{"id":109,"date":"2012-08-08T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.petitefreespirit.com\/2012\/08\/stillness\/"},"modified":"2020-06-10T19:47:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T00:47:08","slug":"stillness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/08\/stillness\/","title":{"rendered":"Stillness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P align=justify><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 14px\" face=arial><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT>In the most trying of times, when I don&#8217;t know which way to turn, which action to take and my emotions are running high, I seek stillness.&nbsp; Not the superficial stillness of not moving but the deeper stillness of inner solitude and quiet.&nbsp; In my experience, prayer is like initiating a request.&nbsp; Stillness is the necessary state of attentiveness in order to receive the answer.&nbsp; I often think that what people regard as unanswered prayers are nothing more than that &#8220;still small voice&#8221; going unheard amongst the &#8220;noise&#8221; of life.<br \/>\n<P align=justify><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 14px\" face=arial><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT>Although stillness is the optimal state in which to hear or receive an answer, for me, it is one of the hardest states to maintain.&nbsp; By its very nature, stillness means doing nothing.&nbsp; However, in the midst of trying times, anyone you mention the situation to will ask, &#8220;what are you going to do about it?&#8221;&nbsp; In the absence of a third-party I ask myself the question.&nbsp; Yet, from a multitude of previous experiences whose lessons don&#8217;t always remain in my memory, in the midst of the stillness the still small voice comes along with a course of action or something in the situation shifts without effort on my part and the situation moves forward.&nbsp; Once I surrender my will over the situation, change somehow comes.&nbsp; <br \/>\n<P align=justify><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 14px\" face=arial><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT>Frequently in these instances, the answer is not always an easy course of action.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve found that an easy course of action is not always the best.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve also found that the best course of action doesn&#8217;t always appear to make the most sense from the outside (or even from the inside for that matter).&nbsp; However, returning to stillness provides the reassurance (sometimes) to continue going in the direction of that still small voice.<br \/>\n<P align=justify><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 14px\" face=arial><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT><FONT style=\"FONT-SIZE: 85%\"><\/FONT>I enjoy going places and doing things.&nbsp; Movement is essential for me because I am full of restless energy.&nbsp; However, I will always ensure that I have some way of leaving the &#8220;noise&#8221; behind so that I may tune in to hear that still small voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the most trying of times, when I don&#8217;t know which way to turn, which action to take and my emotions are running high, I seek stillness.&nbsp; Not the superficial stillness of not moving but the deeper stillness of inner solitude and quiet.&nbsp; In my experience, prayer is like initiating a request.&nbsp; Stillness is the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/08\/stillness\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Stillness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"pfspirit","author_link":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/author\/pfspirit\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"In the most trying of times, when I don&#8217;t know which way to turn, which action to take and my emotions are running high, I seek stillness.&nbsp; Not the superficial stillness of not moving but the deeper stillness of inner solitude and quiet.&nbsp; In my experience, prayer is like initiating a request.&nbsp; Stillness is the&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petitefreespirit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}