Find Your Reset Point
Nick Kettles and Pat Thomas
Amidst the turmoil of debate, the successes and setbacks, the hope and despair in creating a more sustainable society – and set against the backdrop of protesters actively occupying the financial districts of the world – what is the value of retreat?
What is the value of actually pressing the pause button completely to disengage from the world, including your quest to make it a better place? Of learning how to turn the mind inwards, and take refuge within the silence, the reset point, at the centre of your very being?
How any of us achieve this is personal and unimportant. Some people like to meditate, others engage in mindful activities such as making bread. Still others like to walk in Nature and contemplate its beauty. What’s important is that you do it.
At first blush, the benefits seem profoundly individual, even selfish. But a choice to prioritise your personal peace, taking a retreat from the inherent madness of the modern world, is not a way of escaping our responsibilities. It is, instead, a profoundly revolutionary act.
Once the surface noise of our angry or despairing thoughts about the environment, or modern world, begin to quiet down, we begin to detach from the outcome we want to see and a more reflective and creative state of mind can emerge, one that can be applied, once again, to our quest for a better, fairer more sustainable world.
Once we begin to trust the silence within as a source of nourishment, our fear and sense of vulnerability about the planet can be embraced as confirmation that we are, in fact, deeply connected to the web of life everywhere.
Above all, each time we turn inwards and retreat we challenge the prevailing paradigm that wants us to believe that moments of quiet reflection are purposeless and self-interested, that disengaging is synonymous with boredom, lassitude, lack of choice and the greatest sin of all: being out of touch with the next ‘new’ new thing.
When we affirm that the emptiness inside doesn’t need to be constantly filled with the ephemeral whims of consumption, we give permission for others to also discover it as a resource rich in energy. In the silence, ideas which can galvanise our sense of purpose have space to grow.
Try stopping for 20 minutes, 3 times a day, to reflect and quieten your mind, in your own unique way. In what ways do your thoughts and feelings about the environment change?
Roadmap To Creating Sustainable Change From the Inside Out: Part 3 ‘Adopt a new aesthetic’ coming soonish.
