Читать книгу The Book of Rest - James Reeves - Страница 21

We might at times want to call this state of watchful, restful, full-yet-empty being peace (even though it resides beyond peace. . .). We’re not talking about a spiritual peace, or even a physical peace, but more a sense of absolute OK-ness – of absolute completeness – that very often comes out of nowhere and without us having done anything to prompt it. Sometimes, we don’t realise it’s been there until it’s gone.

When this quality of peace becomes present in our experience it feels as though we have connected with something deep – something knowing – within ourselves, while at the same time we have a sense of being connected with everything we had thought was outside of ourselves. We, for just moments, become aware of our own smallness yet somehow feel greater for the realisation.

This quality of peace requires absolutely nothing for you to connect with it: and this is the problem. We very rarely do nothing. In fact, nothing is not something you can do.

That said, regardless of your circumstances, you will have experienced this quality of peace many times in your life already, however fleetingly, and without exception these will have all been times when you stopped trying to do anything (including trying to bring about a sense of peace). You will have been resting – that is, you will have separated yourself from the desire to do, have, think or feel anything at all.

Perhaps you woke up this morning and for those first few seconds were aware of a sense of ease and spaciousness before your brain kicked in and started barking orders at you or telling you stories about how you were going to feel for the remainder of the day. Or perhaps you recently undertook a task that consumed your full attention so much so that all your mind-chatter cleared out the way until it felt as if ‘you’, in effect, was gone. Perhaps you can recall having been to a music concert and suddenly feeling as though you and the musicians and the music were one; as though everyone in the venue had merged into the same poignant, unified experience. Or perhaps last weekend you took a walk in nature and, although for much of the time you were preoccupied with to-dos and work quandaries, there was also that blissful moment when you gazed out to take in the view and for just a few seconds became aware of a magnitude of quiet. Or perhaps you most recently found peace in that first mouthful of ice cream – not because it satisfied your taste buds but because, just for an instant, everything else stopped.

ASK YOURSELF

Can you recall a time, however recent or long ago, when you were hit by a sudden feeling of being both completely present and entirely connected to the people and experiences around you? If that’s too strong, perhaps think back to a moment when you suddenly noticed a stillness — an OK-ness — without there being any particular reason why.

In all these examples, rest (stillness, silence. . . a harmonious no-thing) emerged only when everything else had faded away. That feeling of completeness – of everything being OK exactly as it is right now – was not brought into the experience but rather revealed itself only once everything else was gone. This quality of peace, it seems, is the only remaining constant when all other layers of our experience are removed. This is a wonderful thing to know. It is always present within us, even when we are experiencing great suffering. But it is also deeply frustrating, since we are unlikely to feel its presence if we are distracted by any other aspect of our experience.