It’s not new for me to feel this call, a call to being silent and very quiet for a few days. There are times when I feel that I need to be restored by silence.
It’s different from rest. The call to silence often has me sitting quietly for long chunks of time. Sometimes with eyes closed. Sometimes staring out a window. The sitting seems to feed an emotional and mental well being, despite my noisy brain that trumpets more accomplishment.
The call to silence isn’t a call to distraction for me. It’s not streaming programs. It’s not reading a book. It’s not writing. It’s not filling my time with task. It’s not calling a friend. It’s not listening to music. I love all of those things, but the call to silence is, for me, so much more about being willing to be in an emptiness and in a feeling of nothingness. There is some scariness in that for me. Yet delight too.
It’s not new for me that I seek to have strong relationship with an unseen world. Spirit, yes. Flow of Life, yes. Reminds me of John O’Donohues’s poem, Fluent, that states the desire to live like a river flows.
I wonder about what this is like for others in relationship with silence. I’ve done plenty of following the attractive noises of a contemporary and busy life. I’ve been much fulfilled by such. But I’m noticing what feels like an even further letting go these days, that I’m sensing can best be found in these periods of being willing to more fully encounter the loud call to silence.
You?
Hello my friend! I appreciate this sharing. It is very much winter here in Saskatchewan at a snowy -49F and I feel this natural call to be in silence, quiet…I feel the longing for emptiness.
For me this kind of silence is a way to touch back in to the experience of simply being alive, as part of life, rather than experiencing myself as “separated” from it. I get to feel like I AM the landscape and skyscape…
This silence invites me beyond my mind, offering me a taste of the truth of who I really am, and a sensation of existence that is beyond the “knowledge” and “thinking” of myself and others. Really, this silence dissolves the part of me that thinks it’s “me” and takes me into that impersonal and timeless space of presence. For me it offers a sense of relief that goes way beyond rest and relaxation.
More and more this kind of silence is also a place where I welcome becoming lost, where I get to forget my name, where I am whole, complete and free and where there’s nothing missing. Perhaps it is another of my mini practices of death.
I believe that this silence has always been an essential part of our natural way, my natural way (before being lost in the din of a 24-hour-on lifestyle) – with us since the beginning long before we tried to name it…
With much love and gratitude,
Michelle
Big, big yes. I love your ways of seeing and surrendering Michelle. Thx for sharing here.
Something in me is sad that I don’t have much space in the fullness of life for silence and I have a deep sense that my time will come and I also know my time has been in terms of silence. There were many weekends within the last 10 years where silence was the most loyal of my companions. The way you write about it here, I feel or am reminded of a connection to stillness and silence. My ADHD brain struggles with both. Even in the silence I am holding several different threads…there is the outward silence that I think I have learned to perform. There is the inward silence, that requires so much more from me and sometimes feels beyond my skills…I hear this loud call to silence, often…and I just don’t know how to respond.
“…the most loyal of companions, yet that requires more or different…” I love your reflections on this Moze. Part of my experiment these days is to remove more distractions. Not all of them. But to break the pattern of addiction to them. In this, I’m finding some new ways with silence. I’m wishing good journey for all of us in this.