Gateway to Inner Wisdom and Guidance
by Giorgia Milne & Mary Reis
The uniting principle underlying any activity is stillness. As paradoxical as it may seem when our lives are filled with busy-ness, it is the stillness that makes all the activity possible. Just like a hurricane, when our center is clear and organized, so too is our power output.
“A fulcrum is a pivot point of stillness that provides the power to
organize a specific activity. Fulcra are portals that connect all the dots between separation and oneness. Because stillness is the core of every activity, it is the constant uniting principle through which each part
connects with other parts, and with the whole. In this way,
the infinitesimal connects with the infinite.”
—Charles Ridley: STILLNESS pgs 23-24
Learning to rest inwardly, sensing the presence of stillness, unites you with the wisdom of the body and the wisdom of the whole. You strengthen presence by resting inward inside your body-space — the coalescing point of stillness and awareness. The breath is a perfect vehicle for contacting this presence, and it opens the gateway for your authentic guidance to emerge.
At the beginning and end of every breath, is a slight pause. From that magical pause moment arises the sense of being centered, of feelingly being connected with the aliveness of our presence. Without thinking our way into this inner orientation, but feeling our way, we feel sensations as they arise. We can feel our body expanding with the in-breath, the coolness of the air passing through the trachea. We can feel the slight pause at the end of the breath and the sensations that accompany it. Then the warmth of the out-breath as it passes through, and the inner body sensations that accompany exhalation. Then the pause again.
Sensation is different with each portion of the breath, and there is something about the expansion of sensations within the pause that allows us to truly feel our aliveness. As we feel into the stillness, our connection with it deepens and expands. It is as if some deep part of our present, alive, embodied awareness rests in the source of this pivot point of stillness — even as our breathing and other physiological functions remain free to naturally flow on their own.
A contemplative embodiment practice: (Sense it directly, not just think it). In the pause, where has the breath gone? Is it “gone”? Or has it just gone past the horizon of our perceptual awareness? Trust your felt experience. Rest there.
Our body’s innate wisdom is naturally oriented to the origin and order of a larger functional whole. Embodied perceptual awareness, through which you spontaneously respond to life, expands accordingly… opening the gateway to deeper orders of connections.
When you strengthen your presence, it loosens the power of habitually grooved patterns that create unconscious and automatic thoughts, actions, or reactions. Your authentic bodily responses originate from a silent language without words that well from the depths of your embodied presence while resting inside your body. Your actions well from the wisdom of the body.
Form arises out of stillness, and stillness becomes form.
—Charles Ridley
Inhabiting your inner body space and sensing the tonal qualities in your inner body atmosphere, you rest here while you let everything be as it is. The felt-sense of the inner body qualities becomes your objective guidance, your inner GPS.
At the core of your embodiment practice is a trust in the inherent wisdom of your body, and a confidence that your body is connected to the natural order of Life. You can enhance your awareness of inner body wisdom and live by its guidance, when you receive and soak up the stillness inside your body, which slows the tempo of your consciousness and you can sense the subtle nuanced micro-qualities that pulse inside you.
Be Still and Know I Am
