Holding Still Versus Being Still

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Holding still is a lot like being told not to move. You could absolutely be in one spot, but internally your mind is racing all over the place.

Being still is more about presence. You could be constantly on the go or in one spot, but you are stable and centered.

Great athletes are revered for getting into the flow. It is a state in which one has heightened awareness and can be absolutely focused on the task at hand. But I am a regular Joe. I can experience flow states when I go on a run, but other than that my attention span can be just as distracted as anyone else.

Could it be ordinary to live life in a flow state?

I certainly think it could be done more often. But how?

Recently my sister posted that she would love to go to Mars and not be around people anymore. I thought about that. What if we did suddenly have the ability to space travel? What if some portion of our humanity finally did colonize another planet, create an ecosystem, and replicate an earth-like experience?

So, I began imagining that… here. Here I am. On Mars. We have air. We’ve created balanced guidelines for our survival and we preserve our way of life to be able to prosper on a new planet. Fresh start.

What would we do? We would probably be a lot kinder to each other. We are on a new planet after all. Us getting along would literally depend on our survival. We’d likely be taking care of our personal health more. Doritos wouldn’t make the trip.

There would be a lot that we’d do differently.

In between that play of my imagination and interaction with my reality here on Earth, I found calm. It was somewhat of a flow state and it didn’t take a whole lot of stress and/or expectations. No standards to meet. No place to hurry to. All of those things still existed, but I was still within myself.

I think that is something we miss in our ordinary lives. The imagination. Henry David Thoreau is quoted as saying “It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.”

The imagination is what balances us on the verge of being still versus holding still. We allow our minds to expand and create. When we are told to hold still, or to think a certain way, or to behave in a particular manner, it comes at the cost of our expansiveness. Of course, we do need that guidance as children to understand the inherent dangers of being alive, but that comes to a point of natural awareness over some time.

We don’t have to constantly perceive threats. Does that eliminate the danger or scary situations? No. Not the message here. But it does give us a sense of ease. We can breathe when we are safe. This could shift your entire reality and bring on the new instance you never could have thought.

Finance has always been terrifying to me.

I grew up in a household that money was learned as a scarce resource. We should just be lucky to have what we can get. Going into adulthood I defaulted on student loans and wrecked my credit. Not only did this have a negative consequence on me, but also a family member who had cosigned. I felt shame and wasn’t willing to face the humility of it.

It was such a low point for me but I was frozen in fear. I had no idea what I had gotten into and a lot of other things going on in my life around that time were also falling apart. It was a lot for someone who was still a kid at the time.

Now, it’s taken a lot of learning to climb out of that hole and not feel danger around money. Like I have to fight for it or sell myself to every minute of the day. I work with a job that I enjoy and also attract clients who are good for me. Before I was working in a construction job I loathed and it was a negative environment. Everyone had the same life output and it was uninspiring. While I also see myself as a part of the problem at the time, I did take the steps to change that reality to a better situation. Even if my world felt like a hell at the time.

The stillness was the factor in all of this for improvement.

I never realized how busied my mind was until I took the steps necessary to settle it down. It took some meditation, some breathwork, but more than anything talking and opening up to other people going through similar situations helped the most. It wasn’t until then that I could feel a sense of “oh, this is okay” that I could move on from challenging times. That gave me some validation that I wasn’t alone.

What I desire now are presence and space. A lot of what I had been taught growing up was about holding still. Constricting my thoughts. Narrowing my expression. I had learned about the world as if it were innately wrong. Now, my life is about being still. Watching as moments arise, fall, and re-arise. You come to realize that everything has its own way of balancing, and you must keep yourself from getting in your own way.

As far as money goes, I never hit the jackpot lottery, but there is a lot more fulfillment with what I do receive. That ripples into many other facets of my life also. Not just with finances, but also within the daily exchange of energy with other people. In that way, I feel enriched. I can share a better version of myself with others. This truly allows calm, and I can realistically think “Wow, this is a great world after all.”

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