Finding Calm
Although there are many starting points for the path of inner transformation, most people nowadays find that their lives are hurried and filled with too much stimulation. Because of this constant over-stimulation, most of us become over-sensitive and prone to letting things build up and then over-reacting to something relatively insignificant. The media doesn’t help much, pulling on us like the force of gravity into feelings of insecurity and worry over the ever-escalating crises on the national and world stage.
Closer to home, we seem dogged forever by the repercussions of past mistakes even as we worry about the mistakes our loved ones might be making right now. Like others we know, we find ourselves confused about the direction our important relationships have taken and worried that being so over-whelmed is making it difficult to let ourselves really be touched by others. We can sense that we feel close to the breaking point too often, yet we never seem to have the time or energy for the spiritual pursuits we know would help us cope with all the stresses of everyday life. Instead of finding the bottom of our dissatisfaction, we try to muddle through, alternating between impatience and procrastination, between being explosive and being apathetic, between over-reacting and ignoring. All in all, most of us take up the path of inner transformation feeling much too serious and not nearly light-hearted enough.
The progress that modern technology brings to human life is the result of a collective and sustained effort to keep our attention focused on the workings of the external world. This goes a long way to making possible our sense of material well-being, but it also contributes to our unfamiliarity with the workings of the inner world. For example, few people are aware that most of what they experience internally are simply the habits of thought, emotion, and memory that they have accrued over the course of their lives. What most of us think of as me, in other words, is the sequence in which certain long-ingrained ideas and feelings and memories are triggered and relived, over and over.
Even the present is experienced through the filter of these habits that we mistake for our real identity—rather than functioning as creative beings, we tend to wander around, reacting in ever more predictable ways to the things we bump into in life. And no matter how often our reactions prove self-defeating, still we persist in responding to whatever we encounter in the same automatic ways. All in all, most of us take up the path of inner transformation acting as if we were incapable of changing ourselves.
But if habits can be started, they can be ended. If they can be kindled, they can be extinguished. If they can grow obsolete and no longer adaptable, they can be replaced with new and more adaptable ones. And just as our old habits acquired strength through repetition, the new ones we create gain strength through the repetition of inner training.
So until the body, emotions, and thoughts can be calmed by inner training, they carry us away like a wild horse plunging across an endless field—and just as musicians and athletes train to achieve peak performance, we all need to train our instincts, feelings, and self-talk if we are to reach our full potential.
Let us begin by asking ourselves a straightforward question: How does a capable and confident person my age act under pressure?
And let us begin by building up an image of ourselves acting thus.
This is the I Ching trigram for Mountain. It represents Stillness and Stability. Like the eye of a hurricane, it is the Still Point around which all change turns. By sensing the immovable Mountain within, we train ourselves to achieve inner Calm.
If you need to alter your outer circumstances before starting your inner training, there are several time-proven guidelines you may find helpful.
- Slow your life down.
- Establish a list of priorities that reflects your true values.
- Disentangle yourself from the lower priorities.
- Spend more time enjoying the higher priorities.
- Stop talking about your problems until you are sure you know what they really are.
- Listen more to those who are important to you.
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Next week, Part Two of Finding Calm.
The above is an excerpt from The Spiritual Basis of Good Fortune by William Douglas Horden.
If you’d like to learn more, visit the website: http://spiritualbasisofgoodfortune.com/
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The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications. It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams. Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.
Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.
