Detachment is not the Same as Stillpoint | Steve Beckow

There are levels to the mind

By Steve Beckow, July 26, 2021

(Golden Age of Gaia)

I no sooner wrote this sentence:

Want, want, not want attracts an “I” to fulfill itself, after which “I want” sets “the entire universe in motion” to get what it wants. (1)

than I saw that desirelessness and stillpoint were not the same.

“I want” is attachment. The absence of want is desirelessness, detachment from the things of the world.

Desirelessness or detachment seems to have triggered stillpoint. But they’re not one and the same.

Detachment is an action. It’s a relinquishing of attachment, a letting go, a relaxing of grip.

Stillpoint is not an action. It’s the absence of action.

It’s a state of mind in which the senses, while operating, are passive and yet aware.

Stillpoint creates the space in the mind for what’s next to be revealed.

I imagine that this is the state that Krishnamurti is talking about:

“The phenomenon of the observer and the observed is not a dual process, but a single one; and only in experiencing the fact of this unitary process is there freedom from desire, from conflict. The question of how to experience this fact should never arise. It must happen; and it happens only when there is alertness and passive awareness.” (2)

The awareness is passive in that it’s not going out and wrestling with external phenomena and yet it’s alert.

It’s a “dark night” to the soul in that the soul is deprived of sensory input. Not because sensory input is not there; not because external stimuli are not still incoming. But because the mind is not gathering or holding onto it.

This passive and yet alert awareness is the launching pad, the platform, the foundation, I assert, for spiritual unfoldment.

Footnotes

(1) “The Legions of Love,” July 22, 2021, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/?p=324109

(2) J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living. First Series. Bombay, etc.: B.I. Publications, 1972; c1974, 1, 61.