Seeking the Still Point

I've talked about the theonoias--units of mental activity, where the goal is the first theonoia, or mental stillness--and I've talked about the "layers"--the fact that every thought has an emotion, every emotion has a physical sensation, and every physical sensation has an energy (and our job is to witness the interconnectedness of it all.)   I've also talked about suspension--the way we are most at the disposal of the spirit within when we are beholden to two opposite sides of a paradox, without resolving the tension.

The fact is, the first theonoia isn't just mental. It has an emotional corollary, a parallel in physical sensation, an energetic equivalent.  And knowing what these are is an important part of cultivating curiosity and playfulness with all the many layers of our experience. To that end: a bit of an "umbrella concept."  I call it "the still-point." [bxA]

Theologically, this is the same as suspension, remaining with Christ.  The still-point is a ptsd sufferer's hyper-vigilance recapitulated.  The still-point is like a non-mental locus of the first theonoia.  It necessarily suspends ego--because it can only be done with the attention, energy, and presence of the whole self. (It's not the still point if, mentally, you're elsewhere.)  This can happen between opposites: when you have so united yourself to an action you're doing that you cease to be able to tell whether it's bad or good.  The still-point can happen between layers: there are points where you can't tell whether "what you're feeling" is a thought, emotion or sensation--because perhaps it's all three. The still-point can exist between powerful drive systems--when I am suspended at that place where breath, energy, sensation and attention meet, sometimes breath stops.  Then I can focus on sustained attention, feeling the subtleties of sensation, watching how they transform.  I can find the still-point in a situation: if I sit back, be present and cease judging.  Lastly, the still-point can be present in the body.  Particularly, if I am facing trauma stored in a part of the body, the still-point can be found by overcoming my aversion-reaction.  When I sit in the trauma, treating it with compassion and curiosity instead of judgment and rejection, I cultivate the resources that eventually lead to letting it go.

When a thought is present at the still-point, it dissolves.  God "scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts."  Pride is a thought.  When it is exposed to emotion, it begins to confront its own impermanence.  When an emotion is present at the still-point, it includes its opposite.  In the book of Ezra, when the second temple was being blessed, there were old people in the crowd, weeping at the remembrance of the first temple.  There were young people, with no such memory, rejoicing.  Scripture reports that the reaction was mixed.  Many "wept aloud when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping."  When a sensation is present at the still point, it is both pleasurable and painful, and it is neither of those.  Pleasure and pain are ego-categories.  As Fr. Tom Keating of Spencer says "There is a level on which pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain, because we are grounded in divine love."  When an energy is present at the still point, it burns away all words and concepts, making us totally one with ourselves and our experience.  The Spirit within is a wind that blows where it chooses, and a consuming fire.

So what of it?  I use the still-point as a litmus test.  If I am still judging people or situations, I'm not standing in the center of the paradox.  If I am still thinking that pain and joy are entirely opposite, I am not, emotionally, standing at the first theonoia.  If I am still labelling energy "dark or light" or good or bad, I am not suspended with Christ on the Cross. If I am still mentally standing at a distance from my own experience, I am not at the intersection of my most powerful drives.

And the entire invitation here is egoic malleability: on the one hand, to learn to defend yourself from other-people's unfaced and compulsively-flung-about darkness, and on the other to learn to let down your guard entirely, as prudence allows.  It's both a cultivation of intuition and a surrender into the living presence at the creatively tense center of revelation and mystery.  Some of it is your work, some of it is God's, some of it is allowing your sense of separateness from God to dissolve.

But I am saying too much, and living too little...thank God for the messy apartment, and the sink of dirty dishes calling my name.