Winslow Eliot: Do feel you’re a nail or a hammer?

I became friends with Winslow Eliot about five years ago on Facebook. At the time, I had no idea who she was, just that she was an award-winning author of a number of non-fiction and fiction books. Currently, I’m reading and loving Sati And The Rider (A Satyana Mystery Book).

But as if that wasn’t enough, since then, Winslow has continually inspired me, not only because of her fabulous books but more personally through her Stillness posts each day.

Come rain or shine Winslow posts a thought-provoking stillness image poem. She’s gathered an impressive international grassroots following through these posts.

I’ve shared a few of her other posts here on Surprising Lives, but this more recent one grabbed my attention. And perhaps it’s what she added in her comments that drew me most.

Here is the picture from her post and the accompanying comment;

“Sometimes I feel I’m the nail, being hammered and coerced and forced into my place in the world. Other times I’m hammering away at life—especially at my typewriter when I write. Probably all of us, at different times, feel as though we’re sometimes the doer and other times the done-to.

But recently I’ve been feeling that neither of these two ideas are true—especially not when we experience life from a place of stillness.

There’s no room for dualism (either-or) or even for one-ness when we’re being still. In stillness, we become more than we can imagine. We become the motion, and we become the object being created. And we become the sound, and the intention, and everything around us. We are even the idea of what the hammer and nail are creating. We are potential. We are all of it.”

You can read more about and from Winslow on her Facebook page.