Keep Still

Stillness is a vital part of the dance.

Movement emerges from stillness. Chaos eventually emerges from movement.

Returning to stillness is returning to order of a kind. An empty room.

When I was a kid, my mom warned me many times, then took my toys away because I wouldn't clean up.

To her chagrin, I never asked for them back. I just LOVED that empty room.

Emptiness, stillness, nothingness, is A THING as often as it's NO THING.

It is A THING that can be missing from a relationship, from a dynamic, from a motion. Adding emptiness can create fulfillment.

This teaching is a vital but dangerous one.

So much of our historic subjugation and oppression was enforced through silence, choked in the grip of fear.

Freeze is one of the trauma responses.

The mere suggestion that we question the story we're telling can feel like gaslighting.

The idea that we not tell a story can seem like brainwashing.

Yet, the person breathlessly silenced by their fear could not be more different in nervous-system-disposition from the monk pursuing a vow of silence.

This is not a subtle difference, and not an inexact process.

It's the way to experience the safety you've already created around yourself.