Stillness, Our Loftiest Goal – Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Triche Atkins
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DESCRIPTION
If stillness is our loftiest goal… why? What is it? What two key blockages do we need to clear out? And what’s the best route to reach it? Join us this Sunday to continue our exploration of stillness.
SUMMARY
- Stillness is a state of infinite peace, rest, and tranquility where one aligns with God and hears the “still small voice” of Spirit speaking within.
- Achieving stillness requires overcoming the “voice in our head” that is the ego – the mind-made sense of self that creates an illusion of identity and prevents us from knowing our true self.
- Other barriers to stillness include living in the past or future instead of the present moment, as well as tendencies like victimhood, complaining, and comparison.
- Knowing one’s true essence or “beingness” beyond the ego is essential for experiencing stillness, which is the gateway to creativity, intuition, and the deepest connection with the divine.
- Stillness is the loftiest goal, as it is the source of inner peace, courage, and hope, and where we can hear the “whisper of the heart.”
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Dr. Jaqueline Triche-Atkins (00:00):
I got to tell you, was that good? What’s so interesting about it is such the truth, like okay, you want to do it, you better do it, and the only way you can do it is start with the man and that man was like the biblical man. Human in the mirror. That’s it. That is it. What do they have up there? That’s our title. I have that much. I can tell you microphone. I need the microphone. That’s why I never want to pick up the microphone. I wonder what that’s about. Hello, hello, hello for you all out there in Lands Across the World. I’m glad to be here with you. I am Reverend Jackie and I am going to do a little bit of conversation. I just want to tell you it’s not my fault, okay? Can I say that it’s not my fault, fault. You can either blame Eckhart or God, I don’t care. Whichever one you want to can blame either one of ’em and that’ll work out just fine.
(01:09):
But we’re going to work at the whole notion of stillness and the next slide we have is the one. If we can’t have slide number two, Ben is working with me because I didn’t bring my computer with me. So slide number two shows us something. What does that show us? Yeah, Ben, let us see that one. And I want everybody just to look at that and the water’s coming down and the water is touching a lot of things. What is coming? It’s coming. It’s going. It’s going to where it’s going to go. It’s not being stopped. It’s not being stuck anywhere. It’s going to a place where it’s going to be at peace. Over all the rocks. Look at all the stuff that’s in the way of the water. Just look at that yet, it’s very intentional. It’s heading on down and we see a body where it’s going to join in and unite and be at one and be at peace, be in stillness and be in stillness.
(02:58):
We’re going to touch a little bit on what stillness is. I know all of you know what it is, but I got to tell you, Eckhart helps you to say, well, maybe I don’t know what it is. So we’re going to touch on stillness and then we’re going to look at those things. A couple of things, a couple blockages that block you from experiencing stillness, but what’s really important is understanding who you are so that you will be able to have the full impact of stillness. Because if you don’t know who you are, you will not be able to really, if you don’t recognize, if you don’t live out of that, you’ll not be able to really have an experience of stillness. That’s absolutely ours right here and right now. And yet as the water was coming down, we get sidetracked by the leaves. We get sidetracked by a rock as opposed to getting to the spot at the very bottom, at the low point where you are able to be in one and one in union and have stillness.
(04:16):
Let’s get a couple of definitions of stillness slides three and four. I think we have those up there. They’re behind me. Yeah, stillness, A state of infinite peace, rest and tranquility where our senses are hushed and we abide in and align with God, be still and know that I am God. When I get to that point, I can be still and know that I am God. And then the metaphysical meaning, which is in the revealing words. When you’re in this experience of stillness, there’s a still small voice thing that you’ve heard about from time to time. It’s the voice of spirit speaking within the depths of your being. The still small voice is not audible. It’s not audible. It comes from within once you have reached your point of stillness.
(05:25):
The next slide I want to share, it talks about that still small voice a little bit more, and that’s the art of listening. Is that the one that’s up there? Yeah. The art of listening to the inner voice and obeying it is well worth developing. You need to do that. We’re talking about stillness. You’ve got to have this art of listening to the inner voice and then it is that the Christ of one’s life calls out. See, if I’m listening and I’m at that point of stillness then and I’m giving away all my good stuff, but that’s okay, then I’m at one with God. The Christ is operating. I have let go of some other things. We’re going to talk about that operate, but the Christ of my being is operating and it will say, put out into the deep and let down your next for dropped.
(06:20):
When the thinking faculty is obedient and does as it’s told by the Christ, it’s always rewarded with a multitude of new ideas. So in the stillness, in the stillness and that still small voice and it all comes together, you are given direction, you are given guidance, you’re given love, you’re given all kinds of wonderful things, and if you work with it, indeed goodness is yours to be always, always experienced. The next slide tells us what totally wants us to recognize though this leads me into, I’m going to talk about tooth blockages, things that block our ability to have the stillness and I don’t know how to express it even emphatically enough because without this stillness, you are walking around crazy. Okay? Maybe that’s why you’re just walking around nuts and more importantly, you’re blaming everybody and everything else for your feeling the way you are when you have full control, full control. Okay, so Eck and the Still to Speak, this is the book we’re working with.
(07:56):
I fought with them for about three weeks before I actually said, okay, I’m going to actually reread it and reread it. So if you haven’t picked it up yet, that’s okay, but you do want to get it because when you stop fighting with it, as I told Reverend Amy, when I realized it wasn’t the book that was causing the problems, it was my perception, my humanist that was not understanding his spiritual discussion, okay? My humanist was listening with its eyes and with its intellect and with its, oh, the ego, which we’re going to talk about, and he’s saying, no, that’s not how you’re going to get there. That’s not how you’re going to experience stillness, but Toley wants us to recognize, he starts talking about one of the blockages. He wants us to recognize that there’s a voice in our head now, maybe not in your, yes it is.
(08:54):
It’s in yours. It’s a voice in our head that pretends to be us and never stop speaking. It is then that we can begin to awaken our notice, awaken or notice waken or notice that voice. You realize that you are not the voice, you are not the thinker. You are not the voice, but you are the one who is aware of it, and I have a word up there, don’t I, boy? Because when I said, wow, that’s it. When I know that I’m not the voice, that I’m aware of it, that I’m aware of it, I am moving into freedom. I am moving into preparing myself to be able to experience stillness every time I want to. As I talked this morning, I want you to remember that being still and listening activates that what’s called the non-conceptual intelligence within you and that this being still and this it’s a dimension.
(10:07):
What’s activated is a dimension of consciousness that’s far deeper than thought as new thoughts. I don’t know about you all. We think about thought a lot, but thought if it comes from stuff out here or comes from our intellect may be creating something other than what we really want. This listening, it activates this intelligence. It’s our essence. That’s what’s activated when we really are able to get quiet. When we get there and we listen, it’ll activate our essence and totally calls our essence awareness. We as new thoughts often call our essence the Christ. The Christ, the Christ. So when we think or speak about ourselves, totally is saying when we say I, it is really a mind made sense of who you are conditioned. Listen to this. I know it’s esoteric, but listen to me conditioned by the past and seeking to find its goodness in the future.
(11:21):
The I, which totally says we hear too often usually refers to me and my story, okay? It is the eye of your likes and dislikes of your fears and desires. It is the eye that is never satisfied very long, and when each of these thoughts absorb your attention completely, this thought, this eye, I want this, I need this. I’m not good enough for this. They absorb your attention completely. It means that you identify with the voice in your head. As one writer says, the thought then becomes invested, invested with a sense of self. Wow, what is this? What did I just describe that thought? That becomes invested with a sense of self. This becomes a my made self. I’m saying that’s the ego. That’s your ego. That’s your ego. You thought you didn’t have one. Yes, you have one. Yes, you have one. And this ego is mind made.
(12:32):
It’s mind made me, I guess you could say as the creators that we are, we created this ego and this mentally constructed self, this ego, Lord, it always feels incomplete. It always feels wanting. It is always fearing something. It is always just having a lack of limitation kind of in its emotions. Knowing yourself as the awareness, knowing yourself as the awareness, not as the ego. You created the ego but yourself. You are the awareness looking at it. You are the awareness behind the voice. You are awareness behind this self. Why did we create this ego? God? But we did. We did. Wayne Dyer wrote in the next slide that the ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting go. The ego illusion becomes your, what did I say here? The ego illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing. Oh, letting the ego not letting go.
(13:50):
Letting the ego illusion to become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self, letting your ego become your identity. It is not, but you allow it to. You are then preventing yourself from knowing your true self and from experiencing stillness. Your ego is a blockage. Your ego is a blockage and some of the issues that make the ego that my made thing that we have created a blockage. Well, the ego has this element called a victim identity, and it has a lot of emotional attachment to your victim stories and it makes you want to talk about ’em compulsively. When you are, you saw the water kept coming down over the rocks. The ego have you stop at the first victim story and you won’t ever get down to the place of stillness. What’s another reason why the ego will block you? Complaining, complaining, complaining and more complaining.
(15:09):
It’s the favorite patterns through which the ego strengthens itself, so you wonder sometimes why you’re complaining. Check yourself. You’re working with your ego and as in your complaints, you won’t get to that place of stillness and have the experience of having that communion with the true, the true who you are, the truth of who you are. Your ego lives through comparison, having subtle feelings. I know none of you all have this with this ego of either superiority or inferiority toward others. I walk into a room and as opposed to just feeling absolutely at ease and at peace, I’m feeling, did I dress right? What do I say? Are they going to like me? This is the ego blocking you from getting to that place where you can have that stillness, where you can have that peace.
(16:27):
The eagle needs to be in conflict with something or someone which explains why you are looking for peace and joy and love, but cannot tolerate them very long. Our unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of our lives when we’re allowing the ego to take over. It is not our unhappiness is not from the circumstances, but from the conditioning of our mind. The ego has conditioned our mind and we have forgotten that we are not, that we are the awareness of it, that we are the truth behind it, that we can walk away from it and walk into that place of peace and start experiencing stillness. Our self-created ego is a blockage to our stillness, which is why we must realize that we are the ones. We are the ones aware of that voice, the one who is aware of the thoughts. We are the ones, I can’t say this enough because we have these thoughts and a new thought.
(17:39):
The more I thought about totally. I said, well, hey, ever since I’ve been in new thought, they’ve been telling me my thoughts create blah, blah, blah. That’s true, but where did the thought come from? Where did the thought come from? If I know myself as the awareness behind the voice, I am free and freedom takes us onto the road to stillness, so that’s the ego. The ego will keep you from being at peace will keep you from experiencing stillness will keep you from being able to hear the Christ because there’s a big thing up there blocking you called the ego, which is saying, you’re not good enough anyway. You’re not going to make it. They don’t like you. Why are you trying? Anyhow, and the awareness behind you is saying you are one with God.
(18:40):
Another blockage is not living in the now. Now I don’t know how many of you read totally before. Let me see a hand if you read the power of now. Yeah, good, so you all as confused as I am. That’s good, very good. But I want to mention stillness one more time. Let’s do slide eight. Ben, if we can stillness, inner quiet and mindfulness. I want to remind us of what we’re doing. What is our goal in this discussion? Our goal is to remind myself of what stillness is and why am I not feeling it all the time? Well, it’s inner quiet and mindfulness. In a psychological sense, stillness can refer to the quieting of the mind and the cultivation of the mindfulness. It involves being fully present in the now, free from the incessant chatter of thoughts and worries of the past or future worries of the past or future.
(19:48):
You don’t have that. Do you have no regrets of the past that you’re bringing with you or anxieties of the future? You don’t have that, do you? Yeah, right. Totally writes on the surface, it seems that the present moment is only one of many, many moments Each day, each day appears to consist of a thousand moments where different things happen. Yet if you look more deeply according to Toi, there is only one moment ever. One moment ever is life, not this moment. Now, for those of you who’ve never heard this concept before, just hang with it and just hear it and maybe go back and listen again because it’s real. It really is, and as I said, as after I stopped fighting and telling totally how wrong he was and started listening with another spiritual level, I began to get the nowness. Now is the only thing we can never escape from one constant factor.
(21:06):
You see totally is absolutely correct. The division of life into past, present, and future. It is mind made and ultimately illusory. Now you mind made you think about the ego. It is illusory past and future is totally rights are thought forms, mental abstractions. The past can only be remembered when now an event that happened in the now that you’re remembering in the now, that’s what we call the past, the future, when it comes as totally rights is the now. So the only thing that is real, the only thing that is ever, ever, ever is the now.
(22:02):
There’s no escape from the now. Why not welcome it? Become friendly with it. Listen, when you make friends with the present moment, you feel at home no matter where you are, and if you don’t feel at home in the now, if you don’t feel at home right now, no matter where you go, you’re going to feel uneasy. You’re going to carry a feeling of, oh, I’m doing something wrong. I need to do something right in this moment. If you’re not feeling comfortable in the now, there’s an obstacle to overcome. Do you have to get to the future moment That is more important if in fact you have to get to the future moment and now is not adequate. You’re under a constant unease, a constant tension, a constant discontent, and the most important point that totally wants us to understand is that the now is deeper than what happens in it.
(23:13):
The now is deeper. Just close your eyes as I say that the now is deeper than what happens in it now is a space in which it happens. So he explains that sense of I am is one with the now the sense of I am is one with the now. I know this is a lot. I understand, but I want you to really hear because we get caught up in the past. We get concerned with the regrets and therefore we go for months being miserable, right? We get concerned about what’s the future going to be right now It’s really maybe a concern. You go for months miserable totally is telling us. Now, can we have the next slide? Totally is saying living in the now, it’s important if you’re going to get to the place of still stillness, if you’re going to have that experience of that still small voice living in the now, do not take hold of a past. It no longer serves you. If you’re sitting up here, let it go. Release it, forget it. Forgive yourself and everybody else and move on. Nor does the uncertainty of the future serve you, rather embrace the now to come to stillness, to come to who you truly are.
(24:41):
The last thing I want to mention as I’m starting to come to a close, because I’ve been up here 24 minutes, Reverend Amy, I’m about to shut down who you truly are. See, the question becomes very important. Do you know who you truly are? Do you know who you truly are? Because if you know who you truly are, as a matter of fact, he says that’s the most important thing that we need to do. Finding the essence of who we are beyond the the dash gene birth and so-called death, finding out who we are, totally rights when we are unaware of our essence, we create misery. When we don’t know who we are and you are, what happens is I don’t know who I am. I’m going to really fall prey to that my maid self, that ego. If I don’t remember who I am as a substitute, I have that ego, which then becomes a substitute for the beautiful divine being that I am.
(25:52):
It is why I am clinging to being fearful and needy when I am none of that. All that is brought about because I have forgotten who I am and I’m leaning on the ego totally tells us that the only place we can find ourselves is in the stillness. What? Yeah, yeah. When I know who I am, when you know who you are, we find peace. Not by rearranging the circumstances of our lives, but by realizing who we are at the deepest level in the stillness. When I know who I am, when you know who you are, we know that I don’t have a life. You don’t have a life, but we are life. See, I am life. I’m life. Yes, the one life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone, as a blade of grass, as an animal, as a person, as a star, as a galaxy.
(27:12):
When I know who I am, when you know who you are, we experience an abiding, a alive sense of peace. It is the joy of knowing ourselves as a very life essence in the stillness before life takes on form. We were in the stillness before you took on this body. We were in the stillness, in the love of God, in the masterful awareness of God before we took on the body. Why is stillness our loftiest goal, our grandest goal? Let us have the last slide within you. There’s a stillness according to Herman Hess and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself, be who you truly are. Why is stillness our loftiest goal, our grandest goal, according to Jack art? Totally. Because stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found. Why is stillness or our loftiest goal, our grandest goal in the stillness? If we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear and hope to despair. That’s why stillness is our loftiest goal, and so it is, and I invite you now to join me in prayers as I pray to close your eyes. If you so led to and get comfortable, take a deep breath, almighty and ever present, spirit of peace in the chaos. Chaos of daily life. I long for stillness.
(29:22):
Release me from the shadows of yesterday and the anxieties of tomorrow that linger in my mind. I stand before you asking that you quiet my restless spirit and help me find solace in your presence. Oh, gracious God, teach me. Teach me to be still to rest in the knowledge that you and I are. One. I release worry and anxiety, aligning myself with the now while placing my trust fully in your hands and loving Father, mother, God, as I seek truth, fill me with your peace that surpasses all understanding. And Lord, in the moments of silence, let me remember my true essence. While I feel your gentle touch and hear your loving whispers, I know that in your presence, I will find rest and strength, love and joy, peace and harmony. Thank you God for being my refuge. Thank you, God for my experience of stillness. Now drawing closer to you. Thank you God. Thank you God, thank you God. It is so and so it is. Amen and amen. Thank you Reverend Jackie.