Stepping Off the “Restless” Train

Dear Reader,

The restless train is leaving; all aboard! All of you with restless, thinking minds, or restless, busy days and nights, know this train very well. As do I.

Yes, by the “restless” train, I mean the human ability to think constantly – worrying, planning, remembering, wondering, figuring out – until we are exhausted. I also mean the human ability to fill a day with activities – yet by the end of the day, feel a little empty.

Consider this your invitation to step off the train.

Yes, it is doable.

In fact, stepping off the restless train may be one of the most important things you do in your whole life. Let’s take a closer look at why that is.

Habit

A lot of that thinking and doing, we can attribute to habit. we humans like the familiar, and habits do come in handy sometimes. But be careful; what habits are you creating right now, and how helpful are they? What neural tracks are you laying down, and deepening, so that you experience the same thought patterns over and over again? Are you still worrying about what you said in that conversation with your colleague yesterday? Or perhaps you are still angry about the injustice of something a relative said to you years ago? Once you form the mental patterns, they can be difficult to break. Sometimes, they become so familiar we no longer realize they exist. But what lies underneath those habits, if we look closely?

Fear

A lot of our habitual thinking and behavior can be seen as an attempt to avoid something we are afraid of, whether it’s a difficult emotion, an insecurity (“I’m not good enough”) or a potential conflict with someone we care about. Sometimes we are busy searching for answers, either to perceived problems, or as an explanation for why things are the way they are in our lives, or in the world. We worry that we should be saying something different, or doing something different. And what is underneath this fear, if we look closely?

Stillness

It can be pretty tough, in this day and age, to just be still. With more and more people on our planet, living closer and closer together, able to see hear and read about each other’s behavior (and have everyone else see our behavior as well!) we are confronted with more choices every single day. We have more options, and more information to digest. We often avoid stillness because we are afraid of what we will find there, or we just don’t know what to do with it.

But fear, in whatever form it takes, often arises pretty quickly. If we can just recognize it, accept it instead of pushing it away, and sit with the nature of it, we can come to understand it a little better, at which point it may dissolve – at least temporarily.

That leaves us again with silence, perhaps a little deeper now, a little bit longer-lasting. Maybe it even feels a little bit better, a little more welcome.

And what, you might ask, waits beneath stillness – if we look closely?

Love

Yes, love. Love, ready to express itself as intuition, curiosity, creativity, desire, compassion, and courage. Love, which is an inherent part of your true nature. Love, which is waiting inside for you to experience every time you are willing to be still, and allow it.

It’s there right now, and always.

You, as a human being, have boundless depth, beyond anything you can imagine. You are capable of amazing depth of feeling, of insight, of genius – of love. It is true than when you go within, you may find deeper levels of fear than you were aware of, but beneath those fears you will always find even deeper, more expansive levels of love. Always.

That’s just who you are – who you really are.

So again, I invite you to step off the restless train, because incomprehensible beauty awaits you when you do. You may even feel called to invite others to step off the train as well.

And that, dear reader, is how we change our lives, and this world, together.

I honor your loving heart,

John