Living from The Still Point
- Trisha Lord
- Jun 5
- 4 min read
And when we really stop, completely stop, then we drop deeper and deeper down, deep into the stillness, and it all just happens. As Ramana Maharshi says we are pulled deep into the current where we have no control. We let go of the Controller, recognizing that there is no one making it happen, other than the power of wisdom and love itself.
Samaneri Jayasara: The Still Point Meditation
That still point is always there. Resting in it brings relief. It quenches all desires.
Buddhist teaching emphasizes the notion of impermanence. That impermanence is all there is, the very nature of existence. That, in a world of no guarantees, the one guarantee is that everything changes, and – in the end – the timing of which we cannot know, we will die. We will change from our current form into …….. who knows? There are differing views as to what happens next, from nothing, to bardos (or purgatory if you are Catholic) through to heaven or nirvana or reincarnation.
I like the piece by physicist Aaron Freeman, who says “you want a physicist at your funeral …… to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed they should not have faith…..According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you are just less orderly.”
Paradoxically, the one thing the Buddha said is not impermanent is the still point of the wonderful Samaneri Jayasara’s meditation quoted above. The still point is the only constant, in this world of impermanence which we are traveling through from birth to death.
Those of you (thank you, bless you, I hope you are not losing the will to live with this theme of mine!?) who have been following my trajectory since the impact of the deeply embodied experience I had of this still point during my time in the Karoo in January, will know that the consequences of that impact are far reaching.
I have no way of knowing if the way I am responding is the sanest or the craziest choice I have ever made in my life. I do know that the impulse to want to find a way to live life that doesn’t eviscerate the still point – banishing it to a distant memory of a precious time I once had and might find again but only if I put “real life” on hold and go back to the Karoo, is one that I choose, deeply, not to ignore.
I am writing here to say that crafting a way to live life from the still point is exquisitely provocative: stimulating, inspiring, meaningful on the one hand and formidable, demanding and seemingly unfeasible on the other.
For one thing, the still point doesn’t have anything to say. Which makes writing a newsletter particularly difficult to achieve!
As Samanari Jayasara goes on to say “this silence is really the most authentic language, and you have to know it for yourself.”
I have been realizing how alienating it is to attempt to live life from the still point, with its lack of views, opinions, likes or dislikes – the very stuff with which we identify and trade in our day-to-day interactions with each other. I regularly feel as though I am on a fool’s errand, having taken a wrong turn and am going to end up writing a shamefaced newsletter in the near future with much egg on my face and having to send myself up when I realise the clue I missed and now have to “tell one on myself” to recover any kind of credibility with my kind, generous and compassionate readers!
Practicing living in the present moment from the still point is a dance between the experience of abiding and non-abiding awakening described by another meditation teacher Adyashanti:
The slippery thing about seeking to stay in the still point is that you cannot. And seeking to stay there is a form of grasping – a habit of the mind, which see-saws between grasping and aversion. In many ways, I see a deep correlation to the practice of being a thinking environment. Like all practices, mostly the learning comes from failure. If we equate the still point to the Component of Ease, what I have discovered about that Component is that it is not achieved by creating conditions that are filled with the absence of urgency. It is the constant practice of producing ease in the face of urgency. The word urgency contains the root “urge”, first cousin of grasping and aversion.
The very “urge” to stay in the still point is the habit that will dismantle it, just as the self-critic that assesses our success at being a Thinking Environment is the voice that dismantles the experience of being one.
Tricky!
This is all so deeply intriguing that I am not at the place where I am ready to give up on what might continue to reveal itself to me.
As noted above, woven into all of this is the lack of striving, or of there being anywhere to get to or arrive at, that is integral to the nature of the still point, or to the being of a Thinking Environment, or to the outcome of a Thinking Session.
So you see – it’s all very paradoxical! And regular readers will know about my lifelong love affair with paradox.
Onwards, therefore. This is as far as I can go for now. I am pleased to report that it is way more of a newsletter than I feared I would be able to write. And I’ll just have to trust that people are still clicking “open” come July!
To your brave heart from mine,
With love
Trisha
PS. In replacement of my usually more lengthy newsletters, I thought I would gift you this link instead to a piece by Mark Nepo that lifted my heart so much, and made me fall in love with this wonderful man yet again, as I have done many times over the years in which I have known him as a writer: of such depth and wisdom, the giver of compassion and insight through his writing. For me, it was worth every moment of the time it took to read.
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