s voices our minds get soothed. We get closer to ourselves, and all negative self-talks that are limiting our abilities to believe in ourselves and to reach our true potential become quiet, we start healing and feel unusual inner strength.

In this demanding and busy lifestyle, we ignore our inner voices and always prefer to complete our set targets for the months, and years.

We tirelessly work to fulfil our commitments. However, in my view, it is necessary for us while settings goals and dreaming big we should also think about this stillness and breathing because it’s one of the most powerful forces on earth that can be helpful to achieve our goals in life.

As human beings we all need stillness and those who have big plans and big dreams need it the most. It is important to empty our minds from heavy thoughts that are creating obstacles to moving on the path of goals. Hence, it is necessary to collect insights and strengths to break the ice ceiling and make dreams happen with peace and harmony.

I read Daodejing who has highlighted the importance of emptiness beautifully somewhere, ‘when the clay is made with emptiness, it turned into pitcher and pitcher has the ability to contain water. Then water can be poured into any container that is also made up of emptiness.’ If i talked about my room where I am sitting in, is itself formed on an empty place.

In this way, stillness is itself an emptiness of mind that helps us to work more efficiently by erasing harmful negative thoughts and creating space for developing new ideas and thoughts without clinging to any past burden that can help us to go the extra mile. 

However, people take stillness in another way like doing nothing keeping a hand on the hand and staring meaninglessly and not participating in any work affairs, but stillness and emptiness are not an excuse for our responsibilities and our daily tasks. In fact, it teaches us how to collect energy to fight those demons that have controlled our lives and the thoughts that are holding us back. These demons can be anything like our fear, anxiety, hopelessness, depression, etc.  

I have also faced such demons as there was a time when I was overwhelmed with some business loss. I was depressed that how things will be sorted out, how I will manage to survive, what people will think about me and how life will go on there were many other assumptions that were haunting me. There was a continuous noise in my head that seemed will never ever end.

I was in depression because nothing was in my hand. I could not do anything except overthink. Then I started to observe my activities and start thinking about those thinking. Afterwards, I realized that I was so consumed with my lost things that there was no space to think about the other good situations because I refused to accept those destructions that had changed my life. 

Then one day I decided to stop clinging to those thoughts. I just made my coffee and stand still with the window. I looked outside at the sky. I kept quiet all those voices that were shaking my inner peace and making me restless.

Sitting still for a couple of hours dramatically changed my life. I learned that I must empty my mind in order to stay in present and overcome my problems. Now I have realized that no one can accomplish anything if they are paralyzed by over-estimations and we all have this ability of stillness.

 I believe that our creator has given this ability to all of us with a great purpose as He knew that in the world of men and women where cities never sleep is important to infuse this ability of stillness in us to stay calm.

In order to gain this ability of stillness Icalms followed some steps that helped me out are:  

 In surreal times, take a long deep breath on a daily basis as the first thing that we did when we came into this world was breathe, and the last thing we will do to expire is also breathe out. We cannot survive a second without taking a breath in the air.

So, practice the art of deep breathing when feeling overwhelmed and powerless to respond in uncertain situations. Even in ancient times, doctors suggest deep breathing. They believed that this exercise cleansed the impurities and give strength and all the modern discoveries have proven that they were right. It impacts our brains and interacts with our memory and emotional processing centres.

 I usually take five minutes to breathe and pay attention to my breathing at the same time.  This is the core practice that helps to cope with stress and anxiety.

I would say that everything comes with attention and practice. I learned this skill of stillness with practice.  It allows us to hear our thoughts and calm our never system. I sometimes close my eyes, empty my mind and mute my thoughts for a while. I practice it whenever I need this. I even do this when I am in the office like I put a note outside the door ‘do not disturb’ and take a few minutes for myself.

Sometimes I also listen to soft music and it is also a nice idea because sometimes the deafening also frightens us and some people get afraid of their own thinking. So soft music is best for such types of people.

I do different things in different situations I also read aloud some phrases that help me to bring calmness. I repeatedly say ‘i am calm and still or I can create stillness. I sometimes focus on the moving branches of trees and try to listen to the plants and trees.

We all probably have days when we think that life is out of control. We run to the grocery then cook food and check emails, voicemail, and junk mail, we are also stuck with social gatherings, shopping, health issues, death, job, nurturing kids, improving skills, and the list is endless. I often get overwhelmed, want peace of mind, and start idealizing a simple life. People even assume to get away from their responsibilities but instead of leaving anything behind and thinking to go to live in a mountain and caves, learn to develop inner peace and stillness because the quality of inner peace reflects on the quality of our outer life.