One of the first conscious efforts you can make after you have observed some wrong work or negative I in you is the practice of inner stop. It means to become absolutely still within yourself. You are not trying to stop your thoughts. Stopping all thoughts are not possible. But you can hold yourself inviolate against any particular thought that wishes to grab your attention by being entirely motionless inside. It has nothing to do with stopping the I itself. I's will continue to move in and out of your awareness but in your stillness, you have become invisible to them like a rabbit that freezes when it senses a predator. You notice an encroaching negative I or negative state and instead of trying to banish it you become silent and still inside yourself and therefore are invisible to it. You don't talk to it or contend with it in any way. You simply stay still within yourself which will give you the time to proceed to the next movement. Practicing inner stop gives you the opportunity to decide the best course of action.
Rain ... for the eighth straight day ... rain. She was beginning to find the enforced confinement more bitter than sweet. Freedom of movement was as dear to her as freedom of thought, even though both were often misunderstood by others. The rain limited her general habit of walking daily -- hikes that cleared her mind to receive guidance and centered her for authentic living. Rain ... it also cleansed memories and scars of past mistakes.
He came home to a testy woman -- wife in his perception, companion in her dreams. His had been a lean day of purpose, distractions met with sighs of unacknowledged anger. They met at the door with a perfunctory kiss and he began to grumble recitals of a misspent day. She felt constrained and controlled by an unspoken inner fear of screaming ... STOP! Let's not talk, but simply listen to the rain.
And he, being sensitive to her psyche, felt the contained rejection and talked -- frenetically spewing words toward an unreceptive ear. She heard him not; she had tuned into a void to avoid an unrelated sharing.
Out of the rain came rumblings of thunder. The storm approached rapidly and with uncontrolled savagery. The light dimmed ... then went out as the next crash followed the flash of lightning too close to ignore. He took her hand and led her to the sofa, as much for his comfort as hers. They sat without speaking and listened to the storm raging outwardly, that storm which each had felt within. As the storm abated -- seeming to have spent itself in calamitous outburst -- the subdued pair continued in a silence that radiated an envelope of peace. They were still sitting when the light came back on.
She was the first to speak. From that deep place touched in the Silence, she said simply and quietly, "Yes ... shall we take a walk before we eat?"
He assented with a kiss and a smile which conveyed more than a plethora of words.