Posts Tagged ‘Silence’
There is a school of thought which suggests that silence is found in the space between two thoughts.
In order to experience mental peace, you need to experience and gradually lengthen the gaps between two thoughts, thereby extending the duration of the silence.
Now, this sounds pretty logical at first, but I disagree with the reality of this idea, for a number of reasons. This viewpoint creates a few problems. Allow me to explain.
1) It creates the idea that thoughts/noise can somehow replace stillness/silence/awareness/presence.
The idea is that you experience either silence OR thoughts. This is true. Physical experience is indeed dualistic, but it’s not how things actually are.
The problem with this idea is the belief that silence somehow “disappears” when thoughts are present. It then magically “reappears” in the space between two thoughts.
Silence is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS present. It can not be replaced by noise, only temporarily covered up by a noisy distraction.
It is the infinite silence of the forest that allows us to hear the rustling of the wind.
It is the silence of the audience in the concert hall that allows us to hear the orchestra perform.
It is the stillness of the mind that allows us to hear thoughts at all.
If the silence was replaced by infinite noise, it would be impossible to pick out any thoughts in particular. It is the presence of silence that allows us to listen to thought in the first place.
Our true nature is one of awareness. Now, awareness can be focused on awareness itself, the unmanifest silence, or it can be focused on thought, the manifest form.
The unmanifest is permanent. The manifest is transient, temporary.
Thoughts do not REPLACE silence. They simply sit on top of silence, are supported by silence, come up from silence and subsequently fall back into silence.
Thus, awareness is more like a continuous background awareness. Awareness can be aware of itself (silence) or of thoughts (noise). Either way, awareness is always aware.
It may SEEM as though silence disappears when the mind is thinking, but the reality is simply that awareness has shifted focus to the thoughts. It’s not that the silence has actually disappeared and will only reappear in the space between two thoughts. Read More …
I’m sitting outside in the garden now looking around at all the “form” that surrounds me… plants, flowers, trees… cars, homes, bees… statues, stones, leaves…
After a relatively brief meditation session, I opened my eyes and began looking at my surroundings, simply observing without allowing the mind to hop in and insert its commentary and labels. Just looking and allowing all color, form, shape, and movement to flow into my eyes as one seamless flow of light.
Suddenly I realized what I was seeing and burst out laughing.
Underneath all form is a dance of formless energy. Nothing is solid, real, or permanent. What we call physical and tangible is simply a dance of impermanence.
The building blocks of all form is the formlessness of pure non-physical energy.
It’s like this…
Look at this picture. What do you see coming from the light? Smoke. A dance of wispy smoke. Frozen in time in this image, we could look at this smoke and say it has a distinct, definable form. It has a structure, shape, color, and size. In fact, we can keep looking at it and it doesn’t move. It must be permanent!
As we know, however, the shape of smoke is constantly subject to air currents and the flow of all of life itself. It’s constantly moving and evolving. Despite any appearances of form or structure, we know that smoke is truly formless. It has simply takes on the appearance of a particular form in every changing moment.
Every thing you see in life is just like this smoke. It is the appearance of form created by the formless.
Nothing is truly concrete or solid, despite outer appearances.
Look at a growing plant without mentalization and what you see is the dance of formlessness. It is a formless flow of energy temporarily taking the shape of a plant.
Everything in life is like smoke, just moving a little more slowly or more quickly. Some things are physically more dense so they move more slowly. The smoke from a flame is not very dense so it moves relatively quickly. A human body walks around somewhat more slowly. A stone cathedral, which is very dense, changes even more slowly.
Yet given enough time, they will all equally be reduced to dust.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
There is an inherent vulnerability in all form. When we see someone or something putting up a protective shield, be they the thorns of a plant, the anger of a person, or the walls around a castle, we recognize that these defenses are simply the result of “something” being fearful of its own dissolution and subsequently doing whatever it can to solidify its sense of permanence.
Yet what we often recognize as most beautiful in life is that which is vulnerable… the petals of a flower, the breeze over the ocean, the gracefulness of a ballerina, the body of a young woman, the fluidity of a symphony, a sleeping baby, the chirping of a bird, a siren’s song, curves.
Vulnerability is the true strength, for it is in alignment with the permanent impermanence. That which is vulnerable can never be destroyed. It can certainly change forms and evolve, expand and contract. It always will, and recognizing this fact, one may let go of trying to maintain their current state and allow their own light to shine forth from within.
This awareness comes from beyond the mind. The true strength of formless vulnerability can not be seen by trying to look for it. It’s the timelessness of all that is. It’s the gentle touch and the powerful crash. It is that which can not be named, for it is simply just something that is. It exists. You can talk about it, but you can not say what it is.
Its presence arises naturally as the mind goes quiet and stops noisily covering up that infinite vastness.
It is a peace, yet beyond the most infinite peace you can imagine. It is truly beyond all imagination, beyond your wildest dreams.
You can tap into it whenever you wish. It is always there, lovingly awaiting your conscious return. 
Are you interested in being able to handle any event and any circumstance without being shaken from your core?
Do you want to be in a state of imperturbable Peace no matter what is happening around you?
If so, here is another very powerful change I’m going to suggest you implement in your life. If you try and adopt this as a belief or intellectual concept, it will be basically worthless in its effectiveness. It will be food for your spiritual ego and will be a hindrance to your Liberation, not a stepping stone towards it. Thus, if you’re serious about experiential spiritual growth, this is for you.
So let’s get right into the heart of the matter, no pun intended, yet still “coincidentally” awesome.
The mind is 99% empty space.
There’s just the little voice in the head blabbering about and it’s that one voice that gets all the attention. You see, it’s necessary for the majority of the mind to be completely silent in order for that voice to be heard. It’s necessary for a concert hall to be silent in order to fully hear the music. It’s necessary for the forest to be silent in order to hear the soft rustling of the leaves in the wind.
The vast majority of what we experience is pure silence, yet it’s the movement and noise that attracts our attention. It’s like having a huge stadium devoid of people with the exception of one person sitting in the stands cheering for no good reason. 
Your attention will automatically go to the crazy cheering looney because that’s where the action is.
The self is found in the noise.
The Self is found in the silence.
Great. Cool. So what?
Here’s how we can use this information to further our own growth:
Pay attention to the silence.
Instead of focusing on the CONTENT of life, namely events, actions, circumstances, sounds, and happenings, focus your attention on the CONTEXT, the field of energy surrounding all the action, the energy from which all form arises and ultimately falls back into. That is where you’ll find what you’re looking for.
Photo by Mahesh Thapa
Look at the photo. What do you see?
Perhaps the elk, antlers, grass, mountain, trees, clouds, perhaps even the lighting. You see, the mind looks at all the content, all the “stuff,” while it misses the biggest part of all: EMPTY SPACE!
It’s the empty space that you want to bring your attention to. Only there will you find Peace.
Feel the Unmanifest from which all that is made Manifest arises from and falls into.
When you are being consciously present, instead of paying attention to your breathing, thoughts, body, or surroundings, make the state of Presence even more powerful by abiding in the infinite field that permeates and runs through all things.
Adopt this change from focusing on content to focusing on context and see how your experience of Life changes.
Our minds can be a noisy chatterbox from hell. It can keep yapping away and driving us nuts. Is it possible to experience a state of mental silence, the same type of silence we can experience when sitting back in awestruck wonder of a beautiful sunrise? Can we experience the mental stillness of a cool winter morning?
When we’re feeling really stressed out and want to change it, we’re often suggested to sit down and calm our minds and think good thoughts to replace the bad ones. Have a positive outlook. Be an optimist. Look on the bright side.
This can certainly help us replace bad feeling thoughts with good feeling thoughts and change the direction of our life. Absolutely.
However, there are even higher levels of being in the world.
It is possible to experience a lasting sense of inner peace and quietness without having to escape the incessant mind by going to sleep or engaging in various distracting activities.
Is there an effective technique to experience extended periods of mental tranquility?
What does it take to experience a sense of continuous peacefulness within, regardless of what’s happening without?
In order for your mind to quiet, all you have to do, all you ever have to do is to abide, to accept without resistance.
It means to simply allow things to be as they already are.
Completely and totally.
Next time you’re feeling like an emotional wreck, instead of trying to change it or hate the fact that you’re feeling like a miserable wreck, allow yourself to completely and totally experience the experience even though that sounds like the last thing you’d want to do.
What you’ll find is that when you allow your current emotional state to be just as it is, that underneath the emotional turbulence you’ll experience a profound sense of peace, a liberating sense of freedom, and a wide spaciousness around this moment.
Any time you’re not feeling peace, it’s a sign that you’re struggling and not allowing everything be as it is.
This sounds counter-intuitive to the mind, but what you resist persists and what you look at disappears.
As soon as you start to allow things to be just as they are, you’ll start to experience the breathing room around the situation, the peace, the freedom.
What’s awesome is that this sense of peace does NOT depend on the negative emotions actually leaving you or on your external situation actually being fixed. The negative emotions and situation can still be there and still be experienced, but by allowing them to be, you’ll experience a yourself abiding in a greater context that totally allows the emotion to be and without insisting that it leaves.
The cool part is that once you let go of pushing against the negative feelings, you’ll be able to see the situation more clearly and open up to receiving and discovering solutions to your problems that you would have otherwise been too mentally clouded over to realize.
As soon as you allow what is to be as it is, whatever that thing is that was so terrible will actually point right towards your own mental and emotional freedom.
What freedom? Well why not explore the lifestyle of letting go and find out for yourself? 
