The Book of Rest. James Reeves
not by reading but by writing; we learn to walk by walking, we learn to drive by driving, we learn to swim by swimming, we learn to love by loving. It is in the doing that we do, and the being that we are.
— Regardless of what you think you want, if you allow it, the rest will come, and the rest is easy.
- Prepare yourself for rest. You might want sit, lie down, or you might want to stand and stare into space. Do whatever appeals. (You might also want to revisit Enquiry 1 on page 15)
- As you settle, you might notice your mind is racing. That’s OK. Don’t try to change anything. Stay with this for a few moments
- Now ask yourself what you hope to get out of all this – this resting, this stopping. What’s driving you?
- Whatever your answer, now reflect on the possibility that restfulness is a quality within; not something to create but something to be recovered (or uncovered)
- What does this mean in terms of your motives for seeking out rest? Can you see any contradictions? It doesn’t matter if you did (you cannot be ‘wrong’). See if you can observe without criticism
- Continue to be still for a few moments, or minutes if time allows
- When you’re ready to end the enquiry, have a stretch or take a deep breath
- As you consciously come out of rest, notice how you feel, and note any insights or important new understandings
- Take a moment to write down your reasons for rest. Reflect on them, read them back to yourself (put them on the fridge or on a sticky note)
- Remind yourself that whatever you thought, felt or experienced during this enquiry, was exactly as it should be
Learning to stop battling with yourself
Life can seem like a constant tug of war, with only ourselves on either side of the rope. The more we struggle, the more tension that builds, and, against our best efforts to sort ourselves out, we feel worse than before. We feel flawed, substandard, helpless, broken. We hope to introduce you to a new possibility and guide you just enough so that you might begin to see a truth that has been revelatory to many of us (a kind of ‘quiet’ movement if you will): that you cannot be broken. Fundamentally, deep down, you are already and always whole. Your deepest nature is wonderfully OK and absolutely doesn’t need fixing. The deepest aspect of your self – this ‘awareness’ we’ve referred to – already knows this. In fact, to qualify that a little further, the deepest aspect of your self doesn’t know anything; it is beyond knowledge, and it is beyond knowing – and that’s the gift.
Concepts and theories aside, being told you are fundamentally OK when you feel anything but OK can feel like a slap in the face and far, far from the truth. Therefore, we’d like to ask that if you don’t believe anything we have said so far, perhaps you could at least entertain it to be a possibility. For a short while, we ask you to just try on the idea that deep down you are fundamentally OK. Just suppose that in spite of it all, the very essence of your being wishes to change nothing about who you are or what you are going through right now. And then consider that your current beliefs about rest and how it should happen and how you should ‘do’ it might be exactly what is standing in the way of you connecting with this essence, and of you feeling rested.
If you can do this, then we can set about enabling you to experience it to be true. Our challenge as teachers is to convey something that allows the brain to ease off – to stop hunting for examples, facts and stats – and to step aside (do nothing!), so that that which lurks beneath can rise to the surface. We would be hypocrites if through this book we sought to instil a new set of beliefs in you, for it is beliefs that very often prevent us from seeing ourselves as fundamentally always OK.
Accepting that we rarely see ourselves clearly
We have two young children and therefore are often a little behind with the housework (this might be an understatement). There’s a mirror on our landing that hangs high above our stairwell and in order to clean it we have to affix a feather duster to a broom handle and stand on tiptoe at the top of our ancient and precarious staircase. It’s a monumental faff and one that sits fairly low on the priorities list, so as the months go by a very thin veil begins to cover the mirror that, even if we can’t perceive it, means we can no longer see ourselves clearly. Now, if we left that dusting job for 40 years (entirely plausible) then we wouldn’t be able to see ourselves clearly at all. Just a glimpse, an outline, a suggestion of who we are, with the gaps filled in by memories and ideas we already have about what we look like.
And that’s how it is for most of us in terms of grasping our true identity. Our deeper nature is obscured by our other identities. Our stories of who we are on the surface, our thoughts, our feel ings and bodily sensations all act like noise to cover up our deepest, unchanging nature. All of the things we believe we have to get done, everything we believe in and think we know to be true, and all our responses to the world with all its complexities – these are the things that lie in the way of something that underneath is always gleaming and clear, regardless.
We are not going to instruct you as to how best to dust your mirrors – that would go against the premise of this book, and as we have shared, we are not fans of dusting (or indeed any housework). Instead, we hope rather to lead you into an experience of seeing that you are the mirror, and feel the permanence of that fact regardless of how much dust you’ve gathered (or your penchant for cleaning).
We are a race of storytellers and belief-seekers, eager to find reasons and solutions at every turn, but this does not inhibit our ability to go beyond reason and take relief from the possibility that we don’t have to have all the answers – or any answers, special techniques or particular insights to see our completeness. We don’t, in fact, need anything.
Rest and thinking
Despite that thought seems to come as a constant stream of chat and insight, there are interludes between our thoughts. If we follow a train of thought to its conclusion, we will notice when a new one pops in, and sometimes we might notice a pause beforehand. Again, we might miss something here, believing that it is the conclusion of the thought that feels good (because we’ve worked something out), but really, the pleasure comes as much, if not more, from the fact that on concluding your thought, you are now not thinking at all. You’re experiencing the ultimate holiday.
The challenge comes, then, that on realising this we can quickly jump onto the idea that if we could just stop thinking for five seconds, then we’d feel good. Once we begin to notice and enjoy these spontaneous moments of not thinking, we can’t help but grasp for them. Our mind gets hold of the experience and wants more of it. It’s like the mind knows that the spaces around thinking are really good but then thinks about them and spoils the whole show, like a child who’s watching their favourite television programme but who gets so excited about it they can’t stop talking all the way through.
We can’t think ourselves into not thinking. At most, you might have ‘held’ your thoughts in the same way that you might hold your breath. There are activities that can ‘control the mind’ to a certain extent, such as concentration practices, but while it may be possible to create conditions for the mind to focus, such as reciting the same word over and over again (some people adopt a special word or mantra, but repeating ‘fudge, fudge, fudge’ might be as effective) or concentrating on a single point of focus (a candle is a popular one here, but a cupcake would do just as well – maybe a fudge one), we’re still ‘doing’ something (not resting). We’re still engaging in an activity. We may be experiencing a pause, but it’s not a natural pause (we might even be supressing our mind, only to have it fight back harder later). There may be benefits to doing this, but it is not rest.
ASK YOURSELF
Is it possible to stop thinking? What happens when you try to stop your thoughts?