Silence

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”  Pablo Picasso

The creation of sound, the destruction of silence.  Sound has to emerge from silence and stillness.  Webster defines  healing as "to  make sound".  Sound is used in many variations as a form of healing. 

"The person of science says that sound comes from the spine, diaphragm, abdomen and lungs… the mystic says that sound comes from the soul, the heart and the mind. Before its incarnation the soul is sound. It is for this reason that we love sound”  Hazrat Inayat Khan

But I want to talk about the stillness.

"The sounds that are used in a healing session induce a shift in consciousness that helps the clients to get unstuck from their belief in disease or misfortune. Actually, it is not the sounds; it is the no-tone in between tones that has a healing effect. It is the silence that takes clients back to their pure state of being. Silence; this is not the absence of sound. Silence is the distant residue of sound ...true healing comes through silence. "  (tuberose.com)

I love silence. Given the choice, I will almost always choose silence over music in the car and quiet versus noise, like TV, in the house.  I will not mention whom, but "someone" was snoring last night. I took my pillow and blanket downstairs to lay on the couch and was in awe of the loudness of the silence.  I spent many moments listening to the quiet and becoming absorbed by its vastness. 

Silence is the space between the sound.  It's the space between the inhale and the exhale.  When I practice retention breath work, I like those quiet places best; they seem to connect directly to a part of my soul that can only be accessed through stillness.

Silence, on the mat, is consciously reconciling with the stillness of the poses.  The movement is in the transition but can you be comfortable with then holding still?

I don't think many people are comfortable with silence.  They always attempt to fill it with speech or thought so they can shut out their mind chatter.  That's one reason many find meditation difficult...either an unfamiliarity with stillness or the noise their mind creates because they cannot access stillness.

“I don't think..." then you shouldn't talk, said the Hatter.”   ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

At my son's baseball game Saturday morning, it suddenly occurred to me that I had tuned out all the chatter around me and all I was conscious of hearing was the slap of the ball against a glove or a bat.  I felt the sun and the breeze and that was it.  All that existed in the moment was sun, wind, a baseball and me.   It was beautiful. Of course, upon realizing this, it was also gone, but how many chance upon those realizations?  Don't be afraid of silence.

“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”

― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

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