Awareness, Humanity, and the Runaway Train...

  As I take the time this morning to review yesterday's and today's events in my mind, I am bombarded with a runaway train.  The mind is on a track that is never-ending and it is going at a fast rate.  How do we slow this dilemma down a little? How do we even begin to think about slowing down?  The Psalmist encourages us to 'be still and know God", this is of course easier said than done.  There is really no quick fix or fast track to being still.  I t is like breathing, we need it, and we will eventually self destruct if we avoid it.  Here is a quote I have found to be helpful and revealing to me from a book that has made a difference in my contemplative journey.

"In order for awareness to begin to drop its many scarves of self-consciousness and reveal its core-that overflowing vastness whose ground is God-we must grow still.  This is precisely where we meet the struggle of the human condition: we cannot be still.  Even if the body can be still, the mind keeps racing like a runaway train."

(Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird. pg. 49-50)

  Its a journey to try and allow God to tame our wild inner lands that seem to roar daily and drive us into places or a state of mind that we later regret or feel ashamed of.  Begin with the simple step of trying to be still and see what God does with it.  You will succeed, fail, give up, celebrate, become overwhelmed, and flat out frustrated, but it will be better that the rails of a runaway train...

Step into the Silence....
Trent