In stillness, wisdom inspires the heart to turn and see, awakening to God in his Name, for as the Psalm says, ‘Be still and know that ‘I AM’ God, for I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth (Psalm 46:10). In stillness, compulsive striving, straining and stressing release as the heart opens to God’s Holy Name, awakening to God in the midst, glorifying God through God in God, hallowing God’s Name on earth as angels hallow his Name in heaven. Stillness in God silences warring enmity without, healing subversive enmity within, releasing opinionated confusion and divisive separation. But the deep stillness of God transcends reactive stillness, stillness that counters war but remains conditioned by it, constricted and clenched instead of immersing the heart in ineffable Peace. The stillness of uncreated awareness, whose unconditioned presence is the uncreated ground of created being, stands under all that there is. Uncreated stillness abides timelessly as the unconditioned ground of ever-present awareness, partaking by grace in wisdom’s awareness of uncreated presence and glory’s presence in uncreated awareness. The uncreated Father of all, grounds all that there is through the uncreated Logos, bringing all to fulfilment in the uncreated Spirit. Stillness cures every delusive extreme that deceives with confusion or dissipates with division, generously releasing fixated opinions into luminous radiance. The Name ‘I AM’ reveals God in the ineffable stillness of his uncreated awareness and deifying presence, saving from separation all who are suffering from confusion.
The stillness of the Logos holds together what would otherwise fly apart, whilst the stillness of the Spirit embraces what would otherwise disintegrate, restoring oneness of glory to the Father that would otherwise fall short of glory. The Holy Trinity abides at centre in the midst, whether there is recognition or ignorance, sustaining awareness and presence, whether or not there is remembrance of God. Recognition and remembrance of God, however, acknowledge the grace of true stillness to be the cessation of dissipating ignorance and the liberation of oblivious forgetfulness. Deifying stillness does not itself require improvement, since it is always already replete with the completeness of divine glory. Such stillness is uncontrived, being the holy stillness of God. This is the stillness of the pure in heart, the stillness of wisdom that sees all things in God. In this presence-filled stillness, wisdom discerns the glory of grace, abiding in the peace of God. Ineffable stillness cannot be conceived, cannot be achieved, because the mysteries of the Name transcend rational conception and dualistic perception. Wisdom sees simply and knows directly in stillness that ‘I AM’ is God, that uncreated awareness is one with uncreated presence, uncreated light clearing away all impediments, uncreated glory clarifying every obstruction.
Stillness is decisive in wisdom’s uninterrupted release of every distraction and in glory’s unperturbed resolution of every fixation. Hesychasts do not confuse true stillness with a conceptual fixation on an abstract notion of stillness. Beyond imagining, stillness bears witness to the Name, unveiling the image and likeness of God. Primordial awareness unites with spontaneous presence in the Name, undergirding Name-hallowing with the oneness of wisdom and glory. Knowing ‘I AM’ is God, the heart is hallowed with the healing stillness of God. Conditioned ways and means are able to glimpse a temporal gospel among many temporal ways and means toward God, but the timeless radiance of the Eternal Gospel remains hidden until wisdom dawns and glory arises in the illumined heart. Timeless awakening is decisive because it is no longer conditioned by temporal postponements of the glory of grace. That is why Hesychast saints acknowledge timeless stillness to be truly decisive, rather than the endless postponements which temporal ways and means engender. Stillness is indeterminate in its scope and unrestricted in its co-inherent embrace, knowing no spatial separation in its generous freedom and no temporal division in its liberating grace. Purity of heart in stillness is timeless, unconfined awareness and timeless, indivisible presence, unconstricted by either space or time. Wisdom transcends all spatial or temporal frames of reference just as glory transfigures all discrete forms. Stillness frees wisdom to discern glory at the heart of the hallowed Name, awareness of presence manifesting as the glory of grace, empowering the purified heart to see God.