CTL-IX-0065
“I learned to sit alone with myself in silence and it stopped being scary.”
The thing you used to flee — the quiet room, no screen, no noise, just you — has become a place you can rest. That's a profound bound to learn to trust: the one around your own company. Most of our restlessness was just the inability to be still. You can be still now.
Your Practice
- Sit for ten minutes with no input — no phone, no music, nothing.
- When the urge to reach for distraction comes, just notice it.
- Let the discomfort pass without feeding it. It always passes.
- Extend the sitting by a few minutes each week.
The Architects
“All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées, §139 (Brunschvicg) / §136 (Lafuma), W. F. Trotter translation