This reflection emerged as a quiet conversation that I had with David Whyte’s essay, Silence, from his book Consolations. My own essay, also called ~ Silence, was written by listening to the invitation, request and eventual emphatic need for the recovery found in silence. What follows is not about silence as an ideal (well..maybe a little :), but silence as it appears in my own real human days… interrupting momentum, asking for stillness, and revealing what cannot be heard while everything else is moving.
~Leora
Silence steps forth from the periphery.
In its expansion, silence grants us a glimpse of the unknown. It can crash against the mind with discomfort, and unease, or it can arrive gently, lapping against the heart, in its ebb and flow, allowing what has been unheard to surface.
Silence is not empty. It hums. It vibrates with the inner weather of the body and the restless movements of the mind. Silence is change, folding and unfolding with each breath, each pause, each quiet absorption.
Silence is an invitation, lovingly beckoning, often insistent.
After long, very human days, the body and mind are asked to enter it.
It is true, Silence is not stillness, though the two intwine together like old friends, Sentinels to one another.
A threshold of silence, however, is found through the discipline of meditation practice. In this discipline stillness cradles silence, allowing it to be heard.
When silence steps forth unplanned, asking us to slow down or stop, it is often ignored. At first without awareness. We keep going until the body intervenes, pain appears, the nervous system becomes overstimulated, the mind begins to loop. Silence is no longer subtle. Emphatic with what was once an invitation becomes unavoidable.
When silence whispers, we override it with momentum and productivity. We keep moving until *Annamaya (the body) becomes painful enough to demand attention. The comfort of others, the insistence on forward motion, and external entertainment speaks louder than silence, pulling at the frayed strings of a strained nervous system.
Silence, speaks from *Vijnanamaya, a layer of our being that reveals discernment, insight and a quiet knowing.
Silence is food for the soul, a healing call of the body, mind and spirit.
~Leora
*The Koshas: Five Layers of Being
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