Stillness

By Yi Liu 

Really, it’s just one word–one word that changes everything in a snap of fingers. I don’t know what that word is just yet, so let me write on. 

The way I’ve experienced change is… 

… being pulled forward for one second and held back for the next, and trying to gasp in between these movements. 

I’ve also discovered that change feels like a fundamental need. 

It feels like a calling, a nudge from within, a whisper I don’t explicitly hear but decide to follow–all the time. So I’ve been changing. 

Have you? 

Over the past few days? Few years? Few decades? 

Change is the constant. 

So I guess my question is – why would anyone want to resist change? 

Why would anyone want to hold still? though there seems to be great virtue in stillness–like the stillness of a stone, the stillness of silence, the stillness of a tree. 

Stillness is temporary too, but the stillness of a tree creates a sense of serenity that feels like eternity, like peace. 

Thus the quality of stillness is of great virtue, precious to the constant movement of the universe, the movement of your inner being. That quality of stillness is of great importance. And it’s important to notice the difference between stillness and resistance to change. 

Stillness is in between movements, in between changes. 

Stillness is the respiration that is naturally occurring. It is a part of it all that is changing. 

Resistance, on the other hand, is the declaration against the natural occurring. It is the stubbornness that is born from prejudices, from biases, from what is only partially known to be true. It is limited to our knowledge, our experience, our habits, and the perceptions from which we see ourselves and the world, which thus mirrors us. 

It is limited to what we know, so we have to make resistance happen–a lengthy process that feels like being pulled forward for one second and held back for the next, during which we are trying to gasp in between these moments. 

Resistance is how we play with the universe, whose nature is like breathing.

So “breathe.” 

Ah! –the magic word that changes everything in a snap of fingers, the magic word that teaches you to let go of resistance, the word that teaches you to be. 

So breathe—— 

Let your breath go through your spine like air goes through an open channel. And I see that you’ve changed in stillness, and will continue to change in stillness.