Silence
What is it for me.
Silence is the absence of noise.
Not the absence of noise on the hearing level.
It is the absence of mind’s noise.
An inner quality of being, a quality of energy. Something that can be identified as the «calling».
Silence is not outside, nor it is only inside.
Silence is everywhere as soon as the mind pacifies and unveils something deep, powerful, that is like pure stillness.
Silence is where the melody of life arises from.
Just as stillness is where the movement of life arises from.
Silence and stillness are at some point similar, I guess, from the experience I’ve gained so far.
It is not dead nor empty. It is incredibly full.
Silence is here even when on the surface things sound noisy. The same way profound stillness can be found through movement (Qi Kong masters or Cachemirien Yoga embody that for me).
I understand now why mystics used the analogy of the ocean.
Movement and noise on the surface, while deep silence and stillness live deep down under. But it is still one same thing: the ocean.
When Silence is calling, it is when I feel like letting myself sink deeper and deeper inside.
When the mind, with all its stories, gently and softly melt like warm butter… and it can happen anytime… whether I am « trying to meditate» or gardening, or drinking my morning cup of coffee.
It is not something that I make, I create, nor I reach for.
It is something that Calls, and if I can listen and open myself to it, it is something that takes me. Literally.
Technically in those moments I have to be physically still, and not in a busy or noisy environment. I sit, and let it in. Or let myself sink down in it.
And actually I cannot say that «Silence is appearing» because it is always here, always!! Simply it has to be unveiled… it is like being covered by noise, agitation. (Just like, once again, the ocean: when the water is agitated, we cannot see the bottom).
For some people it means retreating from the agitation of the world for years, like the hermits. But I guess it’s different for everybody.
Curiously, to me, those experiences don’t cut me out from the world, on the contrary they connect me joyfully to it.
It is like feeling everything is right just AS IT IS.
Yet that doesn’t mean agreeing with everything.
I know it can sound paradoxical. But the more I meet Silence, the more paradoxical Life seems to me. I feel great about that.
I wouldn’t have been able to experiment all this if I didn’t quit city life, years ago, to reconnect with nature.
Yet, I can feel that somehow, at some point, I will be able to feel Silence also in the craziness of cities because it is an inner quality.
But until now, nature is what is helping me to wash away all the agitation. Watching the stillness of mountains, walking in the forest and feeling the trees.
I am so grateful to have those resources right where I live.
And in the end, I am wondering if Nature, on a subtler level, isn’t the same as Silence and Stillness.
Three words to describe the same «thing»: the same power that lies under everything. That, which is beyond Human Mind’s noise. That, from which everything was born, and in which everything dies.
Please receive those words with the heart, not with the mind.
Feel them, instead of trying to understand with any kind of logic or rationality.
Just give it a try.
by Pauline Michard
