UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young

The mind is all. If the mind is active, even solitude becomes like a marketplace.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi

The world, it seems to me, must have been inherently peaceful before the intrusion of the human mind. The world just IS. We have filled it with so much chatter that we can scarcely hear the silence anymore.
I walked around a small lake in the midst of suburbia that is a nesting ground for several bird species. It was like stepping into a different world as I left my thoughts behind and nature drew me in. I noticed the duck with her nine little ducklings in tow - still soft and downy - as she swam proudly in their midst.
The geese and the gulls mingled, apparently oblivious to one another. There is a small island in the middle of the lake, which provides a safe sanctuary for several geese and their goslings. I watched as a duck made repeated headstands, no doubt to grasp some delectable morsels in her beak. It was a strange sight to see only her hind portion above the water.
Although the park itself was not silent, I experienced silence, because I was not thinking. I was simply being an observer - a silent witness. I had the same experience when I returned home and spent some time working in the garden. I just noticed the changes that had transpired in only one week. The sunflower seeds were sprouting. The tiger lilies had sent up shoots with their shiny, polished leaves. The impatiens, with their delicate flowers, seemed to sit contentedly observing the growth around them.
All living things in nature seem to have that quality of silent witnessing. Is it not true that when we become a silent witness of nature, we lose ourselves and become one with her? On the other hand, when we become lost in our thoughts, we move into our inner world, and lose touch with the world outside of ourselves. Consider how easy it is to drive all the way home from work only to wonder how we got there, since we were oblivious to anything along our route. We were not in a position to witness anything - not even our own thinking process.
Often, in the modern world, our work is based on information. Everything can be managed from a computer. With voice mail and text messaging, not only is there less need to go out into the world for face-to-face contact, but everything happens so much faster.
Even in our leisure time, so much more input comes our way. Some think watching television or a movie is relaxing. It may be for the body, but not for the mind. The mind is busy, processing constantly changing visual and auditory stimuli. Sometimes one gleans important information or a valuable shift in perspective, but mostly it is spam for the mind. It takes up disk space, but serves no real purpose. The problem is, we cannot delete it. It will continue to take up space. Add to this the faster pace of life in general, and it is not surprising that our heads can become so full.
What we soon begin to notice, if we are paying attention, is this: as is our mind, so is our world. If our mind is filled with thoughts, inner dialogues, lists of things not to forget, and replays of recent or past experiences, it is like the choppy waves on a stormy day. When we silence it, and just observe, it becomes like the still, reflective surface of a peaceful lake.
Interestingly, little reflects off a choppy surface. A peaceful, glass-like surface has amazing reflective powers. When we give our mind space to be still and peaceful, often profound or valuable insights are reflected back to us, if not in the moment, then some time later.
Ideally, creating this stillness should not simply be a quick time-out in the middle of a hectic day. We should think of it more as a still, quiet part of our being that we cultivate daily. Like a peaceful, special place in your garden where you can go and sit - that is always waiting for you, we can create a part of our consciousness that is our sanctuary.
If we cultivate it within, we can take it everywhere. We may like it so much that, over time, we allocate more and more of our inner mind landscape to our sanctuary - creating a much better place to live, than in a marketplace.
 

Gwen Randall-Young is a psycho-therapist and author of Dancing Soul: The Voice of Spirit Evolving gwendall@shaw.ca, www.gwen.ca