Member-only story
A Time to Stop
Close your eyes. Imagine a muddied pool of water. Now open your eyes. Imagine you are inside it thrashing around. What do you see?
Nothing.
A Pool of Clear Water
Our mind is like a pool of clear water. All our thoughts, our anxieties and fears, our hopes and aspirations … are like mud sediments. The more we turn these thoughts over in our heads, the more these sediments experience a flux in our minds and the muddier the pool becomes — making it difficult for us to see or swim in any direction. Oftentimes, to see clearly, we need to stop thrashing and allow those sediments to settle.
Sadly, in the world we live in today, our minds and bodies are so calibrated that we are ALWAYS in motion. The alarm, the morning routines, work, leisure, the next deal or the next paycheck, the next object of our desire to have more. Every day, we are in motion and so is our mind — constantly thinking of the past and how not to repeat its errors of judgment; of the future and its many uncertainties; occasionally, of the present and how to make it last forever or not make it last at all. And in this turbidity of thought, the mind muddies even more. But something is happening right now. We may not see it that way, but this is what it is. Time has brought us all to a screeching halt, forcing us all to slow down. And this offers us an opportunity to stop. Stop…
