More than Mere Windows 

Photography and Text by Jules Hovee Steffen

For me, bedtime and waking time are my two favored spaces of time within my day – to
reach into stillness.  And somewhere inside the stillness, there is an ever-so-gentle wave of movement that rises with expansion and then deliberately dissipates as if riding a very slow-moving ocean swell.  All the other pulsations and rhythms that surface for me seem to fade in the distant background in the midst of this slow swell that gives way to a sense of expansion and its subsequent ease.  When eager to await this experience, it seems to stay hidden and remotely unavailable.  For me, it’s when I’m not looking for it, that it seems to reveal itself.   The expression of the Long Tide within is a stable rhythm ride that is unceasing in it’s wave-like dynamic.   An earlier blogpost entitled Riding the Long Tide offers more information for interested readers.

Just as stones of the Earth are a daily experience in my life as the most dense form of Spirit – that prompts me to drop within more deeply,  (reflected in the following blogposts:  Stone Sense and Sitting Stones), the Long Tide seems to guide me to a place of sacred stillness where Stillness resides, another space in which dropping more deeply seems to occur.  This extended wave breathes an ever-present breath that does not cease to exist. True rest and relaxation seem to come when we stop the incessant search, when we refrain from our identifications with form, as we forego our fragile attachments to this finite world – and cross over into a realm that is without form.  I believe the Middle Ground: Where Sages Dwell is the middle space, the gap, the still breath in between the inhale and the exhale, and the places of silence and stillness into which we drop when we rest in the safety and mystery of true Stillness.  Stones and our Long Tide may be more than mere windows through which we crawl into another realm of experience.  They may be open portals that reach into another world.  And what’s true, is that there are many openings that reach into these wondrous spaces.

You are invited to take a look at what’s available in our store for purchase:  Reaching Beyond into Relaxation, an audio download for rest: