Stand Still

"Fear ye not; stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord." -- The Bible; Exodus 14:13

"Stand thou still a while, that I may show thee the Word of God." -- The Bible; 1 Samuel 9:27

"Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord." -- The Bible; 2 Chronicles, 20:17

I love walking in the woods. I've noticed that most people who hike do it with a body consciousness... they approach it as exercise and work. I walk a bit, but I spend a great deal of time standing still. I'll stop in the middle of the path and listen to the wind in the trees. I'll stop by the stream and listen to the trickling sound of water, and the rustle of leaves, breathing in the scents of the forest, and noticing how the light filters through the canopy of the trees. I'll laugh and appreciate the antics of my dogs as they run with sheer joy and abandon. All of these words are describing the five senses of the body. And if I was thinking in those moments (which I'm not), I would say that my body is serving its true function... a tool for communication within the dream. I am hearing and tasting and breathing and seeing Self in all Its glory.

My walks in the woods are metaphors for standing still. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, we can stand still and rest in Awareness ItSelf. These are moments of expanded awareness, where everything simply IS, and at the same time, it is all One, an interwoven tapestry of immeasurable beauty. It's easy to do this and see this in the silence of nature. We may have opinions that make us think that standing still in the middle of a noisy city is harder or impossible, but it is just the same. And standing still in the middle of a mental or emotional or physical battle is also no different. As A Course in Miracles reminds us, "All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is preference, not reality. What relevance has preference to the Truth? Illusions are illusions and are false. Your preference gives them no reality. Not one is true in any way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as answer to them all. God's Will is One." (ACIM; Chapter 26, Section VII, 6:5-10)

Standing still has nothing to do with the physical self. It doesn't mean we have to literally stop the body. It is all about an inner stillness and alertness, the expanded Awareness of Wholeness. We stop thinking and doing from the consciousness of a separated self, and experience firsthand the salvation of the Awareness of the Oneness and Allness of God. There are an incredible number of passages in The Bible about standing still. As Jeshua ben Joseph said, those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will hear the inner meaning. It's not about bodies or illusory stories about battles and personalities. It's about the inner war we have set up between the illusory separated consciousness and the inevitable Awareness of Our True Self, forever and forever One with the Allness and Completeness that is God.

"The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the Spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him anymore than He can avoid you. The ego is afraid of the Spirit's Joy, because once you have experienced It you will withdraw all protection from the ego, and become totally without investment in fear." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 4, Section I, 9:10-11, 10:1