Stillness

Direction: The Center
Image: Shell and Quartered Circle
Key Words: stillness, center, joining, co-creation, balancing, reconciliation, plurality, destiny
Color: purple
Element: Will

At some distant point in mythological time, the living being which we call the planet Earth joined together with the Great Spirit of All That Is to co-create humankind. As the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so is every child more than a joining of two parents. Distinct from the rest of creation, humankind achieved self-awareness and by so doing gained the right of free will.

Because we are children of form and spirit, we have access to both the Earthly and the Divine within ourselves. Further, every individual is a collection of many parts: emotional, mental, spiritual, physical. Each part affects the rest in invisible fashion. But there is a way to achieve balance by seeking the center point of stillness where all parts will merge. If we learn to move from that center, responding not to the various insistent voices of body, heart, spirit or mind but acting from an awareness of the greatest good, then all four are served. They may not receive all their wants, but their real and essential needs will always be met.

By seeking to balance the plurality of our existence, we have the ability to balance the entire planet. This is the challenge that faces us. But there is no way to point at humanity and say, all right, take responsibility for your actions, make these realizations, because humanity is a collection of billions of individual beings who have lived, live, and may yet live. Our movements as a whole are difficult to perceive. But the awareness of a few can profoundly affect the rest of humanity through the invisible but powerful winds of change. Humanity can evolve through movements in individual lives.

The Earth as Gaia, a living being imbued with the spirit of All That Is, is faced with the same challenge that we face as individuals seeking to balance our plurality. If we choose of our own free will to accept our destiny, releasing the weakness, inadequacy and resistance that binds us to our old vision and world view, then yield to our greatest potential, we can be the wielder of will for the Earth as well, making the decision that will end this cycle and allow a new one to begin.

The gift of free will gives us the right to choose any direction and any path. Somehow the gift seems most powerful if it is used to do other than what is expected. Destruction appears to us so much more powerful than creation, taking so much more powerful than giving, controlling so much more powerful than yielding. But this is a distorted view. The other side of the gift of free will gives us the right to choose to be what we are intended to be. While non-human beings accept their roles without choice, we are given the freedom to choose to take our part. From here we make our own paths, then choose to walk upon them, taking responsibility for every choice that we make.

No one is going to tell us what we have to do. No force outside us is going to provide an easy solution to our global crisis. No ultimate authority is going to deliver an absolute truth in which we will all finally be able to believe. No relationship, no religion, no acquisition, no achievement, nothing that we find outside us is going to make us whole.

As we journey within ourselves, searching for the center point of stillness, we may discover it is a place we can only approach empty-handed and alone. But turning our backs on the world we may find, to our endless joy, the whole world waiting there for us to arrive and our empty hands holding everything we need.

~Judith Pintar