Finding the Still Point Centre
Posted by Anam cara on 08 Oct 2009 at 08:41 pm | Tagged as: Spiritual Direction Podcast, celtic spirituality, spiritual storytelling
W. B Yeats – My Spiritual Director
As an Irish mystic storyteller I adore the poetry of W. B. Yeats. Let me say at the outset this interest in W. B Yeats. is in no way academic.
I never set out to find a connection to W. B. Yeats and his poetry. I never set out to find a connection to the poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi but I did. These wonder poets came into my life at a time of threshold. Each appeared in my life at the time of my return to my homeland of Ireland..
In April of 2000 my sister Mary who was four years older than myself died of cancer. This lead me to question what I was doing with what the mystic poet Mary Oliver calls “this one glorious life that you have been given.” The answer to that question was that I wasn’t doing what I wanted. I wasn’t living gloriously. I was playing safe as an accountant working for myself.
I made the decision (along with my partner Bee) to return to Ireland to develop what we would call A Still Point Centre. Little did I know then that all hell would break loose. Since my return I have been supported and amazed at the beauty and invitation from the poetry of W. B. Yeats. He keeps asking me deep hearts core questions that I attempt to share and sometimes avoid.
One key aspect of this mystic search at the deep hearts core is the search for peace. It is the peace that Jesus Christ refers to when he says, “My peace I give to you but not as the world gives you.” This peace in no way requires that you believe in Jesus Christ. Belief in Jesus Christ must be the direct inner experience of Christ Consciousness.
W. B. Yeats in his poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree invites
“And I shall have some peace there for peace comes dropping slow.”
I, as a storyteller, am in some little way a peace pilgrim. I walk this world in search of what it is I aspire to know and be and give. This peace pilgrimage is inner. It is a journey into stillness and silence that is at the deep hearts core. Out of this stillness arises what is called right action. This is Love in action.
Gangaji says this beautifully when she writes in “The Diamond in your Pocket – discovering your true radiance.” She writes
“It is possible to trust that right action can come from the unknown stillness of your being. You have learned not to trust this stillness, because you are afraid you will just lie on the couch all day. And you might just do that. Your body is probably exhausted anyway.”
We don’t have to know what the plan is, but we do have to be true to peace: to take responsibility for choosing to over look what is already at peace. We have learned how to armor, to lie and to protect ourselves.
Yet deeper, closer than any strategy we have learned, the peace remains. It is here right now.”
All mystics invite you to know the now of this peace. Except that Gangajii says you do not trust that out of the stillness, the apparent emptiness of no thing comes everything. That, at the centre of such a peace is a power that knows what needs or needs not to be done.
As W. B. Yeats rightly says in the poem Lake Isle of Innisfree,
“for peace comes dropping slow.”
You have to value it. You have to have direct experience of it. You have to have the commitment to make it real in your life and to have it radiate within your life situation.
Pay attention to what your culture invites. Our Western culture teaches us to be afraid of silence. Thus it holds tight the keys to the dwelling of peace but not the indwelling of peace that allows you to know safety, sanctuary and Love. You have to become an island of calm. You have to be able to attune yourself to listen to the peace of the infinite peace. This peace is at the still point centre of your deep hearts core.
On this journey of the peace pilgrim you learn that peace comes dropping slow. Do not be discourgeaged. Still it comes because it is always there. The more silent you become inside the more the Universal song sings through you. It is always a unique song and always a song of peace.
How do you find this peace that comes dropping slow? Simply by witnessing the non-peace of your mind without judgement until you enter no mind and the One Mind. It is the most difficult and the most simple of practices. It follows the biblical instruction “
“Be still and know that I am God.”
Out of this knowing all that needs to be known is know and out of that knowing Love in action arises. Action that is effective in the world of form arises out of the still point centre of the deep hearts core.
NOTE
You can download and listen to Tony making this invitation to Finding the Still Point Centre at our Deep Hearts Core podcast. Simply click the button below.
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Thank you, Tony for this beautiful reminder….I need constant reminders these days, it seems. One would think that after walking here for 60 years I would “get it”, but it remains elusive to me….
I look forward to your ezines.
I will be looking for the book “the Diamond in your pocket” here where I live.
Judy