Amidst the hustle and bustle of daily life, you have to take time to pause, to be silent inside and not move around so much. With the state of the world topsy-turvy, and everything moving so fast, stay low to the ground, reflect, read a bit, stare off into space. Start by exhaling long and deep. Remove the rush and urgency from your nerves and drop any ambition to get anywhere. You need not fly 10,000 miles to go on retreat or travel to Bali, Rishikesh, or Costa Rica. Just make a cup of tea, sit in the chair by the window, stand under the big oak tree, or sit by the edge of the sea. Be still, and let the whole world come to you.
Take one or two hours off. Let time lapse. Note the way thoughts and memories arise, drift and dissolve in turn. Note the way that all things appear and then disappear. In this way, your mind is like a swinging door, not holding to anything, just letting things pass through.
By doing nothing you enter a pregnant pause. The pause has power and a certain potential all its own. Enter a space in your mind and heart where you have the freedom to roam, to discover and to just be. Do not try to figure anything out. Simply let yourself belong to a vast, timeless space. Let yourself be inseparable from the sky, the air, the ground. In time, let the stillness and peace of the pause penetrate into all that you do.
