Silence

The sound of silence is the practice of mindfulness.  This practice quiets the noise inside of us and grounds us in the present moment.  Without mindfulness we get pulled into past regrets, future concerns, and are left groundless as we sift through thoughts and feelings that are triggered by this loss of the moment.

Silence can be frightening.  To suddenly be still and exist in the moment can feel overwhelming as thoughts and feelings present themselves.  As we experience these unbidden things, and have no place to attach them, we can grow anxious and fearful.  Our minds look for places to form attachments so that we have a frame of reference for our thoughts and feelings.  After all our minds are conditioned to have control of our lives, so to become still and present in only the moment begins to loosen the mind's grip on this control.  Fear rushes in to fill the void of stillness and to re-establish mind's illusion of order and control.  In these moments if we relax into this stillness mindfulness can manifest.

We may become distracted by the emptiness we feel inside.  In this distraction we may be waiting for something to arrive to make our lives feel more exciting, more meaningful, and more alive.  Moving through our inner distractions allows us to gently embrace the silence.

The first few months after I came home from the hospital I was placed into a physical environment that had far fewer distractions.  As physical silence enveloped me my mind quickly tried to fill the void.  My thoughts ran rampant as my mind attempted to create a framework for my thoughts to identify with. The hospital was filled with chaos, and the weeks I was there I found that my daily practice of meditation gave me a focus through this chaos.  At home the silence permeated my being and my mind sought to bring chaos into the silence as a means of distracting me.  Without the obstacle of distraction my mind attempted to create this through my thoughts and thinking. The thoughts wanted to fill my perceived emptiness and give me the illusion of feeling alive. 

This perception and fear of emptiness brought me back to my practice of mindfulness.  Just as the sounds of a chime alerts my mind to returning to mindfulness, this fear of emptiness allowed me to be aware of my inner distractions and how to use these distractions in returning to the total silence of mindfulness.

Breathe in and breathe out with total focus on the breath.  Nothing else matters, only my breath exists and my focus is completely on this breath.  As I breathe this way I enter a place of silence; this is the deepest kind of silence that I know.  In this eloquent silence my thoughts, distractions, and fears disappear.

In the hospital outer chaos allowed me to find my center of silence by moving away from it and into myself.  At home, with few distractions, I was allowing  distractions of thought to become the chaos, and so I began to still my mind in the midst of outer silence to find my inner direction.  Thich Nhat Hanh calls this noble silence.   

By emptying the noise within ourselves we experience the deepest kind of silence.  We approach the place where we can commune with our deepest state-of-being.  This silence can be healing because we have the capacity to be completely alive in the moment.  When we free ourselves from the regrets and suffering of the past, and from the fears and anxieties of the future we become free of our mental chatter.  In this silence of no mental chatter we celebrate ourselves and each other in ways that are truly healing. 

The sound of no sound thunders in our awareness.  When we have stilled all sounds within ourselves we can hear the deepest calling within our being; we hear the soft, quiet voice of our heart.  We have let go of our daily concerns, regrets, worry, fear, and we exist only in each moment.  In the moment we can hear the thundering sound of silence, and the quiet, gentle voice of our heart.  This is the practice of mindfulness.