Years ago, I “went into the stillness” – or so I thought. Desired nothing, nothing at all but the empty vastness of infinity. Didn’t give thoughts a chance to formulate. At all. Wanted to go in more and more, deeper and deeper. Nothing happened. However, “thoughts” veered off before manifesting.
Suddenly I saw, I knew, I Am the vastness. I Am the emptiness … empty of all matter. I Am the stillness. I Am the Allness, the infinity, the invisibility that I sought.
“As you continue to work on yourself, … the day comes when all this is gone, and you are gone. You become nothing, a good-for-nothing. You go beyond nothingness, which is ineffable, something that can’t be explained, for there are no words or thoughts to understand this. Yet, you’ve got it all within you. Everything you need is within you. You are the one.
All the tools that you need are within yourself. But you have to make the move to do something. As I said, leave the realization to me. Work on yourself. Get rid of all the stuff that’s kept you bound for so many years. You know what it is, the fears, preconceived ideas, all these things that have kept you in bondage all these years. Let go of them. Give them up. Surrender everything.”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)
To Truly Enter the Stillness one needs to
SURRENDER COMPLETELY.
Many many times in my meditations
I tried to enter the Stillness
But came up kinda short.
Oh, it was good each and every time
Like a refreshing dip in the ocean that is God.
But this time was different:
I YEARNED for a deeply spiritual and lasting,
Life-changing experience.
The YEARNING grew and grew until
I wanted nothing else –
Just cleanse everything about me
And let me stay indefinitely.
It was tantamount to total
Unmitigated SURRENDER
Although I gave no particular
Thought to it.
I was humbled to the depths
Of my soul.
Moisture told me I had never
Wanted anything so badly.
It happened!
The floodgates of Love burst open
And I saw. I saw everything.
I saw all you guys perfect as you are.
Saw my passed-on parents
And sister and brother.
I saw the whole world
Healed and whole.
When u go into the
STILLNESS
don’t try to DO anything.
This is the place where u can ‘see’ in proportion to ur ABSOLUTE SURRENDER. rjs
“I tell you, deep inside you is a fountain of bliss, a fountain of joy. Deep inside your center core is truth, light, love, there is no guilt there, there is no fear there. Psychologists have never looked deep enough.”
~ Ravi Shankar
Indian musician and sitar player
For other people named Ravi Shankar, see Ravi Shankar (disambiguation).
Ravi Shankar KBE (Bengali pronunciation: [ˈrobi ˈʃɔŋkor]; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, spelled Ravindra Shankar Chowdhury in Sanskrit; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012), whose name is often preceded by the title Pandit (Master), was an Indian musician and a composer of Hindustani classical music. He was the best-known proponent of the sitar in the second half of the 20th century and influenced many other musicians throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999.Quick Facts: Background information, Birth name …
Shankar was born to a Bengali Brahmin family in India, and spent his youth as a dancer touring India and Europe with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956.
In 1956, Shankar began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. His influence on Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in Western pop music in the latter half of the 1960s. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra, and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. He continued to perform until the end of his life.