Welcome, friends:
Pause your fears from the past and your worries about the future during this moment of quietude.
Sit not just with your body but with the stillness beneath your breath—
That calm presence has always been here, even when overlooked or forgotten. Listen—not with your ears alone, but with the silence behind all sound, where true knowing begins before words ever form.
I speak not to your thoughts but to the awareness that watches them come and go.
Consider the vast, deep, and ancient ocean when it is stirred by the restless winds of time; she forgets her immensity. She rises in the waves, crashing and foaming with force, each crest shouting, “I am separate, I am moving, I am the storm!” And yet… she is never not the ocean. The wave is the ocean caught in a moment of forgetting, a fleeting mask of motion upon a face that has never truly changed.
Still, the ocean plays her part. She surges, roars, forgets—until, at last, the winds grow weary and the sea grows still.
Her surface smooths. Her depths remember. And lo and behold—she becomes a mirror, holding the sky with such gentleness that even the clouds blush in their reflection. In that sacred stillness, the ocean returns to herself—not by going anywhere, but by ceasing to chase the illusion of the wave.
So, too, it is with consciousness, the great light behind your eyes. When consciousness identifies with the fluttering forms of thought and the storm sounds of emotion, it forgets its boundlessness. It becomes “the mind,” a whirl of stories, judgments, and reactions. It mistakes itself for the wave—“I am sad,” “I am anxious,” “I am not enough”—and so it crashes again and again against the rocks of imagined separation.
But you, dear friend, are not the wave. You are the ocean.
You are the one that contains the wave and remains untouched by it.
And when, through sacred stillness, consciousness turns back upon itself—no longer racing outward to grasp objects, ideas, or sensations—it becomes aware of itself, by itself.
The light ceases to scatter into the world of objects and forms, returning inward to illuminate itself.
Perhaps, there is nothing left to observe… And yet, there is observing. Nothing to hold… and yet holding. Nothing to become—yet you have always been.
This is pure awareness. Awareness with no object. Still. Silent. Full.
Here, the mind no longer shouts. Here, emotion no longer grips. Time bows in reverence, for eternity is not duration in this space—it is your nature.
So don’t mistake the wave for something separate from the ocean.
Don’t fear the winds that come and go—they only disturb the surface.
Instead, pause. Be still. Let your attention settle so profoundly that even your breath becomes quiet.
In that stillness, you will begin to remember: You were never the thoughts, emotions, or reactions.
You are the awareness beneath it all—unchanging, quiet, and always present.
Like the ocean’s depths, your true nature isn’t the surface that rises and falls with the winds of experience.
You are the still, silent depth that watches all movement come and go, untouched and undisturbed.
Visit nycfitliving.com to begin your journey toward a deeper understanding and to cultivate genuine happiness and well-being through fitness, mindfulness, and stress management.