The Stillness Within

It can be easy to think that the rest, peace, stillness, and wholeness we seek exist in some ‘other’ place or time. Just out of reach from our normal, daily lives. That we need to go to a monastery or an ashram to find it. Or that we need to get away in order to uncover it.

A few years ago, I took a solo camping adventure to the Sierra of Baja California for a few days. Well, solo, plus Mia the dog. We took water and food for three nights. San Pedro Mártir does have "campgrounds," but it is quite remote—no electricity, no water, no bathrooms, and, of course, no cell service. I was looking forward to "getting away" and being off-grid for a few days, breathing the fresh mountain air, hiking with Mia, and finally having all that time to read and journal.

What I found completely took me by surprise.

I had gone in late September, during the week in the off-season. There was only one other couple in the entire campground—which really just means a few isolated, cleared spaces with fire rings and picnic tables, each secluded and far from the next. I saw the couple walk past once with their dog, but other than that, my only human interaction was checking in with the guards when I arrived.

My family’s trusty, decades-old camp stove refused to light. I found myself building a fire in the morning just to heat water for my coffee and oatmeal, and again in the evening for the simple dinners I’d brought. I walked miles with Mia—watching her run free, exploring boulders and squirrels and pine trees she had never seen before.

But what surprised me about that trip—what caught me off guard—was not what I did, but what I didn’t do. I didn’t read. Not one bit. Not in front of the fire in the morning, and not at night in the tent, wrapped in a down sleeping bag to keep warm. Not one word. And I didn’t write. I didn’t even open my journal.

This might not sound odd unless you understand that, at the time, I was reading and journaling voraciously. Daily. As though I couldn’t get enough. Yet here I was, with all the time in the world and nowhere to be, and my "hunger" for those things had simply vanished. I kept thinking it was strange and trying to force it. But it was as though an invisible force within me would not even let me pick up the Kindle or the pen.

It wasn't that I suddenly disliked those activities. It was that I had found something more satisfying: a sense of wellbeing, a profound peace, a deep relaxation. A sense of wholeness that did not want to be distracted, even by reading or writing.

I sat for hours just staring at the fire, watching the flames. I walked miles with Mia, letting her explore while I tried to remember the way back to camp, completely taken by the towering pine trees and the blue sky dusted with white, puffy clouds (clouds that, I learned that night, held a lot of rain).

It was as though I was caught up in something—something so deeply soul-nourishing that nothing else could compare.

Finally, after three nights, I had to break the spell. I had no more water and no more food. I had also promised I’d be back from being off-grid, and I didn’t want anyone to worry.

Ever since returning from that trip, I have wanted to go back. I love the mountains, and San Pedro Mártir is stunning, but what I really wanted was to find that peace again. That stillness. That "being-ness" that was so refreshing to my soul.

For one reason or another, I wasn't able to make the trip the following years. One year I went to Yosemite instead—beautiful, but not the same. One year I didn’t make it to the mountains at all. One year I planned for San Pedro Mártir but switched at the last moment to Laguna Hanson. Also beautiful; also not the same.

But the longing continued.

And then one day, as I was sitting in my daily "15 minutes of nothing" (a practice I adopted from Martha Beck), I had an earth-shattering revelation: That place, that peace, that stillness—I didn’t have to return to the Sierra to find it. I was the one carrying it. I had it within me all along.

All this time I thought I had to carve out days in a busy schedule to return to the Sierra and find that stillness, when I really just had to give it room to be.

I remembered back to the harriedness of my corporate days. I remembered a practice I started then: every Sunday morning, I would sit on the pier and watch the waves crash below. I would take my books and my journal, but inevitably, I would just sit and watch the water. When I was preparing to leave that life and move across the country for seminary, I worried I couldn’t take the pier or the waves with me. My therapist, Pam, gently reminded me that what I was finding did not live in the waves; it lived in me. And it would move with me.

It turns out that we carry both the "hurry within" and the "stillness within." I had taken both with me when I left one life for another. The hurry I hadn’t wanted. The stillness I thought I had lost.

For though we do carry the hurry within, until we can consciously and gently loosen its hold, we also carry the stillness within. We can consciously and gently give it more room to breathe.

I still want to go back to San Pedro Mártir—the tall pines and the mountain air are things I love. Being off-grid, walking for miles through the trees with Mia running free.

But the stillness? I realized that I don’t have to "go away" to find that. It’s right here with me, if I just give it the chance to be known.