Labels part II
Labels manufacture fear
Quiet Stillness blossoms love
Instead of hiding away from prejudice, we dove right in. “What does it mean to feel fear when you see someone who is black and they are wearing a hoodie?” This began our in depth dialogue tonight. A member courageously brought up his fear around certain aspects of those who are black. This led to questions about the impact of what is taught into us through parents, schooling and media that invokes this profiling and fear. How does our fear impact someone else? If we were walking down a street and became fearful of the black person in the hoodie, how does that impact their reaction? Does collective fear impact society? If one was black and walking down the street and saw three white males coming towards him, how would one feel? What would you feel if you saw someone white and wearing a hoodie? Would that fear still come up? Is this stereotyping an entire group of people or just the individual?
We rush so quickly in our society for that is what we are taught to do. Because of this we don’t even recognize that we hold onto certain labels about others and about oneself. We work and work some more, then go home and turn on the television. We run around, busying ourselves. We rarely take time to just be.
We believe that everything has to have some sort of purpose. But for what end? And if we don’t know ourselves then what are we running towards? Even movements like Black Lives Matter will be hard pressed to push towards a deep understanding, unless there is a pause to look into oneself and one’s own thinking. No matter where we are coming from, we have all been born and conditioned into our hierarchical cultural framework, and all participate in the divisiveness by the way in which our culture has taught us to think….and we forget that we are society. Until we stop, we will continue to all create in our own way, identifications to labels without even knowing why and how they create division.
As i sit here today, I stopped. I didn’t write until I was quiet. From there it began to flow. It all comes down to stopping. Our dialogue was fresh and insightful as we didn’t hide away from talking about something challenging. This led us to see that we are conditioned, that there is systematic oppression, and we need to look within. Even though we were talking and listening, there seemed to be a stillness that was unfolding in the midst of the dialogue.
To see truth and in freedom, we need to stop and be still. If I could point to the most important thing we can do to create transformation; real change, is not to look outwardly for change, but to truly stop, and listen and find stillness within oneself. Here is where wholeness and love arises, and where one can flow and be in right action.
“In the stillness of my mind I saw myself as I am - unbound. - Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of ‘I am’ is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the ‘I am’, without moving, you enter a state, which cannot be verbalized, but which can be experienced. All you need to do is to try and try again. After all the sense of ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it- body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions and so on. All these self-identifications are misleading, because of these you take yourself to be what you are not. “
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realize that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine
“As spiritual searchers we need to become freer and freer of the attachment to our own smallness in which we get occupied with me-me-me. Pondering on large ideas or standing in front of things which remind us of a vast scale can free us from acquisitiveness and competitiveness and from our likes and dislikes. If we sit with an increasing stillness of the body, and attune our mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, the mind gradually stills and the heart is filled with quiet joy.
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
“Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words 'Be still'. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?”
― Ramana Maharshi
“The inner is foundation of the outer
The still is master of the restless
The Sage travels all day
yet never leaves his inner treasure”
― Laotzu
“Go deeply into the urge to be silent and not the mental interference of how, where and when. If you follow silence to its source you can be taken by it in a moment.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest
“Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life — perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy — if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation….The flowering of love is meditation……The mind has to be empty to see clearly.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
