Flowing in Stillness

As of late I have again been thinking about the idea of flow. In my last blog I wrote about what flow looks and feels like when there is a lot of movement and momentum in life. I talked about how it feels to flow when things are FLOWING. Now I turn my curiosity to the idea of flow when what you are experiencing in your life feels more like stagnation, obstruction, or churning. How do we access FLOW and still tune into the energy of flowing with Divine presence when what we are experiencing in the material world is complete stillness? Or, possibly even more challenging for many of us; when we are facing downright obstruction, or the endless spinning and agitation of being stuck in a whirlpool. What does flow look like from the middle of the eddy pool or from the riverbank when you have just butted up against a huge boulder and you can’t find a way around it? What are your options when there is no viable way of creating productive forward movement? What do we learn in the stillness of just waiting it out until there is enough momentum for the whirlpool to spit us out, or for the water level to rise sufficiently for us to finally flow over the obstruction? How do we continue to energetically flow when we are faced with the inertia of stillness, or when confronted by agitation and non-linear movement? What does that feel like? 

Understanding how to flow in stillness likely begins with acknowledging that we have a collective societal dislike of stillness.  And an equal dislike of agitation. We don’t voluntarily practice stillness or agitation (movement without a direction) as much as we practice action (movement with a purpose). In fact, most of us try to avoid them all together. Both stillness and churning are interpreted as the absence of order in our lives. We experience them as an undesired lack of control. So our knee jerk reaction is to try to change the situation. We work hard to get unstuck and to get moving again. When confronted with stagnation or agitation we inevitably respond with effort; even when it feels like single handedly pushing a two ton boulder up a steep hill. We would rather work ourselves into a state of complete exhaustion than to be still, or to sit patiently in an agitated state. It is completely counter intuitive for most of us to relax and allow ourselves to simply experience the churning with the faith that eventually we will be dumped out exactly where we need to be. We haven’t yet learned to sit in stillness with the knowledge and trust that there is invisible work being done (both by us and on our behalf) that truly is moving us forward in our trajectory. Invariably we react to both stillness and churning with effort. Some sort of effort to help us gain, at the very least, the illusion of forward momentum. 

Maybe that’s the whole point. When we are in a moment of stillness or in a period of being stuck in the vortex, we aren't dealing with the kind of energy that can be moved or transmuted with effort. In this instance effort just batters and bruises us as we thrash about and bump up against the obstacle. Or it exhausts us. We can swim and swim and swim without ever arriving at an end point, without ever breaking free of the whirlpool, because that end point simply doesn’t exist yet. That particular door has not yet been opened. So what would happen if we rolled over and floated on our back until we were finally, effortlessly caught up by the tide and slowly moved by it? Either way, whether we resist or peacefully submit to the experience, the timing is not ours. The timing is always Divine. We will only arrive at a destination when it is time for us to arrive at that destination. We will only discover the fork in the road when we are actually prepared to choose a direction.

That's what the experience of stillness and agitation offer, they offer a pause, a moment in space and time to prepare for what is to come. Our efforts have no effect on the length of the journey. Effort will not get you there faster. Effort only affects the condition in which you arrive at the next stage. You can arrive well rested and well-nourished (because you figured out how to flow) or you can arrive battered, bruised and exhausted (the result of resistance).  What flowing in stillness calls for, what the endless churning truly calls for; is SURRENDER. They call for sitting and submitting, and serenely witnessing your life as it readies you for the next step or next series of steps that you will need to take.

I encourage you to play with the idea of surrender. Become curious about it. Surrender to the stillness. Surrender to the chaos and churning if that is what is present in your life. Avoid the temptation to try to get unstuck. Avoid all effort. Just sit and allow the Universe to move you. There is something you are trying to learn from being here, so let yourself be here. Stop trying to get there. Surrender to the here and now, look around, open your eyes and see this moment, and then ask your mind and your heart to accept that you truly are exactly where you are supposed to be. Be here now. Be with those who are in this moment with you. Release the belief that you are stuck. You ARE flowing, right here, in the stillness!

So very much love for you all, 
​Tawa