Painting by
Autumn Skye Morrison
Spending time in silence each day has become an essential part of my life in recent years. As a young person I valued the idea and practice of quiet meditation, though I was seldom able to do so in a comfortable, consistent fashion. I was too busy searching for answers and direction in more immediate and tangible ways. I was too arrogant and full of my own sense of things, too unwilling to give up control, especially of my thoughts.
Now, there is room for silence. I’ve discovered that when we come to understand that all of our efforts to live successfully according to the world’s, will ultimately fail to fill the hole in our hearts that remains when we are disconnected from the source of all that is, we can begin to understand the value of silence. It takes decades of trying and failing to see the absolute necessity for giving up control of one’s destiny and to finally rest in the peace of what is.
I was reminded of this beautiful poem by John O’Donohue posted on Facebook today by Woman, which is a great page that you might enjoy following too.
To Bless the Space Between Us
by John O’DonohueTo all that is chaotic in you..
let there come silence.
Let there be a calming of the clamoring..
a stilling of the voices that have
laid their claim on you..
that have made their home in you..
that go with you even to the holy places
but will not let you rest…
will not let you hear your life with wholeness
or feel the grace that fashioned you.
Let what distracts you cease.
Let what divides you cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes and demeans..
and let depart all that keeps you in its cage.
Let there be an opening into the quiet
that lies beneath the chaos..
where you find the peace you did not think possible..
and see what shimmers within the storm.
I might be able to turn off the noise in my external world, but my monkey brain is as loud, annoying, interruptive (<=== may not be a real word), and obnoxious as ever. Even as I sit in solitude during my Centering Prayer, I have yet to achieve more than 60 seconds of silence without someone in my head shouting "Hey! Yeah, but, what about (fill in the blank with anything that has nothing to do with the present moment)?" Now I have to go write about the presence of solitude and its illusive buddy, silence. Thanks, Dorothy. The poem speaks to me in a big way.
Barbara, I’ve been enjoying practicing a meditation that Wayne Dyer suggested in one of his lectures. I forget the name of it, but what you do is say “Ahhhhhh” The sound in “G…ah…d”, “Y…ah…wheh. It’s universal deity sound and when saying it as a meditation the vibrations and the action really takes one’s mind away from the monkey brain activity. I believe as long as we keeping working at finding inner peace, the better our chance of finding it!
It is from within the Silence that one learns to Be at one with the “source of all that is”. Inside that great silence, is the Sound of Eternal Truth – and blessed are those who learn to hear it, and to be at peace in each present moment.