Editor’s note: We’re discussing Pico Iyer’s The Art of Stillness together this month. Catch up on last week’s installment here.
Nearly every time I drove off the monastery grounds after my weekly visits I looked wistfully down the hill toward a row of pine trees that sheltered two small hermitage cabins. I toured the sparsely furnished units on my first visit and often imagined staying for a week. I saw myself lying on top of the handmade quilt on the little twin bed every night, or brewing tea in the tiny kitchen, to drink sitting in the solitary chair by the window with nothing in my hands, nothing in my head.
In the beginning, two friends had brought me there to introduce me to the monks and show me the grounds. One friend stood still in the cabin on our tour, much like me, slowly taking in the space with a look of deep serenity, if not longing, on his face. The other friend paced about, pulling back on the curtains, opening and closing the cupboards, observing the lack of indoor facilities. “The two of you are just alike, ” she said. “I can see either one of you coming up here and never wanting to come back out.” Holding onto the door, as though afraid it might close and trap her inside, she laughed. “I wouldn’t last 30 minutes.”
The difference in response to the prospect of a week alone in a remote, rustic cabin is partly a matter of how an introverted person and an extroverted person might view such an opportunity (or catastrophe, as the case may be). But it can also be the often simple fact that being alone can be distressing. As Pico Iyer notes, “Nowhere can be scary, even if it’s a destination you’ve chosen; there’s nowhere to hide there.”
Perhaps part of what makes being alone seem daunting is that we aren’t, really. Even when alone, one is still with oneself. Iyer recalls the thoughts of Emily Dickinson, who was deeply acquainted with solitude. “She knew that you do not have to be a chamber to be haunted, that ‘Ourself behind ourself conceal— / Should startle most.'”
One of the fears we face when we choose to be alone is worrying that our mind, like my friend anxious to get out of the cabin, will hold us captive. Iyer says, “Being locked inside your own head can drive you mad or leave you with a devil who tells you to stay at home and stay at home till you are so trapped inside your thoughts that you can’t step out or summon the power of intention.” He acknowledges that sometimes the search for stillness, the entrance into the inner life, can go the other way: “A life of stillness can sometimes lead not to art but to doubt or dereliction; anyone who longs to see the light is signing on for many long nights alone in the dark.”
When I first began my trips to the monastery, I didn’t know what to expect. I went looking for space, for quiet, and I knew I had found it early on. Even so, I did not have a specific outcome in mind. I spoke little of the experience at the time, and while I wrote reflections following my visits, I did not initially make them public, fearful that to do so would break the spell. Iyer looks to Thomas Merton’s thoughts on expectations: “The way of contemplation is not even a way, and if one follows it, what he finds is nothing. …If you enter it with the set purpose of seeking contemplation, or worse still, happiness, you will find neither. For neither can be found unless it is first in some sense renounced.”
I wonder, along with Merton and Iyer, if part of the key to guarding against that downward spiral of doubt and darkness is to approach the time of stillness empty of expectation.
Book Club Discussion
We’re reading The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere together this month. Are you reading along? Perhaps you would share in the comments about your experience with (or need for) purposefully seeking out stillness. Are you more like me, yearning for some time in the hermitage, or more like my friend, anxious at the thought of days or even hours alone? What stood out to you in the chapters this week?
Our Reading Schedule
Announcement Post
December 7 • Introduction to Chapter 2
December 14 • Chapters 3 & 4
December 21 • Chapters 5 & 6
Photo by Don Wong, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by LW Lindquist.
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Maureen says
You have a particular gift, LW, for guiding the book discussions. This post draws on some of our richest resources (Dickinson and especially Merton), blends with Iyer’s and your own good thoughts, and leaves us with more than a few questions to consider. Going nowhere leads us (eventually) to somewhere better.
Laura Lynn Brown says
What she said.
Megan Willome says
Ditto.
Will Willingham says
Thanks, Maureen. It’s the personal connection to whatever work we’re discussing that I think helps us each find a way that it can be most relevant to us. My little monastery history feels like a nice complement to this book. 🙂
Donna Falcone says
double ditto.
Sandra Heska King says
Triple.
Michelle Ortega says
Yes.
Laura Lynn Brown says
Sitting in the stillness of having written a long comment that apparently took itself to nowhere.
Will Willingham says
Whoops… I checked for it here, and it didn’t arrive. 🙂
Laura Lynn Brown says
I’ll revise. 🙂
Donna Falcone says
Ouch.
Megan Willome says
I had a season during which I couldn’t be alone with my thoughts. It startled, to say the least, and lasted about two years.
I’m back now, slowly. One of my still places is a long bike ride (physically active / mentally still), and I did that for the first time today in seven weeks. No doubt or dereliction today. Just a thought of a single sentence I need to revise.
Thank you, LW.
Will Willingham says
And what i love most about that? A single sentence. One thing, worthy of great attention.
I do better when my body is doing something as well. Sitting still, without reading, writing, eating, fiddling, that is beyond doable to me. So the treadmill is good, since it’s now below zero and the bike is out of the question.
And the best thing about walking or biking outdoors (okay, maybe not the best, because the outdoors part probably gets that distinction) is that you have to walk or bike back when you’re done, so it guarantees that much more time when you can be quiet. 🙂
I’m happy you found your way through those years, Megan. I know that we can have those seasons when being alone with ourselves is more than can be managed.
Sandra Heska King says
This reminds me of what Dorothea Brande called “wordless recreation.”
Donna Falcone says
Megan, I’ve been in that kind of space too…. doing anything reasonable so that my thoughts and I don’t have much alone time together.
I’m glad you’re ‘back’ 😉
I’m coming out of it too… very slowly, in and out like a turtle peeking.
Laura Lynn Brown says
That “doubt or dereliction” part stood out to me too.
Getting busy with the hands has been a way to still the mind. Chopping things for cooking, the cooking itself, drawing, ironing linen napkins — possibly they’re all a form of active stillness.
Bethany says
LW, I like what you’re saying about letting go of expectations. I think that helps all personalities guard against disappointment, regarding outcomes, and fear of what the experience might be like (Will I never want it to end?/Will it be torture waiting for the end?).
I usually enjoy being alone and quiet—if I get to journal first. Actually, for me, journaling is probably the quickest path to stillness.
Will Willingham says
Bethany, that is a fascinating observation. That the journaling itself helps bring you to stillness. Is it that the process calms your mind, or what do you think it is that helps create that?
Bethany says
Ink on paper helps me sort out my thoughts and nail down the feeling-fog. It gives me a little clarity and quiet so I can enjoy being still.
Michelle Ortega says
Bethany, I agree~I can ease into stillness better when I am journaling. I think because I have established the practice, when I sit at the table with the same-ish pen and notebook, the clarity of what I am thinking or feeling at a deep level comes through. Sometimes it’s shocking what I am REALLY feeling/processing.
I’ve also learned that the tracks or other noise in my head come from not listening to my own self, in the quiet, with the journal, or just in stillness (rare these days). Which then leads my to a more peaceful, if not truly still, place.
LLaura Brown says
What is your same-ish pen choice?
michelle ortega says
LLaura Brown, right now I am using Pilot G-2 blue ink pens, preferring the .05 fine, but making do with the .07 or even the .10~the latter is last choice because I am lefty and it writes a little damp sometimes!
I used to be rigid about which pen I preferred to use, but then it would actually get in the way of my writing~even if there was a plethora of others at my disposal, I wouldn’t write without whatever pen I was hooked into at the time! Excuses, excuses no more! 🙂
Bethany says
It’s interesting how the brain can learn through practice: It’s time. Feel, think, sort.
P.S. My favorite pen is the Pentel Energel. Do you have a favorite, Laura?
Donna Falcone says
I love that Iyer contrasted intentional stillness and what might be called forced stillness… and how different the two are.
The mention of how powerful meditative stillness has been for veterans reminds me of a retired army vet (I think he was a sargeant) – he wrote to a very well known guided imagery creator and told her how effective the imagery was for him, but that it was really hard to get through the mamby pamby introduction and soft sided gentleness, because basically there was nothing gentle that brings a vet to her work. He told her she would reach more people in his world, people who really really need help with PTSD etc, if she would use THEIR language to convince them instead of her own. She welcomed his feedback and invited him to write one that he felt would work for the tough room he described. Eventually, she invited him to record it, and he did – what a contrast! She (Bellaruth Naparstek) made it available as an alternative intro for our military on the guided imagery for PTSD at HealthJourneys.com…. and so this is very powerful, don’t you think? The door to Nowhere… the path to the door to Nowhere, is so different to each person. A person has to make the decision to OPEN that door, which also relates back to the difference between forced isolation and intentional stillness that I lead off with here. If a person is not convinced that it is at least worth it to peek inside Nowhere, he/she will never open the door even a crack. Sometimes, people need a little help through rational convincing language that they can relate to. So, this brings me to thinking about culture care, and how we need to reach out to people where they are at, assuming from the start that they are very likely not where we are at. And that seems linked to the Growth Model… and now I am quickly sliding off track so I’ll stop for now. 🙂
If anyone is interested in hearing his very awesome military intro, I will happily find and post it.
Donna Falcone says
and… not just language that can be related to, but a general openness… a willingness to plant seeds and not get too attached to the outcome (traslated, to use LWs words, as expectations).
Donna Falcone says
Here is the link in case anyone is curious http://www.healthjourneys.com/MilitaryRaulIntro.asp
L.L. Barkat says
I had the interesting experience of ending up doing both in the same season: sitting still and running. The sitting still was done outside daily for a whole year, cup of tea in hand, bottom on a red plastic sled (in sun, snow, or rain). The running, well, I began that because the sitting still started to work something inexplicable in me; I had so much energy I didn’t know what to do with it, so I started running.
Here’s the thing about that year: it was both jubilant and sad, by turns. Maybe the best thing I learned was that sadness doesn’t matter. So what. So I am sad. And being alone doesn’t matter. So what. So I am alone. Of course, these things matter deeply, in their way, but it wasn’t until I could look at them and say “so what” that things began to right themselves.
I consider this to be similar to that idea in meditation, where you acknowledge a thought, refuse to evaluate it, and let it drift away. I consider it to also be similar to an exercise that they do at the d school at Stanford, where you keep saying, “__________ has no meaning.” (Fill in the blank, rapidly and continuously for like 10 minutes. “Being alone has no meaning. Being together has no meaning. This computer has no meaning. This book has no meaning. This tea cup has no meaning. This snow has no meaning.” The idea is not really to come out of that as a fatalist 😉 ; the idea is to realize that we assign meaning to things. And we can reassign meaning to things. This is our ability as humans, the small control we have even when it seems we have no control at all. It is the ability that ultimately can help us redesign our lives, if that is needed.
Anyway, I like your visits to the Abbey. I imagine there were a few things you assigned as having no meaning, in order to first go there, and maybe as a result of going there, and then perhaps there was re-assignation of the meaning of other things along the way. This might be the biggest irony of an intentional stillness: it begins with a step towards something new.
Donna Falcone says
I love this: we assign meaning to things. And we can reassign meaning to things.
We are planning a trip north soon and I face the challenge of being a passenger at high speed – I am not good at that, but I have been thinking about it all morning as a challenge – to choose to see it differently…. and this way of saying it so helpful.
Will Willingham says
And this is important, I think, that the thought or feeling is acknowledged. Not buried, not stuffed, but acknowledged, and then released. I don’t have to sit here with it until it turns me inside out.
There were things, I would say, that yes, I had to assign and reassign meaning to in order to take those trips during those six months. That in itself was probably worth the whole time. 🙂
Will Willingham says
I also wanted to say this: “so what” can sound a little bit like being dismissive. Like, “So what, no big deal.” I don’t hear what you are saying in this case quite like that. I hear it more as a question: “So, what?” So, this is the thing that I am feeling. What do I do about it? Is there an action I can take? Do I need to just acknowledge it and continue on? Do I need something else? To me, saying “so what” is that first step to acting on it, rather than either being consumed by it or denying it. 🙂
L.L. Barkat says
Yes, it is dismissive in its way. But not in the bad sense of that word. I think it’s interesting to sometimes be a little dismissive with ourselves (and I think maybe you know I am a big self-care fan, so I am not suggesting we mistreat ourselves).
The truth is that sometimes we get oriented in such a way that we think life owes us every last thing we want or supposedly need. Kind of like the chickens in your chicken post this week, we keep wanting what’s on the other side of the wire, not seeing the gifts and advantages that this side holds.
So, I do love the idea of doing both. Telling myself: “So what. So this is where you are. Life’s still good, Laura, even if it’s not giving you this or that. So, so what.” And also asking myself your brilliant question, “So, what? So this is where you are. What are you going to do about it, Laura? And, remember, it could take a few years to turn the ship. So, what are you going to do not only about this thing you wish to change, but about this [sadness, anger, fear, name your emotion or experience]? Maybe you could just look it in the eye and say, ‘So what‘ while you’re handling the question, ‘So, what?’.”
🙂
Donna Falcone says
This perspective is so helpful. When I can remember to live in this way, what you call “so what” in the dismissive sense, I am always happier. Always.
Michelle Ortega says
I have been experiencing sadness differently this season, I think similarly to what you describe above, LL. The feeling surprised me as I was alone on a planned day off, with exactly the time and space I created for myself.
I found myself trying to reason away the feeling, as though it wasn’t valid, trying to have a conversation to give my sadness a pep talk and tell her she really wasn’t seeing life in the right way. And then, I found myself a little afraid that if I entertained the sad feeling, that I would become the EMBODIMENT OF SADNESS, which I have been before, and didn’t want to be again. 😉
After some more time and space, the sad, the still and then the opening to possibilities, and hope, all of us hung out together in the same room, nobody elbowing for attention, just swirling together in the same bowl (or on the same couch, actually).
L.L. Barkat says
I like that image of you all hanging out in the same room, just sort of letting everything be.
One of the very fascinating things I’ve been discovering lately about emotions like sadness is that it isn’t necessarily what’s really going on. Sometimes sadness is actually fatigue. Sometimes it is surprise or even anger. Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes it is just missing something—an experience, a dream, a ritual, my best self. Likewise, other emotions aren’t necessarily themselves. Anger could be sadness. Loneliness could be a lack of fulfillment. Fear could be stress. And so it goes. I want to hear more from Donna, eventually, on how we develop emotional literacy, because I’m guessing that emotions are far more nuanced than we tend to experience and interpret them.
Maybe it is in the stillness (of mind, if not of body), when we stop the pep talks and instead open to the possibilities, as you say, that we can begin to understand what’s really going on. I do find that changing up my environment, even ever so slightly, can provide those openings. A walk down a wooded hill I’ve not been on before, a new cup of tea in a new kind of cup (last night, I tried a Japanese green in a slim ribbed pottery mug at a little place down the street, and that brief experience gave me something special right on into the night and dreams. 🙂 )
Sending you a little cup of tea, to be with you on the couch. 🙂
michelle ortega says
Lovely to sip with you. 🙂
Yes, the head can interpret the feelings much differently than the heart, and it’s in the stillness that the heart can most easily be heard. The head gets used enough throughout the day (thankfully) but it doesn’t surrender the spotlight without resistance.
Sharon A Gibbs says
LL,
What you say about emotions is so true!
I remember being what I call “out of sorts,” or “beside myself,” not being able to articulate my emotion at a particular time, and not completely understanding it. Inside, it felt as though my emotional/inner being was circling above, not knowing where to land.
We may miss the enlightenment and fulfillment gained from landing—and settling in a place (or that couch), maybe turning the pages of situation’s story (or not) to glean meaning from it. In the “being” we become.
Michelle’s vivid image reminds me of something Elizabeth Gilbert said about inviting fear in the room and acknowledging its presence. It is allowed to have a seat and a voice, but not allowed to vote. We can practice this with any emotion, don’t you think?
P.S. Wouldn’t Google Hangouts be a great way to sip tea together?
L.L. Barkat says
An intriguing way to think about emotions, yes: giving them human characteristics and roles! 🙂
It could even be fun to take this further. Does sadness get to cook? How does she wear her hair? What if we took them to the playground? Who would push whom on the swing? Maybe a road trip. Where would anger take us? What kind of route would we follow? Would we take a map? Oh, and so many more situations and roles we could imagine and have fun with, for these emotions of ours.
(Also, I wonder, is there any time when fear *should* be allowed to vote?)
Sharon A Gibbs says
LL,
Oh, I see poetry prompts in your questions. What rich possibilities.
“Is there any time when fear should be allowed to vote?” What a provocative question, and one that deserves contemplation—perhaps a conversation on the couch with her.
I’ll start by taking a seat…
After re-reading this thread, I hung onto something you shared up above, “One of the very fascinating things I’ve been discovering lately about emotions like sadness is that it isn’t necessarily what’s really going on.”
Yes, fear has many faces (and motives), so we need to recognize her first. Doesn’t it all start with the stillness we’ve been discovering here? Everything you wrote in that comment convinces me that there may be times when fear deserves a vote.
For example, moving outside of our comfort zone is sometimes encircled with fear, but can serve as a tremendous growth opportunity and blessing. On the other hand, fear for our personal safety should definitely win the debate. The caveat to is to better understand ourselves and our needs before we give an imposter the power.
Thank you for making room for these open exchanges—so worthy and needed.
Donna Falcone says
Fear has many faces. Oh Sharon, that’s so true. So many faces.
SimplyDarlene says
LW, I’ve been alone twice for a week each time, but I had chores aplenty, a long to-do list, and a menagerie of ranchola animals for companionship. I’m utterly driven by doing and serving and being who I must in order to grease the wheels and drive the rig of my family’s life by connecting the dots, filling the holes, and fulfilling the expectations, that a hermitage cabin stay (though it sounds amazing to experience silence and solitude) gives me the willies. I wouldn’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be without expectation.
Maybe it’s a willie-giver because in then tension of stepping into an unfamiliar void, I might feel all the feels and have a come apart on the floor. I might discover my self-talk is true. Scarier yet, I might learn that it’s not. What then would I do with *that* girl?
[Good news – my local rural library branch gained access to the book. I hope to catch up over the weekend.]
Will Willingham says
Darlene, this idea of what if the self-talk is true, or worse yet, what if it’s not… that tension itself is worth a little time sprawled on the floor, if you can find it. 🙂 I do think that sometimes the stuff we tell ourselves, even if we somewhere deep inside us we know it is not true, and even if we are battered by ourselves in the telling of it, somehow we can find some security in that. I get why reckoning with the possibility that it might not be true is fearsome. But then, what if it’s not? Then what? We might find a way forward in that. 🙂
So glad to have your thoughts here in the conversation. 🙂
Donna Falcone says
These words are so powerful: ” I don’t know how to be without expectation.”
L.L. Barkat says
I’m thinking that’s partly a good thing—to not know how to be without expectation. It means you have a hopeful heart. The hard part is when we need to be okay with things working out differently, when we have to circle past what we hoped for or how we thought things would happen, and travel an unexpected way.
Donna Falcone says
I think so too… someone important to me used to say “it’s fine to [insert thing you want to do here]… but try not to get attached to the outcome.” I love that.
Laura Lynn Brown says
Without external expectation or internal expectation?
Sharon A Gibbs says
Like Darlene, (minus the ranch), I am driven by tasks and to-do lists.
In the oncology unit where I work, the number of interruptions and responsibilities leave me feeling like I’m juggling too many balls all day, most of them of equal importance. A performance of anything less than perfection leaves me measuring my self-worth.
Yes, my personal expectations for my world and myself have been unreasonable, unreachable, and unrewarding. Then I read Pascal’s quote: “All the unhappiness of men arises from one simple fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.”
Even though I know the results of these high expectations, restlessness unsettles my sense of peace these past several days. As much as I try to simplify and be still, my thoughts continue to clutter my intentions—as if my mind were walking around in circles, throwing everything into disarray. My body responds with signs of annoyance (with myself).
“Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”
Okay, Pico has my attention.
Pico’s statistics cited on page 58 leave me tired over the amount of information and interruptions we face each day. He says, “We’re never caught up with our lives.”
What a disquieting thought!
Does anyone else’s focus become undermined and scattered with the interruptions he speaks of?
Lately, I’m even overwhelmed and antsy over the amount of emails arriving in my inbox. The other day, I must have spent an hour deleting extraneous ones.
On pages 64 and 65, Pico writes, “…the point of sitting still is that it helps you see through the very idea of pushing forward; indeed, it strips you of yourself, as a coat of armor, by leading you into a place where you’re defined by something larger.”
In these words, I see I need to be stripped of myself—and expect nothing.
I am not able to take time out to sit still at my job, but I am able to step back and be still in my personal time, in hopes that my outer world doesn’t continue to control my inner world.
In this stripping away, I want to find nothing.
Rick Maxson says
“The way of contemplation is not even a way, and if one follows it, what he finds is nothing. …”
There is a difference between alone and away. Alone is a state of mind. Other books have called it “not doing.” I have gone “away” from all the things that keep me turning this way and that, and unless I let those things go and practice “not doing,” I am not alone. I am still somewhere, not nowhere.
I just returned home and picked up mail. The Art of Stillness was there. I love it.
Laura Lynn Brown says
Last week I wrote about seeking stillness in places that involve movement — walking, biking, kayaking. This week I realized how often stillness for me has also involved standing or sitting and looking out the window of my own home at the sometimes panoramic view, watching a river flow, watching migratory birds, watching the movement of light.
I am more like you, yearning for some time in the hermitage; I’d feel happy about the simplicity, even austerity of the hermitage, the diminishing of possible choices. I love camping for the same reasons. But I also can go into a three-day weekend relishing the thought of not going any farther than outside my door in the morning to pick up the paper, not seeing anyone else, and be itchy for human contact and conversation by the third day. (Possibly people who live alone have some different reasons for seeking stillness than people who live with others.)
What stood out for me this week: “Nowhere can be scary, even if it’s a destination you’ve chosen; there’s nowhere to hide there. Being locked inside your head can drive you mad or leave you with a devil who tells you to stay at home and stay at home till you are so trapped inside your thoughts that you can’t step out or summon the power of intention.
“A life of stillness can sometimes lead not to art but to doubt or dereliction; anyone who longs to see the light is signing on for many long nights alone in the dark.”
It reminds me of a bad dream I had as a teenager. Someone was grabbing me and I couldn’t see and I’d push their arm away and they kept grabbing me. The next thing I knew, my bedroom light was on, and the rest of the family was standing at the foot of my bed. I’d been yelling, “Get off. Get! OFF!” And the attacker I was fighting with my left arm was my own right arm, which had apparently gone numb lying beneath me. I’d kept pushing myself away, and myself had kept flopping back on me. Wherever we go, there we are.
So if I’ve gone somewhere for stillness, or planned a long weekend at the anchorage of my own home, it’s necessary to be still through the restlessness if I want to drill down — still down? — to the place of “So. Aha. So, what?” And, yes, it often leads to recognizing what my expectations have been, and what might be false about them.
I did something this week to make the stillness of my desk-with-a-view even more still: I took the little alarm clock in the bathroom and suffocated its tick-tick-tick between towels.
Donna Falcone says
What a dream! Yep… wherever we go, there we are. I love where a dream can lead if we let it, not that nightmares are anything I ever enjoy! But I mean, I love what you did with that. And, it’s interesting how, even in sleep, we are not very still on the inside.
That alarm clock made me laugh!