I watched this Damselfly staying on this leaf for thirty minutes, while I was beside the stream watching the mason build the compound wall.
When I reached home I noticed a dragon fly on a flower bunch staying there still for longer time.
These sights brought back memories of the first experience, when lat Dr Hans Burki, introduced us during a one month retreat, to the exercise of becoming still in body and mind !
Dr Burki started with an exercise at the beginning of the retreat by helping us to stay still in the body and count the number of thoughts, ideas or imageries passing through our mind in one minute. He referred to this 'traffic' in the mind needing direction and attention. Our thoughts seek our attention.
He then helped us to pay attention to our thoughts by offering to return to them little later. When there was a welcome and attendance to the thoughts, it was a surprise to find how the frequency of thoughts reduced and in about ten minutes the mind was free from the traffic. I remember how Anna and I felt towards the end of the month that it could be possible to stay still for about 20 minutes in body and mind. The feeling to itch or change the posture was also a thought that the body was calling attention to. Once, we became familiar with the thoughts of the body and mind, then we are free to move on to another realm of consciousness.
That is the level of 'heyschia' or rest when we become still in body and mind. It is during such time of rest, we become open to another level of consciousness of realities. Dr Burki would use a Bible passage at the end of ten minutes of 'becoming quiet', to prepare us for this level of consciousness by reading a passage from the Bible to let it 'fall in our inner soil' made ready in quietness. I remember how although the initial experiences were rather dry and did not take us beyond just the exercise, another level of consciousness of being open to receive grew within us gradually. It was during such periods of openness when we are free from our own thoughts, the seed of the scripture can generate within us thoughts which are not our own. Staying still to receive those thoughts or experiences is a patient inner activity, because, such occasions are preparation for the visitation of God of the Scripture.
In fact this exercise of ancient desert fathers of waiting for God to visit in interior stillness is not a common practice we follow in our personal or corporate prayer times.
For me, this growing experience in interior silence has had multiple effects upon my life, living and learning.
The scripture brings freshness and renewal when I read after the exercise of preparing for interior stillness. There is a quietness in mind that removes the cloudy feeling and congestion of thoughts. The transition times between activities when accompanied by quietness for three minutes help to 'leave behind what is over' and prepare to 'welcome the next event'. This becomes a personal reality in my work. Between consultations of children, I am used to having an in between time to 'let go' of what is over and 'usher in' what is to come. This is a way of becoming fully present freed from an addiction to stay preoccupied. When there are anxious moments, or angry prone thoughts, such a short season of inner stillness brings a change in orientation. In fact, I have watched some who talk with pauses between sentences and some of them are people who have few seconds of inner quietness to receive the words inside before they talk. It is evident when we listen to them that they are speaking what they listen from within. It was obvious to me every time I had an interview with late Dr Paul Brand that the words he spoke 'fell' within me with an inner movement of increased awareness to be attentive to receive more. He spoke to communicate to experience communion with the listener.
My experience in this tradition has been interrupted often, although it has been my desire to have periods of silence during the day and a prolonged periods at the end of a week or month.
To be with oneself is not a practice we are normally inclined to follow. We are with our phone, TV, book, music, friends, family, work, etc most of the time. We live occupied and preoccupied.
When we let ourselves to be alone, all the thoughts would return to us in a gush. To sit quiet and jot down those thoughts would be a good way of beginning to have a longer period of stillness. Once we listened to ourselves, we become ready to listen to God, who is waiting within our soul to speak. Prophet Samuel heard his name being called three times and thought it to be Eli calling him, till Eli himself found an excuse to avoid Samuel coming to him one more time interrupting his sleep and told him to say, next time if he were to hear the call, 'here am I" ! That made all the difference in his life, when God made Himself known to him.
The level of living, with the consciousness, 'Here am I" is what liberates ourselves from ourselves. It frees us form the litany of disappointments, complaints or reactions. In that position of becoming and being present to the One, who is beyond and yet present within us is a life transforming experience. It is when we become open to 'listen' we receive a new colour and orientation to our lives.
I struggled with a sense of purposelessness in the year 1991. I was not sure whether I was engaged in what was the best way of spending my time. I was in Chennai exploring through ASHIRVAD Child Development Centre if there can be a meaningful way to bring a consciousness about the needs of special children among the professionals. A lot had happened in ten years since 1983, with considerable openness among medical professionals and school authorities. And yet I knew that there was something more to life. The inner restless grew and I began to sense a loss of wellness within.
It was the time when Late Mr Johny Samuel, the sessions clerk of St Andrew's church invited me to be an elder in the church. I was invited to be in the chair of the work among special need children in the church through partnership with ASHIRVAD. I was asked if I would move to INTERSERVE to be fully involved in its leadership role. I was not ready for any of these at that time. I was the member of international committee of INTERSERVE and was requested to discontinue as they wanted to bring someone else from India to it. I had just then discontinued going to the Christian Fellowship Hospital, Oddanchatram once a month, which I was doing for five or more years. The work we were responsible to initiate at Nagpur had become self sufficient that Mrs Pushpa Waghmare was ready to carry it forward. It was a crowded time with opportunities and closures of some. I felt weary and uncertain.
Such times are difficult times. Our children were growing up and needed full attention. I could not afford to slip into my world of preoccupation or detachment.
I set apart a fortnight of reduced activities and taking more time to 'listen'. There was an invitation from the local Epilepsy association to give a lecture on childhood epilepsy on the national epilepsy day. Prof. C.U.Velmurugendran, the director of the Institute of neurology chaired that meeting. At the end of the meeting he turned to me to complement me for my talk and asked more about me. He invited me to visit him in his office on the next day, which was when he offered me a position at the Institute of Neurology to register for a clinical PhD programme in Neurology.
It was that opportunity to be at the Institute of Neurology in training for three years leading to the award of the PhD, which filled a void and resorted purposefulness to continue in Developmental paediatrics. It was this inner restoration of wellness which gave us the confidence to go to CMC Vellore in 1997 to start the first developmental paediatrics unit in any medical college in India in partnership with ASHIRVAD.
All the other good things that followed thereafter in this 'pilgrim journey' came out of turning purposelessness to quietening my life to listen to what was beyond the ordinary. When I knew later that the offer to do PhD was usually offered only to a faculty member in the Institute of Neurology, I knew it to be a something special that came into my life unasked for. 'What is that we have except what is given "!
It is now, 25 years later, I sense how seminal and defining was that experience of being at the institute of Neurology for three years! Among many tangible outcomes, one person out of the four registered for PhD when I was in the Developmental paediatrics unit at CMC Vellore, Reeba Roshan, received her award of PhD at the convocation a few days back. She might be the first one to have obtained a PhD in Developmental psychology in india. Thus a formal specialty is born and Reeba can take this specialty forward by training others !
It was during a season of purposelessness or weariness or a 'burnout' experience, the invitation to do training in Neurology was offered and out of it came something more than what I could ever imagine- to be a guide for PhD at the TN MGR Medical university and Pondicherry University!
The interior stillness is the way of discerning time and season. The decision to return to live in Kerala when my mother was ailing was a decision which involved considerable stress and adjustment. Having lived away from Kerala for forty years, and Anna having been born and brought up in Maharashtra, the decision was difficult that I resisted it for at least three years.
Now after six years, it seemed to have been the right decision for our wellness and growth. We feel restored by getting connected with our roots. There are many tangible benefits such as the beginning of the student research activity under the ICMR with the initiative from Anna and the starting of the department of developmental paediatrics and child neurology, both at MOSC Medical College, Kolenchery. Far from what we could have planned for! Both of these happened because we WERE enabled to consent to go through the journey of living with an interior sense of moving one step at one time! We faltered many times and had to resume our journey through departures and detours. It was not a linear journey towards the direction of the destination.
All these experiences have had their roots in inner experiences of stillness when we were made ready to let go of our preferences or choices and embrace that we did not entertain! The journey into the unknown became a means for our wellness and gladness.
It continues to a journey with ups and downs, but it is tempered by a growing consciousness that we are being accompanied by the One, who joined the two people walking towards Emmaus two thousand years ago !
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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