The Practice of Being Still

“♪ ♪ Stillness, deep deep within us. In small beginnings it flows into the living waters. The ocean of God, through our stillness, God moves. ♪ ♪ ” Paulette Meier

“And so through our stillness, through our joy may stillness move, through our fun may stillness move, through our stillness may stillness move, and through that movement may God move.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal Wisdom School 8-2020, 1:24:00 0817 IWS Monday PM Teaching.

The Paradox of Movement in Stillness

“We live in one psychic stew after another. But the state of apatheia, this containing yourself within your atmosphere, this allowing it to move, you know, through our stillness God moves. The beautiful setting of that chant by Paulette. So through our stillness God, it’s all just quiet and then moves. Through that field, through that web, something moves. That’s Imaginal reality.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal Wisdom School 8-2020, 18:35 0819 IWS Wednesday PM Teaching

Stillness as Fruit, Not Goal

“Usually we look at meditation, the goal is the stillness and all the things that come in the stillness. And the means is that you do this practice, whatever it is, your mantra, your letting go. So whatever the practice is, is in the service of the goal of the stillness. Centering prayer flips it around in a very interesting way. The goal is the surrender. The goal is the letting go itself, understood as a pure act. And the fruit of this is a deep inner stillness that can express itself. Whether you’re sitting on your cushion meditating or moving out into the hubbub, the stillness still remains. So it’s a slight difference, but I want to not lose this touchstone on the surrender itself.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Boehme for Beginners, 2:31 disc1 track1

Active Stillness as Preparation

“Prepare the abode for the master. That’s good Sufi terminology. But what it means is nurture your heart through practicing the gesture of willingness, stillness, openness, quiet, resignation. And that is preparing the abode for the master. The master being your essential self, your Christ self. We don’t have to name what it is. But as the master takes possession of your first principle, your egoic chemistry, then one of the lovely things about the ego, which is almost never recognized, is at a certain point in your life it longs to bow the knee of the heart to the master. The ego is not a villain.” Boehme for Beginners, 2:43 disc5 track2

“Cleared of all internal noise, conscious attention is an instrument that vibrates like a crystal at its own frequency. It is free to receive the signals broadcast at each moment from a creative universe in communication with all creatures. However, the attention is not mine. In a moment of its presence, one knows that it does not originate entirely with oneself. Its source surrounded by mystery, attention communicates energy of a quality the mind cannot represent. One needs to be at the surface of conscious attention. One prepares for its advent through active stillness.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2016 Three-centered Knowing, 48:42 12-Wednesday Evening Reflection.

The Oxymoron That the Heart Understands

“Through active, through active stillness. Oxymorons. But, you know, the heart gets them immediately. That’s feeling. That’s the feeling level. The active stillness of movement. Yeah. Exactly so. This is what we’re talking about. And this is why, as you feel that call to move to what a human being can truly be, to sacrifice your sufferings, to sacrifice your entitlements and your justifications at one level to participate in this other, which is the bringing in. Because it’s attention that makes it possible for that love to manifest and to transform from simply attraction to conscious choice.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2016 Three-centered Knowing, 55:46 21-Friday Morning Teaching.

Being Still as Source of Knowing

“In the act of actually lovemaking and engaging one being with another, you know them in a way that no facts could ever add up to, right? So the word in Hebrew for that exact word is ‘doth’. It talks about a knowing that goes deeper, that has a deeper dimension to it than anything that we can do with our brain by itself. And the resonances have to do with fecundity and love. And don’t forget the fecundity word. This knowing we’re talking about is generative. It has to do with the creating of newness out of stillness. So that’s the classic pedigree…. It’s referring to a deeper, more global and pervasive and sense-based, attention-based, full spectrum inside knowing of something. “And for wisdom students, that’s where wisdom is found. It’s bringing that kind of knowing, knowing that is more closely replicated in lovemaking than it is in sitting in the library collecting scores and scores of information.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Introductory Wisdom School May 2025 CA, 9:55 02 Mon am Three-centered Knowing 5-26-25.

Stillness Extended into Action

“The intention of a wisdom or of a silent retreat is to really give you that unbroken silent space to do the deepening and processing that happens there. But remember, wisdom is integral knowing. And what we’re really working on in a wisdom school is developing the capacity in you to move from deep silence and gathered recollected stillness into action without losing the spaciousness, without losing the recollection. So that we can extend our silence in the form of gathered presence into everything we do without getting rattled and without getting frenetic.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Kanuga Nov 2025, 3:23 0.1b First Evening Welcome & Introduction.

Our True Nature

“The final [Thomas Keating] poem in this trio of wonderful teachings is number seven, Stillness, about how we come back. Our true nature is stillness, the source from which we come. It manifests within us as a rising tide of silence, a flowing stream of peacefulness, a limitless ocean of calm, or just sheer stillness. The deep listening of pure contemplation is the path to stillness. All words disappear to it, and all creation awakens to the delight of just being.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 42:55 08 Silence Mon pm teaching.

The Practice of Abiding

“The words to this chant, I’ll just say them out a couple of times, really take us into the heart of the Great Silence and into why we’re here. ♪ ♪ Unknowing, abide. In stillness, abide. In patience, in patience. Possess your soul. Unknowing, abide. In stillness, abide. In patience, in patience. Possess your soul. Unknowing, abide. In stillness, abide. In patience, in patience. Possess your soul. ♪ ♪” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2014 Jacob Boehme, 49:38 1.TuesEve.GWS14

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VII. STILLNESS

Our true nature is stillness,
The Source from which we come.

It manifests itself within us
As a rising tide of silence,

A flowing stream of peacefulness,
A limitless ocean of calm, 

Or just sheer stillness.
The deep listening of pure contemplation

Is the path to stillness.
All words disappear into It,

And all creation awakens to the delight of
Just Being.
Thomas Keating

Poem
Willing to die, 
you give up 
your will. Keep still
until, moved 
by what moves 
all else, you move.
from Wendell Berry, The Country of Marriage.

Logion 50
Yeshua says…
Suppose you are asked,
“Where have you come from?”
say, “We have come from the Light at its source,
from the place where it came forth
and was manifest as Image and Icon.
If you are asked, “Are you that Light?”
say, “We are its children,
and chosen by the Source, the Living Father.”
If you are questioned,
“But what is the sign of the Source within you?”
say, “It is movement and it is rest.”

Logion 51
His students asked him,
“When does ‘rest’ for the dead begin,
and when will the new cosmos arrive?
Yeshua replied,
“What you are looking for is already here.
You simply have not recognized it.”

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Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.