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09 March 2012

Stillness at the Center

 
…it’s amazing how quickly people lose interest once you stop reflecting back their dramas…~ a warrior friend

Sometimes there is nothing to say. Sometimes there is nothing to feel. Sometimes there is nothing to express. And when we become pensive and quiet the world around us thinks that something is wrong and demands to know what it is. And if we don’t provide the reason, any reason, even when there is no reason, our apathy is rejected, those around us become insulted and turn on their heel as if we are to blame somehow for not providing them with glossy and exciting dramas with desires to be healed or fixed or needed.

Last weekend a good friend came over who I hadn’t seen for a while. He is much younger than me and was in that place where one questions everything. If you’ve been there you know that everything becomes paradoxical, illogical and life situations and people often appear ridiculous. His friends were all nagging at him to be positive, be happy, see the good in everything, party more but he said he wasn’t feeling it. After a while he asked me why so many people are on meds. “To be happy!”, I exclaimed, “because we live in a society that measures a person’s worth by the amount of happiness they exude, real, fake or otherwise.”

My warrior friend, who provided me with the above quote, and I were talking a few weeks ago about erasing personal history and not really having any overarching need to be surrounded by or in the company of many people, being most content with just being still, quiet, connected with silent knowledge. We talked about how every so often someone comes into our lives and is like a brilliant star with whom we like to shine. And sometimes that shine lasts a little while and sometimes it burns brightly for a long time. And then, she mentioned, it’s amazing how quickly people lose interest once you stop reflecting back their dramas. Nothing to reflect except the stillness at the center.

We shine together the brightest when we are empty and hold no expectations of another, when we can be in each other’s company without trying to fulfill a need, a thought, an idea, a perception or an agenda. We need to honor another’s reality in the reality of many realities. We need, also, to be careful not to become anesthetized by an idea of perpetual and unnatural happiness.

Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations. ~ Don Juan

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