Two minutes of silence
Are you able to find two minutes in your day to remain silent and still?
Remaining available to the sensations, the thoughts, feeling the breath, the aliveness—simply being with whatever arises in the present moment.
Letting go of the resistance, the impulse to escape into the past or the future, the hopes, the fears, the regrets—all those endless narratives that constitute what we call our lives.
Just being here and now, without judgment, with no intention whatsoever, simply open and neutral to what’s happening. Nothing to become, nothing to improve, nothing to run away from, nothing to overcome.
If it sounds silly or pointless to spend two minutes of your time just remaining still, simply aware of your body, your thoughts, your surroundings—in other words simply existing—then tell me, please: what is so useful about that state of psychological tension you’re stuck in most of the time, and that you don’t even notice anymore?
What’s so necessary about the sense of incompleteness you carry around everywhere, that constant urgency to perform, to accomplish, to resolve, to think everything over and over again, along with all the anxiety, anger, and frustration that comes as a result?
The restlessness, the feeling of never getting enough of what you want or too much of what you don’t want, the feeling of inadequacy—what’s so vital about all these things? And why any of this should prevent you from engaging with the reality as it is, right here, right now, at least some of the time?
You might argue that this doesn’t apply to you, that you are fully in control of your life, that your life is filled with lightness and carelessness, that you seldom experience negative emotions. If that’s the case, I invite you to take another look. As long as you hold on to a personal story, that story can never completely be in your favor.
Every story has its struggles, its ups and downs, its successes and failures, its beginnings and ends. Stories are about time, about movement, not about stillness. They are about going from one point to another—not about resting here and now. They are always about some sort of conflict, never really about peace. They are about becoming, attaining—not about being and being content with what is.
If those two minutes of stillness still sound like an escape from reality, then again, just ask yourself: what is reality, and who’s escaping it?
Who’s constantly avoiding this present moment—its sheer simplicity, its richness, its completeness, its beauty—trading it for a world that exists only in imagination? I’m not suggesting that mental narratives are bad, or that it would be either possible or desirable to avoid them; narratives are obviously a necessary part of our functioning as human beings.
What I do suggest is that, by looking at life only and exclusively through the prism of those narratives, never paying any attention to what is here and now, we end up cutting ourselves off from the source of everything. It is here, and not in memories or imagination, that we exist and that life happens—and some of us barely ever get to notice this.
If it sounds difficult just to sit for two minutes and do nothing, ask yourself honestly: where’s the real effort? Is it not exhausting to sustain that personal drama of yours, doing whatever you can to keep it alive and credible, feeding it with all your thoughts and emotions, day after day, month after month, year after year, without ever taking a break?
Where is the real life and where is the imaginary world? What’s escaping and what’s truly being with reality? Tell me why those two minutes aren't the most precious thing you could have during your day, and tell me why those two minutes cannot be now.
IMF - L’Arche - 8th of August 2024
