The Solace of Silence - Cheryl Sanders-Sardello

The enormity of life's tasks weigh and press on the day...
they demand and insist on a constancy of attention that is relentless.
But we are fortunate to have night's solace - in the silence that is
created by the dark.  Night... that melancholy time, when the stars
remind us of the Silence of God.  Here we can lean into the
unknown, setting aside the oppressive weight of our carefully
constructed version of who we think we are.  We can remember
how to see in the dark... with our ears... perceiving the Silence in
its holy echoing and resonance, its calling forth a knowing that is
from the soul.

The Silence sends us on a different pilgrimage.  It guards the heart's
fire and teaches us to speak from within with a language that is
imbued with the Sacred.  Words thus nurtured in the Holy Silence
fly forth to lead us back to the Silence from which they were born.

Cheryl Sanders-Sardello
From - Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness
by Robert Sardello

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Several years ago I "practiced" what I called "window sitting."
I would sit in the window in the dark late at night when the "noise"
of the day had settled.  It was an incredible experience - just
listening to the silence of the night, leaning into the darkness, the
silence at the window, which drew me into the
deeper Silence of Being - the Sacred Silence within, as Cheryl describes.
I have gotten away from this "practice" of "listening" at the window
 to the Silence, but am rediscovering my way back...

~

What is necessary, after all, is only this; solitude, vast inner solitude.
To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours...

Rainer Maria Rilke

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Photo - clouds, color inverted digitally