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Stay Calm

 

It was just a few weeks ago my stepson, of four years now, commented that “I am the calmest person he has ever met”.  This statement has had a profound, and deeply reflective impact on me. For starters, there is nothing about the external headwinds that I have faced in my life over the past four years that would lead one to predict calmness as an outcome. Secondly, he sees me primarily in domestic family situations, and day to day living where the ability to be calm is challenged the most. But most interestingly, I used to be the opposite of calm.

 

For 49 years no one would have described me as “calm”.  I was intense, extreme, driven, relentless and a constant mix of anxiety and excitement.  I was completely at the mercy of my egoic and unconscious conditioning, and I was going through the motions of “life” by doing, achieving, winning, accumulating, out working and dominating. I was so caught up in my own illusion, I think I would have taken being called “calm” as an insult.

 

There was no stillness, no calmness, just a constant and relentless bombardment of thoughts and actions orchestrated to keep me moving on to the next moment and never being present. This base line state of anxious energy was driven by a thousand forms of fear spanning from an unconscious limiting belief system that I was not enough no matter what I did.

 

Then life happened – depression happened - addiction happened – psychosis happened – and I was forced to face the part of me that didn’t know how to be still and didn’t know how to be calm. I can’t tell you how or why it happened, but it is only now that I understand that I started seeking calmness and stillness for my salvation.  And salvation it was. I have found transformation through calmness.

 

 

I didn’t find inner peace when my life became peaceful. My life became peaceful when I found my inner peace. I had to find peace in the middle of the storm. I had to be the calm within the storm. I made finding stillness my number one priority – because what else was I going to do?  I fostered a state of calmness through yoga, meditation, breathwork and shadow work. I accepted radical responsibility for the things I had done and the people I had hurt. I made amends where necessary, let go of all my resentments, stopped fighting anyone or anything and embraced a life of surrendering to the present moment. And I have found so much joy and happiness in this place.

 

Today I see calmness, not as a state of doing, but as a state of being. I am aware that my own ability to remain calm, in the face of all the challenges that life has to offer, has a profoundly positive impact on the people whom I love and care for. Calmness also acts as a mirror to those in need of transformation because calmness is Divine.

 

 

Stay Calm – The Way


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