"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi
Everything about this lockdown period of COVID-19 was strange and unfamiliar until I sat in the stillness of the morning and really felt the silence. There was a strong sense of nostalgia induced by the lack of unnatural noise nearby; it brought up memories of the simple life in a village with valleys and peaks as far as the eye could see, memories of the sound of birds that announced the different times of the day and the space between moments when voices of people in conversation could be heard. The silence beckoned me to a time of old and simple ways, it refocused my sight; I noticed the thirsty plant at my doorway, I saw the flowers that have been in bloom this passing summer that were now wilting and in this process became richer in color and fragrance. My sense of smell was re-ignited not just because of the days in-between showers but the crisp, fresh air that tickled my cilia and I wondered if this was all in the power of stillness. While I sensed that my mind had several answers for the power of stillness as it raced between problem and worry and need and want. My mind dove straight into the deep end of loneliness, of isolation and idleness. Nothing could nourish it and the more the mind tried to escape the stillness by being engrossed in noise in the name of entertainment, the more it starved, the more fear set in and started to look like the natural color of my days.
After 19 days (as of today, the 6th of April) of being isolated from the world, I lost track of days and “normal” left through the back door and my mind took over. For a long time, there was a sense of free falling, nothing to grasp on to; though I could hear the people speak to me and feel the weight of their words, I could not hold on to anything. My mind was in charge and in freefall, therefore, I was in freefall. It was until this night when I heard the call to prayer at 8 pm as I have been since the silence set in, that I went outside to brave the nippy autumn night to submerge myself in the tranquility. The almost-full moon cast a spotlight that exposed the shadows that reached for me in what would have been otherwise dark night. The stillness had met the night and for the first time in a long time, I showed up to meet it too. I stood under the stars with my head facing up to kiss the stars in a welcoming embrace and for a moment I felt whole again. At that moment, I was the sum of my parts, flowing in collaboration to accept fully what this time meant: intention. I felt the alignment of the centers of my body and a path cleared before me that ironically requested stillness from within.
In this state of turmoil, I have subconsciously tried to maintain a normal state of internal affairs but because I have been nothing close to normal, I perpetuated this state of turmoil because let’s be honest, nothing about this is normal and maybe it is not normal that we need. We need to reflect on what we have been doing in the process of living our lives, what we deemed as productive and necessary to live this life we have curated. How many “needs” have you been able to live without since the lockdown? What has befallen you? There are necessary milestones that mark our progress that have been disturbed in this period, for instance, graduation ceremonies; an ancient tradition performed to mark one’s rite of passage but have since become a statement in society, a flag pitched at the top of the mountain to show everyone how far you have come. Without this ceremony, dissatisfaction sets in as if without this moment on stage all your blood, sweat and tears were all for nothing. We get up every morning to go out into the world to seek validation, to strive for the standards set by society to determine success and happiness. We leave our loved ones to earn and make a better life for them only to obtain a better life in exchange for less time with those loved ones. We then work harder to reach a stage where we can manage our own time but as we busy ourselves with the preparations for the arrival of that time, we fail to notice time moving swiftly past us. We trap ourselves in this cycle of “have to and should” and profess a state of external chaos and so the external search continues moving us further and further away from ourselves to seek what is and has always been inherent to all of us.
So, in that moment under the sporadically cloudy night sky, as the moon crawled from behind the foam of clouds to meet me, I met myself with everything that I needed. There is a global stillness right now and there is as much internal stillness that beckons from deep within and I needed the courage to embrace it. It felt like standing in an open field on a dark night and watching all my demons rising like a thick fog, swarming around me with no way to protect against them and nowhere to run. Yet this time is not about running nor is it about others, it is about meeting yourself with the same enthusiasm we have given to others all these years. This time is about learning to swim in the stillness and befriending all the life that lives in the ocean that is you. It is about exploring your depths with a gentle curiosity, going through the “normal” parts of yourself with a life-vest at first- completely immersed with a little buffer. Then step into a little canoe and paddle through the beliefs, the traditions that make up your character. Finally, step into a ship to gain more perspective and glide smoothly over the rough waves, the incidences of your life that threaten to define you without your permission. Do all of this and ask yourself: what is this time here to teach me?
There is no other moment other than the present and the next one is not guaranteed; you have given into your current way of being and you are familiar with the results so, how about you try something different, what have you got to lose? It’s not like you have to be anywhere else so why not meet yourself, explore and embrace yourself, flaws and all.
P.S
I have stepped into silence for the next 24 hours as I wrote this, which means no phone and no writing, just silence and embracing the stillness from within to practice this moment. I hope you find your piece of peace in anything you choose to practice henceforth.
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