Still Days are a little like what I romanticise convent life could be, if I could live for a little while within cloistered walls, wearing a cloistered uniform. Still Days are a step removed from everyday buzzing, squarking world, where instead energetically I'm most attuned to quiet realisation of cyclical nature, cyclical thoughts, and cyclical experience.
Still Days have upsides and downsides. On the up, that sharp stilling allows greater space to see and appreciate the tiny minute changes that are always and everywhere taking place, in our environment, and in ourselves. There's a reason why cloistered nuns shine with so much welcoming when us laypeople visit for a day, I think - when repetition of the Divine Office, day in and day out, is the lynchpin upon which your material, soulful and spiritual life is centered, ingress from the outside world, change, of course is likely to register as a blessed experience. There's less of a need for big travelling-round-the-world stimulus, because every visit from every sentient being, right here, in this space, becomes a holiday in and of itself.
Still Days have their own healing within them - dropping into a meditative awareness of the space between my horizontal heartbeat and the vertical rise and fall of the breath means I focus a little more often on my accompanying mantra, 'but for these, I would not be'. It's possible that the 'healing' occurs because I value the heartbeat and the breath a little more highly for simply having heard them properly. There's nothing like deepening my sensitivity to the inescapability of my own end to help me align my praxis with my highest intent, too.
Still Day downsides turn easily, unchecked, into dark days. Having listened to Reggie Ray, a self-styled Vajra Master be interviewed by Tami Simon recently, I'd love to see more support come through from Christianity to assist those who choose to walk (choose, to walk) through dark days into a deeper understanding of themselves. Reggie talked of dark retreats in the Vajrayana tradition, where, with some evidence of psychological resilience in hand, meditators take themselves into a darkened room for an extended period, and encounter a lowered barrier between the unconscious and conscious mind.
In a small way, Still Days lend themselves to this effect - sharpened awareness in my own company of my own company shortens the length of time between my unconscious reactions, and me seeing them for what they really are. It means I encounter my naked, often unflattering mind streams in all their repetitious angst. There's a learning of the rampant mind games of ecstasy and tortured agony that will echo loudly in the stillness, there's choosing to sit and let all that simply play out or deciding to use whatever's goin' on to ramp up my joy or anger.
I've been in an energetic limbo since mid-November, when a lovely priest (thanks again, if you do drop by here, Fr. Tim+) kept me company online as I shifted, in both a felt bodily and sensed-spirited way, into a place where, forgive me, but I know not from whence I came. It's that kind of place where I sense I have to 'do some time', before another download of energetic pull/push comes my way, and I reconcile myself into the world again, in some way anointed and renewed.
There's been a hectic examination period, the inception of the silly season, a couple of month ends and all the usual daily maya melodrama, and I haven't allowed myself space to sit in my Still Days. Here's a call, to me, to put down the books, the astrology charts, the paintbrushes and the distractions, at least once a day, and sit with this Still Day thing.
I miss the fluttery cerebral sensations at the back of my head. :)
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