The Quiet Place: Thought Room

My daughter asked me if I had ever stumbled across a website called The Quiet Place Project, to which I said no.  It is a very interesting site with an even more interesting premise...quiet.

You "communicate" with the website via the spacebar. In choosing the "thoughts" page, the site asks you to turn off cell phones, etc. and finally says, so you chose quiet.  (You all know I love the word "chose"!)

As it asks you if your thoughts are overloading your brain, the word "overloading" falls gently off its sentence and drifts down off the page; as it it no longer existed.  

The site then offers a thought box for you to type your thoughts into.

It offers you the opportunity to pour out burdens of the heart, promising that no one can see what you type.


The background is the black sky of the massive universe and there is a crescent moon and stars. As you type, your words gently fall away as if to show you, in the big scheme of the Universe, they are temporary and small. 

The first thing I typed I found so fascinating.  I wrote, I need to stay away from sugar. I watched the words fall away and it was no longer a burdensome thought that led to how will I do that, can I do that, there are hundreds of desserts in the kitchen...I just felt calm.

I typed something else- I can't even remember what it was because the words fell away gently and respectfully as soon as I wrote them and, when I hit enter, they turned into new stars on the Universe background.  I use the word respectfully because the slowness of the words drifting away is almost saying I respect you feel this way, but...  

Then I thought how would it feel if I typed something positive...I wrote, I see the sun rise. And the words fell away again reminding me that all emotions and sights are temporary; happiness is as temporary as sadness.  Leaving me with what?  Me. Simply me. I found it simplistic, yet amazing and calming and, well, cool.  

And, if you feel you are going to pass out from having been kept away from Facebook too long, the site calmly tells you that you won't miss anything by shutting down for a few. That all you are "missing" is your friends posting something about something they did or saw. "Meaningless.little.things."
"There is nothing that cannot wait."

Check it out when you are willing to choose quiet.    http://thequietplaceproject.com/thethoughtsroom/

 

Silence is not just Being Quiet

So many people have got to tell you something,
eagerly spilling out their religion,
their stories, experiences, favorites and finds.
They must forward their ideas.
They scream their biographies
in classrooms, websites, coffee shops and in lines.
 
Alone, only, are we safe from
the eternal noise of us,
our thousand discussions that fill the atmosphere
and says nothing at all.
 
However, after a blessed and unconscious silence
We walk out of our beds and into our televisions;
its noise and all that blue chatter
makes us feel at home.
Silence is to stop communicating, affirming;
insisting that we're correct is insisting that we matter.

by Delilah Miller

 
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear. ”
― Baba Ram Das
  
"The basic root of happiness lies in our minds; outer circumstances are nothing more than adverse or favourable." – Matthieu Ricard