We love ourselves by becoming still. Stillness is a great discipline, the great discovery of meditation. Stillness is the dynamic of transcendence. The more still we are, the more we transcend our limitations. Now stillness does not mean stopping. It is not static. We can understand what stillness is when we see it as part of the whole process of growth in nature. There’s a very important relationship between stillness and growth. Stillness is not incompatible with action. One of the things we begin to feel, as we meditate regularly, is that those times of meditation, morning and evening, open up a new centre of awareness, a new stillness of consciousness, of perception, deep within us, which is not affected by anything we do, however busy we may be, however rushed off our feet we may be, however involved in external activity we may be. If our meditation is regular, we’ll find that there is a stillness in the midst of all our activity; in fact we begin to realise that the activity flows out of this stillness. It’s stillness that we discover through
meditation, the stillness in which we learn to love ourselves, to accept, to know and to transcend ourselves. This stillness is not in contradiction to action. In fact, it is the very reason for action; it is the energy of action.
( Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
