Can you remember the last time you sat in silence for the sake of just being rather than doing? You know, the kind of doing nothing where you are fully aware and awake. No thoughts, images, emotions, impulses, sensations or reveries are able to escape the light of your awareness, nor can the meow of the neighbor’s cat or the distant rumbling of a car driving away.
Silence nourishes a sense of inner calm. In silence we may find the stillness within, which is that imperturbable calm, free from the compulsive thinking and doing. Prayers and meditation, being one of the cornerstone practices of the world’s religions which is usually practiced in silence, are one of the time-tested ways to develop one’s spirituality.
One way I define spirituality is that it is the part of us that is in communion with beauty, truth, and goodness. In reaching for the truth, silence teaches us things we do not know or cannot know without pausing for a moment. This may be the truth about what we really think or feel about something important in our lives, such as our job, health, and relationships. The truth may be a personal insight that has been patiently waiting for us to connect the dots that can only be done by slowing down.
Silence connects us to our own innate goodness. It has the power to transform our feelings and thoughts when we willingly turn them over. Anger, sadness, doubt are sublimated into something else. In their place come a sense of reassurance, healing, and release that take us back to who we are. Silence never ceases to amaze me when I consciously and willingly engage with it.
Silence is magical, and you become the partner to a master magician when you set the scene for its entrance. Five minutes a day is a great start. Once you begin and experience the sweet embrace of silence, it will be difficult to not always want it in your heart, and your heart will never be the same again, because it will have found again where it belongs.