Sattva: The Power of Centeredness

I've been quiet. I've been quietly busy the last few days translating my aha! insights into a rough plan. I'm totally pleased with the outcome.

I've spent much of the last month or so enveloped in quiet, stillness, and (gasp) slowness. All unbusiness attributes, no? 

With my degree and background in computer engineering, I have calculative thinking pretty well under my belt. But meditative thinking, ah that was a mysteriously wasteful avoidance for a long, long time.

I used to be a fairly competitive marathon and ultra-marathon runner. Although I'm not fast anymore that has more to do with my lack of consistent training than a willful desire to slow down. (And I don't intend to slow down on my runs.) But going top speed on rocky downhill trails (my favorite) was my modus operandi for every inch of my life. And so when I went out for a hike, I loved to count the number of fit hikers I left in the dust behind me. When I went on vacation, you'd best be a marathoner yourself to keep up with my tightly scheduled sightseeing program.

Now, hiking and walking periods are my time for meditation. I still feel a slight twinge of Ego rising when an elderly couple briskly walks past me as if I am the one standing still. But, I'm not in any rush to be somewhere else anymore. I'm here now.

I read something this morning in the recent issue (not online yet) of Yoga Journal that underscores the main current pulsing through a Dwelve creative process.

I notice sometimes I'm embarrassed to talk about this in ahem supposedly 'business' blog as it's such a counterintuitive approach to strength and power - but one I suspect that our Eastern business counterparts are more adept with. And well, nearly everyone else thinks, those folks in India and China are our nemesis perhaps it makes sense to understand this counterintuitive frame of reference for 'power' and 'strength' better. In this piece, the author shares the wisdom of the three gunas, or three basic energetic qualities that run through our world. I'm drilling into the third, and least spoken about:

The word sattva comes from the root sat, which means "being" or "truth." It's literally the power of beingness, the inner integrity that let the Buddha sit under the bodhi tree until he became enlightened, the power that supported Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the power you that you feel in cathedrals and redwood forests and in people who quietly offer help too those who need it. Sattvic strength is one part discipline and three parts trust - trust that the invisible is stronger than what you can see or touch, and that what you are speaks louder than what you say.

Sattva is born in stillness. True sattvic strength arises out of a willingness to wait, to allow actions to unfold out of the quiet of your center. The forceful agent of sattvic strength is the force of clear intention - a subtle, yet unbending clarity about what it is that your heart and soul truly want.

Intention - the formulation of what you want to happen - is created in silence, through contemplation. It's refreshed each time you return to it. Then, often without your knowing how it happens, the subtle power of intention will guide your actions and words, and gradually, almost invisibly, create change. The key is to keep acting from that stillness out of which the intention was formed. - "Living Your Yoga: Give Me Strength", by Sally Kempton, Yoga Journal, June 2005

On the first day of the incubating retreat (a.k.a. an Advance), the small group gathered and we walked in silence in single file out of the meeting room into the crisp spring air. And we moved at a pace that would make a snail proud. It may have taken twenty minutes to walk the tenth of a mile to the shady bank of Adode Creek -- but who was counting minutes? I noticed the slower I walked the more alive the surroundings became. When I quickened the pace where individual grass blades began to blur my meandering mind filled my attention with its to-do lists, plans for dinner, the outline for my evening talk, and anything it could muster to drag me away from the present moment.

This is what I noticed the slower I walked: the simple aching beauty of a sprawling meadow dotted with lumbering California oak trees pierced a veil of indifference within me which touched a spot that brought me to the edge of tears. Tears of pure joy. My housemate concurred; this week he shared with me that the four days of the Advance were among the peak experiences of his life.

In the Advance handbook, I wrote that the only way we peek beyond our limited self concept of ourselves – or what the spiritual sages call the Ego – to the Real Deal is to surrender the idea that we know. Maybe we don’t know what we don’t know. This is a very yin – a very feminine [or meditative] – way of thinking and it requires a receptive mind. A still mind. If you've ever tried this you know full well the urge to bolt. There is an intensity in the barrage of thoughts and feelings that come up. There is a recognition of our inherent restlessness. And ultimately, the strength to stay, stay, stay and keep looking without falling apart is is very yang, a very masculine energy.

And we need both to thrive. Don't discount the power of a disciplined receptively still mind.

Comments

[Colleen]

"Don't discount the power of a disciplined receptively still mind."

Ah...that's the crux of it, right? To pair beginner's mind with the discipline, experience and insight gained through experience. It's the paradox that makes Big Truth discernible and puts True Happiness within reach.

Often, when people begin acting, there is a rawness and eagerness that is unbelievably compelling. The problem is, it's like a wild horse--crazy-free and unreliable as it is energetic and beautiful.

The trick in acting (and everything, right?) is to stay connected to the wildness as we add skill, so that that energy can be used as needed.

Great post. I love it when you post the non-business-y stuff.

[Jory Des Jardins]

This has been a theme of sorts for me lately. I realize I live impulsively, reactively. A friend pointed out that it's a strength, because I'm always in action, but it's a weakness when I'm acting on something I haven't taken the time to discern as authentic or critical. This effort inspired my blog tagline: Thoughts While Sitting Still.