"Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world." —Jack Kerouac
Today, I invite you to return to silence. You may have a lively social day ahead, or you may feel the need to hover around the latest shifting news, or a long "to-do" list, but regardless, of whatever commitments, consider some time for silence; if not today, then during the week ahead. Recently, someone wrote to thank me for the Hillside Source website's recording of my 2018 talk on The Harvest , including "harvesting silence". The email triggered my own need to return to this particular spiritual practice. Today, I offer it to you.
My early encounters with spiritual silence came through my exposure to meditation; silence is often an aspect of meditation. Over the years, I learned many "techniques"--not all are silent. Meditation is more of a quieting, a quieting that includes the body's relaxation, the breath softening in slow rhythm. As emotions and thoughts settle, the focus can suddenly "shift gears" into a infinite, nameless field. Mantra's, or prayer, or images, can be part of the stream of awareness. Stillness and silence can be a kind of background for contemplation, or alternatively, the stillness, the silence, simply take over. To me, every meditation is different, is movement, is "live" and unpredictable.
During those early years of meditation, I attended and led retreats that usually included a meaningful day of silence. But the full force of what I term spiritual Silence opened 15 years later with my early encounters with U.G. Krishnamurti, and extended to 17 years, often spent in deep silence. We sat in silent chairs next to a crackling fire places. We sat in silence in parked cars in parking lots, waiting for others as they ran the day's errands. There were silent drives through eerie forests with crystal ice branches and piled soft snow in stunning stillness; silent drives on spring-time roads, lined with vibrant flowers, bursting with color and sunlight; miles and miles of drives through empty desert silence, the mental chat stream of thought finally giving way.
Even though it was difficult to leave each visit, in retrospect, I see that it was necessary. Each return home brought a new appreciation of silence in general, and a deepening need to enter it, and hold it. But I rarely had the time. Then silence opened the door--and I discovered it everywhere, and most available in things around me. By things, I mean the inanimate world. Listening to the silence of things, brought an atmosphere of silence. Moments of silence accumulate. Each time of turning to the immediate silence of a thing, or a room of things, even if overlaid with "noise", brings a connection to the silence at the core. The practice of silence then, is a giving way to stillness and the absence of not just sound, but the absence of separation. Silence extends to the natural world, including the problematic world of people. You can find that silence anywhere. Take the time this week to listen beyond your world of thought. (Susan Nettleton)
Listen, my child, to the silence. An undulating silence, a silence that turns valleys and echoes slippery, bends foreheads toward the ground.
—Federico García Lorca