There is a particular kind of stillness that does not feel still at first. I know it from moments when I sit down after a long day and initially notice only how much is still running through me. Conversations echo in my mind, unfinished things resurface, thoughts jump from one subject to the next, and although there is barely a sound in the room, inwardly I am far from quiet. In the past, I would probably have experienced this state as the opposite of stillness. Today, I see it more as its beginning. Because only when the outside world grows quieter can I begin to notice how much noise I am carrying within me. Stillness takes nothing away from me. It simply shows me what everyday life can so skilfully cover over.
This has changed my understanding of quiet. For a long time, I thought stillness had to feel peaceful. I associated it with relaxation, clarity and a pleasant state in which thoughts finally disappeared. But that is not always how I experience it. There are days when it first shows me my restlessness. A disappointment I made no room for during the day. A question I was able to avoid between tasks and conversations. A feeling for which there is no quick explanation. There is something honest in that for me. As long as I am busy, I can cover many things with movement. When nothing else is demanding my attention, what I have pushed aside does not suddenly begin to exist. I simply hear it clearly enough again for the first time.
Perhaps this is one reason why we so easily avoid stillness. Everyday life now makes it very easy for us never to allow a truly empty moment to arise. A short wait is enough and the phone is already in our hand. Something plays in the background while we eat, we listen to music or the news while walking somewhere, and even in the evening another voice from a screen is allowed to fill the room. I know this from myself as well, and I do not see anything inherently wrong with it. Entertainment, music and conversation are part of life for me. It becomes interesting only when I notice that I already need the noise before boredom has even had a chance to appear. Then I wonder whether I am really looking for entertainment or whether stillness would simply come too close.
Because when the noise around me fades, my perception changes. Things that previously seemed equally important begin to separate from one another. A thought loses some of its weight once it is no longer accompanied by ten others. A worry feels less powerful when I stop constantly thinking it onwards. At the same time, something very quiet can suddenly become clearer. Not some great inner calling, not a mysterious message, but rather a simple knowing of how I am actually feeling. I notice that I am exhausted even though I thought I was coping well. I feel that something has hurt me even though I had long since decided I was over it. Or I realise that inwardly a decision may already have been made while my mind is still gathering arguments.
I do not automatically take such perceptions as truth. Fear, old experiences and desires can speak in stillness too. Not every quiet thought is intuition, and not every feeling carries a deeper message. That is precisely why stillness is not an oracle for me. It does not answer my questions like some outside authority. What it does instead is remove something: the constant layering over. That allows me to distinguish more finely between what is actually happening within me. For me, that is a crucial difference. I am no longer necessarily looking for a voice that tells me what is right. I am trying instead to notice which voices are there at all and which of them only become loud because I keep feeding them with new thoughts.
Over time, I have also come to understand that stillness does not arise simply from the absence of sound. I can sit alone in a quiet room and be completely tense inside. Conversely, I can be in the middle of a city and experience a moment in which something within me becomes still. For me, deeper stillness begins where, for a moment, I stop trying to answer everything immediately. A thought can appear without my having to follow it through to the end. A feeling can be there without my immediately giving it a cause. In such moments, a small gap appears between what I perceive and what I make of it. That gap does not feel empty to me. There is something spacious about it because not every experience has to be turned immediately into a finished story.
This is also where I feel a close connection with New Reiki – Back to the Source. In my own exploration of Reiki and energy over many years, I have experienced how quickly expectations can overlay perception. If I already know what I want to feel, I can easily begin searching for exactly that. If, on the other hand, I become quieter and do not force anything, I often perceive more subtly what is actually there. I have found that this openness can matter more than any idea of what a spiritual experience is supposed to look like. That does not mean I attribute an energetic cause to every impression. For me, the depth lies more in staying with the experience first, before explaining it.
The more familiar I have become with this form of stillness, the less I need it to produce a particular result. In the past, I would probably have hoped to feel clearer, calmer or more certain afterwards. Today, a quiet moment is allowed simply to remain quiet. Not every question resolves itself. Not every restlessness disappears. There are evenings when, after a while, I still do not know what to make of something. And yet something has changed because I did not immediately turn away from what was there within me. Perhaps there is a kind of closeness to ourselves in this that we easily underestimate. Not always receiving an answer, but simply remaining present at all.
And occasionally something happens that is difficult to describe precisely because it is so unspectacular. The inner current slows for a moment. No thought pushes itself to the front, nothing demands a decision, and I am not trying to hold on to the moment either. Then it does not feel as though stillness is speaking to me. It feels more as though I have stopped talking for long enough to hear something that was there all along. Perhaps that is precisely its quiet difference from noise: it adds nothing. It simply leaves behind what we are no longer drowning out.