WHAT QUIET EVENTUALLY REVEALS

WHEN NOTICING BECOMES PERSONAL

Quiet is not a place, a technique or an exercise. It is a relationship we have with ourselves.

The challenge is rarely about finding a quiet place, but what we do when we arrive there. Quiet asks something much more difficult than slowing down. It requires us to stay long enough to hear what is going on inside. To listen a little more closely and to notice what sits beneath the noise.

Quiet is not an escape from ourselves. It is an introduction.

All practices can become routine and by their nature we fall into performing them in a slightly robotic manner. Our brain only focuses far enough to complete the task before moving on to the next thought.

Meditation becomes something to finish. Walking becomes exercise. The questions become how long, how far and how fast. It becomes about performance because it is easier to practice than face what practice reveals.

A quiet practice begins when we stop managing the experience and simply remain present. This is the point many of us leave, perhaps it is also where the real work begins.

Throughout these essays I have written about quiet as a place, a practice and a way of noticing. Yet perhaps quiet asks more of us than any of those things.

It asks us to remain present when distraction would be easier. To listen when we would rather move on. To stay when we would rather leave.

Not because quiet is difficult to find. But because it asks us to develop a different relationship with ourselves.

And perhaps that is where courage begins.

Pauses you can feel, drawn from nature.