The Art of Withdrawal

journeys in the practice of consciousness

Sometimes it is beneficial to withdraw. For it can be in retreat from the battlefield or in retreat into a cave that we can hopefully better hear or bear the truth or connect with that ‘still, small voice within.’

If we practice this 1000 times, and then once again emerge to step one foot forward out of the cave, and then practice yet again from that spot, in time we will be more successful in our practice of holding our mind in stillness, despite a world gone mad around us.

Sometimes, we might experience random thoughts rolling in. That’s what happens to me, and it could be in the midst of the mundane, or even in the churning storms of stress. Thoughts which may turn out to be not so random, after all.

Here’s a few of mine, over the last day or two. They are each, in their own way, grown out of personal experience.

1. When you’ve been to the top of the mountain and come back down, you eventually realize that anything lower is not higher.
2. When someone takes a Vow of Silence, is it because someone else required it, or is it because they’ve realized they really don’t have anything to say?
3. A man once journeyed to far lands for many years. It was a sparsely populated kingdom. When he finally came back home, his hair was white and his beard was long. In the far away land he’d become wise and esteemed. Upon his return he was ignored and homeless.
4. For a human being, consciousness is not conscious unless you’re conscious of consciousness.
5. Just as the ocean has many thermal layers, so it is with awareness.
6. To learn what moves my mind, I must first learn what moves my thoughts. This is preceded by investigating and discovering many other basic things. Including things as fundamental as what it is that moves my genitals or what it is that causes attractions in any form?
7. For a single mind to overcome the many, the fulcrum must be strategically placed. For the many, the fulcrum is money, wealth, fame, power or influence. But those are all lower elements, and inferior fulcrums.
8. There is no point to a message if the point is dull. Dullness only appeals to the dull-minded.
9. It can be said that being straight has nothing to do with sexual preferences. But that rather it has to do with being centered and aligned between heaven and earth.
10. The economics of efficiency declares in the loudest possible voice, “Create the greatest amount of work with the least amount of effort.“ Anything more than that, it’s not less enough. How less can you go?
11. One day I discovered that I could not stand and move well unless I first learned how to fall well. So I practiced falling, thousands of times.

From The Unfettered Mind…