Silence is a Gate - Dada Gavand

 

In the present competitive commercial society there seems
to be no room for Silence.

Quietude and Silence are not the negation of life, but the
regeneration of it.  Silence is the means to elevate life energy
to a timeless dimension.

We have got to find this unknown dimension of life.  The
whole world is in desperate need of a new-dimensional
consciousness, so that human being can live intelligently,
creatively, spontaneously and lovingly, and not just follow
the ego pursuits mechanically.

Silence is the means and Silence is the end.
Creative Silence is the ultimate challenge.

Silence is the sap that rejuvenates life.
Silence is the source of eternal life.

Dada Gavand
East Indian Mystic

~

Find the Silence and you'll find "God."

Ramakrishna

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Full Moon 2022

Primordial Silence - a meandering...

"The key", for me anyway, one of the many "keys"
actually, is constantly "returning" my awareness or attention
to the awareness of Primordial Silence within.  I am constantly
challenged to "wake up" and remember this deep Silence at core of
 my Being...

This came out of a conversation with my husband in the face
of life's challenges that are currently occurring here personally
on an ongoing basis - for years actually - but especially 
these last 2+ years - that I feel pulling me away from the deeper
sense of intimacy with "The Silence" within - which is why I
have been posting about Silence recently - as a way to remind myself.
The Primordial Silence calls to me, like an old Friend, 
inviting me, waiting for me to respond, to come and be still -
thus the late night "window sitting" that I practiced years ago,
 where I can rendezvous with the Great Silence by being
 in the stillness and quiet of the night...

Intimacy with the Primordial Silence is what nourishes me, my
Soul - when I can be in that space.  It is the elixir of Life -
dissolving all resistance, and anxiety about what is, the way life
 is right now, what it should be, and allows the veils that keep
 me from this Divine Communion of Silence to drop away... 
But, I'm not there... 
I am riding the "Mind Bus" with its stories and fears.

It is a conscious endeavor to remember that no matter what is
going on, there is always this intimacy with Primordial Silence
within, even if not felt.  I just need to constantly return to the felt
sense of It:
The awareness of Primordial Silence within myself...

Mystic Meandering

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

In Harmony with The Cosmos - Sardello

Silence is not a path...
The most basic experience of Silence is intimacy...
Silence keeps us intimately bound with the truth of
our Being...

We feel how we, in our individuality, are part of a
vast and mysterious world process...
Illusion and ego-fantasy begin with forgetting this
intimacy with Silence...

In "practicing" [being aware of] the Silence we are not
trying to merge with the Cosmos, or to leave this world
for timeless regions... but to come into harmony with the
Rhythm of Silence and the great [natural] rhythms governing
the world [planet].  We start by sensing the presence of
extremely subtle currents of The Silence that have a unique
quality.  These currents are neither "energy" nor the electro-
magnetic currents of the body.  We experience the currents
of Silence, as being touched by a "spiritual" presence.  The
nature of the currents of Silence is that of the presence
of an interiority, like knowing someone in a way that reveals
the essence of their Being.  We experience an immediacy
of the quality of interiority.  There is nothing behind Silence...
There is just Silence...  When we are in The Silence we
experience something very bodily and we also experience
 it as a subtle touch at the level or our Soul, at
the level of our own interiority.

[Accessing] The Silence through directly sensing is the key
to living both our Soul life, and our spiritual life *in* the world...

The work is to be with The Silence itself...

Robert Sardello
Excerpts From - Silence: The Key to Wholeness

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

Personal Note:  I have experienced some of what Mr.
Sardello describes as his own experience.
Everyone experiences this Silence differently...

 

This "Silence" - Amoda Maa

A non-dual perspective on our Essential Nature

"Silence" is not a mental state or a spiritual state, it is already
here prior to thinking, labeling or naming, or feeling;
prior to any experience in perception.

It is not about achieving a state of silence - by rising above.
It is an invitation to go inward to the Deep, the Quiet within.

It is what you already are.  It's your Essential Nature.

"Silence" is known before you take hold of your experience
and categorize it putting it into a mental category of
understanding or knowing.

It's your primary nature - everything else is secondary.

Amoda Maa
on you tube

~

This "Silence" is not about closing the doors, turning off the
phone and lighting candles.  Nor is it to do with trying to get
rid of your thoughts or imagining the perfect sanctuary of
peace.

This "Silence" happens when you stop giving attention to the
narratives that wrap themselves around your experience of
reality.  This "Silence" happens when you turn towards tenderness
every time an unwanted feeling enters your inner landscape.
This "Silence" happens when you have surrendered all resistance
to what is.  This "Silence" happens when you [realize] that
the whole universe is you.  

....Whether you sit in deep stillness or whether you are doing
something [the requirements of daily living] this "Silence" is
always here...  It is in you as Being-ness [your Essential Being].

It's about whether you can fall into the "Silence" that is
always here...

Perhaps it is wise to ask: how can I meet the world
as "Silence"?

Amoda Maa

With thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Undulating Silence

 

Holy Hush - Yahia Lababidi

Silence is the inescapable force in our lives - a constant presence.
Contemplatives, poets, and thinkers alike, have long hinted at
a wisdom beyond words, straining the limits of language
and sense, to describe the ineffable.

Silence is not the absence of failure of words, but instead
somehow exists before and beyond representation, a primordial
essence that lurks beneath our constructed world.  In the immortal
formulation of Tao Te Ching: 'Returning to the root is silence/
Silence is returning to being.'

It is in silence, that things patiently unfurl, open up and trust us
with their secrets or reveal their hidden natures...

Silence can be difficult to define.  For it is not merely the
absence of sound, but may be perceived as an actual physical
presence - a holy hush,  the elemental silence found in the
natural world, where Time appears to collapse and one is 
afforded glimpses into Eternity. Silence is the solemn 
companion of nature and can presence like the very
pulse of Being.

Krishnamurti describes this mystical state: 'And it is only
where there is space and silence that something new can be
that is untouched by time/thought.  That may be the most holy,
the most sacred - may be...  You cannot give it a name.  It is
perhaps the unnamable.'

One is said to 'enter' and 'emerge' from this state, as though it
were an actual physical territory.  We cannot forcibly break-in
and enter, or rush through this portal to arrive at a meditative-
reflective state; but instead must patiently wait to be granted
access...

The Christian philosopher, Max Picard said:
"Silence is listening.  And as attentive practitioners of this
metaphysical art may sense, it can sometimes be unclear who
is doing the actual listening...  us, or Silence itself...

Otherwise, dissimilar spiritual traditions - Hindu, Buddhist,
Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Native American - all
agree on the importance of observing silence as a tool for 
inner transformation...

Yahia Lababidi
Egyptian-Lebanese poet and "thinker"

Excerpts from an article entitled:
"Notes On Silence" 

With thanks to No Mind's Land for the link :)

 

Ruptured Reality - Pema Khandro Rinpoche

We are always experiencing births and deaths [and other significant losses].  There is something radical about these changes in our reality.  There is a total rupture in our 'who-am-I-ness', and we are forced to undergo a great and difficult transformation.

In bereavement, we come to appreciate at the deepest, most felt level exactly what it means to die while we are still alive.  These are the moments when gaps [or in-between states] appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives.  These interruptions in our normal sense of certainty are that state in which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us.

Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it means to be disrupted, to be entombed between death and rebirth.  We often label that a state of shock [or fracture].  In those moments, we lose our grip on the old reality and yet have no sense of what a new one might be like.  There is no ground, no certainty, and no reference point - there is, in a sense, no rest.  In that radical state of unreality we need - not just logic, but something beyond logic, something that speaks to us in a timeless, non-conceptual way.

The more we learn to recognize this sense of disruption, the more willing and able we will be to let go of this notion of an inherent reality and allow that precious pot to slip out of our hands.  Rupture is taking place all the time, day to day and moment to moment; in fact, as soon as we see our life in terms of successive changes, we dissolve the idea of a solid self grasping onto an inherently real life.  We start to see how conditional 'who-I-am-ness' really is, how even that does not provide reliable ground upon which to stand.

At times like this, if we can gain freedom from the eternal grasping onto who I am and how things are - our default mode - then we can get to the business of Being.  Until now, we have been holding on to the idea of an inherent continuity in our lives, creating a false sense of comfort for ourselves...  By doing so, we have been missing the very flavor of what we are.

The cause of suffering can be boiled down to grasping onto [or believing in] a fictional, contrived existence.  But what does that mean?  If we really come to understand, then there is no longer even a container to hold together our normal concepts, to make them coherent.

Reality as we thought we knew it is disrupted; the game of contriving an ideal self is suddenly irrelevant.  We experience a disrupted reality, a direct experience of disruption felt at the core of our being.

When we suffer disruption, we find we just can't play that game anymore.  It's really about recognizing the value of giving up the game, which we play without even giving it a second thought.  But when we are severely ill, and we have to cede control over our own body to strangers, holding it all together is not an option.

There are times like these in our lives - such as facing death [or other losses] - when we are no longer able to manage an outer image, no longer able to suspend ourselves in pursuit of the ideal self.  It's just how it is.  In these times of crisis we just don't have the energy to hold it all together.  When things fall apart, we can only be who we are.  Pretense and striving fall away, and life becomes starkly simple.

The value of such moments is this:  we are shown that the game can be given up and that when it is, the emptiness that we feared, emptiness of the void, is not what is there.  What is there is the bare fact of being.  Simple presence remains - breathing in and out, waking up and going to sleep.  The inevitability of the circumstances at hand is compelling enough that for the moment, our complexity ceases.  Our compulsive manufacturing of contrived existence stops.  We're forced into non-grasping of inherent reality.  The contrived self has been emptied out along with contrived existence and the tiring treadmill of image maintenance that goes along with it.  What remains is a new moment spontaneously meeting us again and again.  There is an incredible reality that opens up to us in those gaps if we just do not reject rupture.

But what's underneath our experience of rupture?  If here is no inherent existence to hold on to, then what is the ultimate reality?  This unanswered question drives a lot of us.  If we don't know the answer, then life becomes a primordial anxiety...  The extent to which we know [experience] what's underlying everything - is the extent to which life becomes bearable.

In the raw, broken-open state, this place where we let go of all the games, there is actually a great sense of relief, a knowledge that we don't have to do that anymore, to be that.  There can be a feeling of getting to the heart of things, a juxtaposition [a reorientation] of real and unreal.  That's the beauty of not grasping onto inherent reality.  If we can find ways to disrupt our own habit of clinging to our continuity story, to just strip it all down, then what we find in any bare moment is creative, instantaneous playfulness.

Emerging from the [in-between state], we re-enter the flow of life...  A new kind of openness becomes available to us.  We have lost our delusions of our contrived self image and a secure and solid state of reality and value the pause of the [in-between] as it makes apparent the Silence that underlies everything - that makes all sounds more vivid, and clarifies the end that we will now be beginning...

Pema Khandro Rinpoche
Excerpt from - "Breaking Open in the Bardo"
article in Lion's Roar

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(color digitally inverted)

 

True Silence - Fred LaMotte

...Silence is the fountain of creative wisdom,
not suppression of thought.  Silence is the wellspring of
cosmic energy, not the negation of our work.  Real Silence
cannot be created by thinking of it, only by dissolving the mind
into astonishment.  True Silence is the boundless ever-expanding
heart of the matter, enfolded in an inviolable flame of bliss.

Silence transcends the world that echoes out of it, and the world
cannot go back and possess it.  Though all good thoughts flow
from its depths, Silence transcends thought.  And thought cannot
go back and think it.

The bridge to Silence is grace, the grace of one already steeped
and drowned in Silence.....one whose body vibrates with Silence,
every atom saturated with uncreated bliss.

[.....]

Is not everything on earth the dance, the theater, the dirge, the hymn,
of  Divine Silence...

Fred LaMotte
Excerpt from Hymn to Silence
Uradiance

~

Photo from a calendar

 

The Rhythm of Rest...

I flow on the swells of the Great Sea.
Out beyond the thought stream,
in the deep calm of the Stillness
rising and falling in the endless, subtle
rhythmic movement beyond time;
a Stillness that ebbs and flows naturally.

Here is the gateway to deep Rest,
an attunement with the deep inner Silence,
where everything falls into
the Rhythm of Rest.

I allow myself to be taken by
"The Rhythm",
suspended in the mystical breath of the Cosmos,
the Silence of pre-existence.

Its Stillness holds me, sustains and supports me -
Is deeply Me...

And I realize everything is suspended in this
Essential Rhythm of Life.
 In some mysterious way,
We breathe, and are breathed by
"The Rhythm."

Immersing myself in "The Rhythm"
I deeply Rest
in harmony with the Universe...

Ommmmm...

Mystic Meandering
March 2022

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

 

The Golden Silence...

 The Deep Silence calls to her
in the waking moments;
the "remedy" for all that
disturbs, contracts and constricts,
that blinds her from the Way...

It whispers to her:

Loosen the robes of religion you have worn -
that bound you.

Untie the shoes of "spirituality" -
that don't fit now.
Lay down all the "apparel" - the outer garments -
that have burdened you.

Dare to be naked...

Laying in the early morning silence,
she brings her tattered self to the deeper

dimension of Golden Silence within;
careful not to get lost in the shadowy caverns
 of the unconscious along the way...

In the space of Deep Silence she hears:

Just be still and wait...

Observe the metamorphosis
that is taking place inside you
through
your internal "wranglings"
and your unbearable struggle to be free;
like a butterfly trying to break through
its hard chrysalis - wanting to fly...

Be patient - no resistance to what is...

It will all be okay - is okay...

Cross the threshold of your troubled mind
and step into the still waters of the Golden Silence within,
your Primordial Home...

Rest there...

Unscathed...

Mystic Meandering

May 31, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Perfect Pulsing Silence...

 Perfect Pulsing Silence...

Utter Stillness...

Breath-giving Life...

This is what I come to sit for;
to sit in utter and complete Silence of Being -
the pulse of Life;
to feel and sense "The Silence;"
to feel its Aliveness,
to hear Its Song...

Sitting in the silence of not-knowing
puts one in a place of really listening,
with no agenda or expectation,

leaving the space open for "The Silence" to speak,
to calm the mind and
sing Its Song to the Heart...

I listen deeply for the Song of Silence...

A breeze touches my arm gently from the window
inviting me to be more acutely aware...

I gaze inward
to "The Silence" within
that is mirrored
in the silence of the night.
It's all the same Silence that infuses everything...

The Rhythm of Silence begins ~

I sit back in my chair
listening to the pulsing Silence
within and without,
feeling Its familiar Rhythm,
feeling the dance of intimacy begin again...

Nothing disturbs It,
Nothing disturbs the depth of It,
Nothing prevents Its Song
from being sung ~

In this intimate Silence I am reminded that
everything occurs within "The Silence";
all life, all breath, all death, all movement

occurs within this vast space of Silent Awareness
that we are...

In "The Silence" of Awareness
I know everything is living according to Its
natural order - is following Its natural order,
including this life I call mine...

All life is being lived
by the hush of "The Mystery"...

All is the pulse of the Great Silence ~

The pulse of Life ~

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
May 2011

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Wrapped in Silence - Rumi

 Last night,
I begged the Wise One to tell me
the secret of the world.

Gently, gently, he whispered -
"Be quiet,
the secret cannot be spoken
it is wrapped in Silence."

All is known in the Sacred Silence

Rumi

Original title: "Last Night"

from the collection
Whispers of the Beloved
translated by Maryam Mafi & Azima Melita Kolin

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

May Peace Prevail Within Our Hearts!

True Silence - Dorothy Hunt

Silence is a deep, interior Presence that actually
has nothing to do with whether there is noise or
quiet in the environment or in the mind.  What is
revealed in Silence is your Being, your Presence,
your awake and intimate Awareness...in its deepest
dimension.  This Silence is what we are, what life is,
what moves the Universe and simultaneously is its
Source.

The deeper the Silence, the greater is the felt sense
of the Mystery that sees beyond all thoughts, images,
and acquired knowledge.  We become aware of a
deeper dimension of our Being that is very quiet,
very still, completely open, very natural...

Psychologically minded folks may wonder if soaking
in Silence is a way of bypassing what needs to be
seen or felt or understood.  In the true Silence of
our awake nature, nothing is avoided, nothing denied,
nothing attached.  Rather than numbing us to experience,
this Silence lovingly invites everything that has been
hidden or denied to come out of the shadows into
the light.  True Silence opens us to the truth of the 
present moment.

One does not have to effort to find this Silence and Stillness.
It is not something we create.  It is felt the moment we
relax and become receptive, the moment we stop trying
to move toward or away from anything.

Dorothy Hunt
Buddhist Teacher
from - Leaves from Moon Mountain

Thank you to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Silence Creates Space - Rollheiser & Jung

There's a language beyond words.
Silence creates the space for it.
Sometimes when we feel powerless to speak words
that are meaningful, when we have to back off into
unknowing and helplessness, but remain in the
situation, silence creates the space that's needed
for a deeper happening to occur.

Ron Rollheiser
from - The Healing Place of Silence

~

Silence is for me a fount of healing
which makes my life worth living.
Talking is often a torment for me,
and I need many days of silence
to recover from the futility of words.

C.G. Jung

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Solitude - Zat Rana

"All of man's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly
in a room alone..."

Blaise Pascal

According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread
the boredom and instead choose aimless distractions, and we can't
help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false
comforts of the mind.

We never learned the art of solitude.  And now we live in a world
where we're connected to everything except ourselves.  Everything
 that has done so much to connect us has simultaneously isolated us.
We are so busy being distracted that we are forgetting to tend to
ourselves, which is consequently making us feel more and more
alone...

Never being alone is not the same as never feeling alone.  The less
comfortable you are with solitude, the more likely it is that you
won't know yourself.  And then, you'll spend even more time
avoiding it to focus elsewhere.  In the process, you'll become
addicted to the same technologies that were meant to set you free.
Just because we can use the noise of the world to block out the
discomfort of dealing with ourselves doesn't mean that this
discomfort goes away.

Almost everybody thinks of themselves as self-aware.  They
think they know how they feel and what they want and what
their problems are.  But the truth is that very few people really
do.  And those that do will be the first to tell you how fickle
self-awareness is and how much alone time it takes to get
there.  In today's world, people can go their whole lives
without truly digging beyond the surface level masks they
wear...[How interesting that we are required to wear masks
these days.] We are increasingly out of touch with who we are...
[Maybe this is why so many are having a hard time with
the "stay-at-home" orders - feeling confined, like their freedom
 has been taken away - acting out].

Almost anything that controls our life in an unhealthy way
finds its roots in our realization that we dread the nothingness
of nothing.  We can't imagine just being rather than doing.  We have an instinctive aversion to simply being.   And there-
fore, we look for entertainment, we seek company, and if
 those fail, we chase every higher highs.

We ignore the fact that never facing the nothingness is the same
as never facing ourselves.  And never facing ourselves is why
we feel lonely and anxious in spite of being intimately connected
to everything around us.

Fortunately, there is a solution.....  When you surround yourself
with moments of solitude and stillness, you become intimately
familiar with your environment in a way that forced stimulation
doesn't allow. [Forced socialization]  The world becomes richer,
the layers start to peel back, and you see things for what they
 really are, in all their wholeness, in all their contradictions,
 and in all their unfamiliarity.

You realize there are other things you are capable of paying
attention to than just what makes the most noise on the
surface.  [Solitude] allows you to discover the novelty in things
you didn't know were novel; it's like being an unconditioned
child seeing the world for the first time.  It also resolves the
majority of internal conflicts.

Without realizing the value of solitude, we are overlooking the
fact that, once the fear of boredom is faced, it can actually
provide its own stimulation.  And the only way to face it is to
make time to just sit... with our thoughts, with our feelings, with
a moment of stillness...

Zat Rana

Excerpt from: "The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You"
an article in Medium.com

[brackets mine]

~

Your solitude will be a support and a home for you,
even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances,
and from it you will find all your paths...

Rainer Maria Rilke

Excerpt from: Letters to a Young Poet #1

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

For Those Who Grieve - Fred LaMotte

"The world is burning.....and I cannot hold it all.  I need some
soothing nectar for my grief!"

Dear one, I mean this from the groundless bottom of my heart:
the grief IS the nectar.  You must drink it all, drown in it,
feel it, not through the insulating concepts of the mind -
which only creates stories about the past and future - but feel
it in every cell of your body as the force of Presence.

Merge with the grief and it will ferment into something that
cannot be described, only tasted as life-giving strength, pouring
out of an infinite well of Unknowing.  That is the true meaning
of Faith. You are not alone.  There is one problem at the root of
many problems.  And when we solve this one Deep Problem, our
life orientation will change so much...  What is the Deep Problem
at the root of all others?

We need more inner Silence.   Living Silence is not passivity,
dullness, or suppression.  It is an ocean of energy and compassion
that flows from the fountain of Unknowing.

The Ordinary is the door.  Grace is the present moment.
The Path is Wonder...

Fred LaMotte

excerpt from his blog post:
For One Who Grieves the Burning World.

on
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

To Meditate or not to Meditate - Amoda Maa

To meditate... or not to meditate?

Is a dedicated mediation practice the only road to
"enlightenment"... or is the direct rout of recognizing
"what is already free" a better way?  Should all effort be
put into achieving a "higher state of consciousness?... or is
it best to simply let go of any effort to do anything at all?

If I discipline myself to meditate, should I sit (preferably
cross-legged) once a day... or is it twice or maybe three times?
And should I watch my breath... or is it my thoughts, or my
sensations?  Maybe I should chant in Sanskrit... or Hindi or
Japanese?  Maybe I should repeat the sacred OM from my heart...
or is my belly a better place?  Maybe I should send loving
thoughts in every out-breath... or visualize golden light from
my third eye?  Maybe I should try to focus on the gaps between
thoughts... or maybe I should just try to stop thinking all together?

And if I make no effort, how do I "awaken"?  Isn't there something
I need to do?  How do I transcend thinking?  How do I shift into an
"awakened state?"  Maybe if I read enough books or listen to enough
spiritual teachers, I will "get it"?

To meditate... or not to meditate?  The question is a conundrum
to the mind that seeks satisfaction.  The mind seeks a definitive
answer, as if this would bring an end to mind's unease.  The
personhood seeks certainty, as if the certainty of "spiritual
progress" would bestow a badge of worthiness or specialness.

But the question of meditation cannot be answered by the mind.
It can only be realized when Silence has become the bedrock of
your life.  This Silence is not about closing the doors, turning off
the phone and lighting candles.  Nor is it to do with trying to get
rid of your thoughts [or your ego, or the notion of I/me]...
or imagining the perfect sanctuary of peace.

This Silence happens when you stop giving attention to the
narratives that wrap themselves around your experience of reality.

This Silence happens when you turn towards tenderness every time
an unwanted feeling enters your inner landscape.  This Silence
happens when you have surrendered all resistance to what is.
This Silence happens when you are no longer the center of your
universe, when you have become without a center and [you realize
that] the whole universe is in you.  Without resistance, there is
no inner conflict, no inner division, no outside and no inside, no
barrier and no boundary.

When you know your true nature as Silence, there is no need to
do meditation... [because] you ARE meditation.  True meditation
is a state of Being.  It is your natural open state, there is nothing to
move away from and nothing to move towards.  You are simply
and irrevocably here.  There is no longer a question... because
in Silence all questions fall away.

So, it is not about whether you meditate or not.  It's about whether
you can fall into the Silence that is always here prior to your
ideas of what meditation is, or what it can give you, or where
it can take you.  Whether you sit in deep stillness or whether you
are doing something in this world, [the requirements of daily living]
 this Silence is always here... it is in you as Being-ness [your inner
Beingness]. Beingness does not need to do meditation... 
It IS meditation...

I am often asked whether I meditate or not... and I sort of shake my
head, unable to give a definitive answer.  Did I used to do meditation?
Yes.  Until meditation swallowed me up and all that was left was
Silence.  Now the whole of life is meditation, without doing a practice,
without trying to get anywhere, without trying to change anything.
Now... I AM meditation.

So perhaps it is wise to ask a different question...  how can I meet
the world [live my daily life] as Silence?  Perhaps the question
will turn the mind around from its horizontal searching into the
verticality of Being that is always here.  And then you discover
what true meditation is...

Amoda Maa

with gratitude to Michel at No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Silence - Author Unknown

Silence vibrating is Creation
Silence flowing is Love
Silence shared is Friendship
Silence seen is Infinity
Silence heard is Adoration
Silence expressed is Beauty
Silence maintained is Strength
Silence omitted is Suffering
Silence allowed is Rest
Silence recorded is Scripture
Silence preserved is our Tradition
Silence given is Initiating
Silence perceived is Knowledge
Silence stabilized [embodied] is Fulfillment
Silence alone is...

[brackets mine]

from - Unself Yourself on You Tube

I tried to find the author of this poem.  One
source says Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  Another
says it was written by a participant in the
Marharishi's teacher training program 1971.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

True Silence - Fred LaMotte

"In meditation, Silence is Mother."

Amma Karunamayi

Let us speak of true Silence.  No, it's not negation.
Not the silence of suppressed speech, which is no
silence at all.  Suppressed speech, or repressed thought,
is a scream.  And the more we repress, the louder our
voiceless keening.

Let us tell of the inmost Silence, omnipresent, effective,
whether we speak or not.  Silence infusing the best words
with their Truth.  Silence is a real mantra, guiding the
mind to the hollow in the seed, through Winter root,
Spring flower, or Autumn leaf.

The Silence of emptiness pervades all forms.  It is the
primordial Silence of God, gushing tears from the spring
of bliss in the womb of creation.  True Silence is the
mother of poetry, the mother of art, the mother of music.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Silence (True Silence) is the Self.
Experiencing True Silence is
Self-Recognition.

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Living "Sabbatically"...

Over the last several years I've lamented about wanting
to carve out a "sabbatical life" - you know, living a monk's
life :) - spending my days in Silence and Solitude, meditating,
continuously aware of the Divine Presence; living life from
the deep Inner Rhythm within; from the Silence of Being;
not *in* silence, necessarily, but living from the deep pool
of Stillness within and not be driven by the requirements
of daily living.

And yet, in reality, I am continually pulled outward into
the requirements of daily living with its ups and downs;
preoccupations with family and relationship, including
helping to care for my mother for 8 1/2 years, until her death
this March;  and then the practical aftermath of settling her
affairs, which still isn't over; many times not meditating at all
due to exhaustion, as well as dealing with my own health.
I am often weary of existence...

But - that's just how life is...  It's like that for a lot of us;
dealing with what we have to deal with...

Sometimes I think I must be delusional to think that it is
possible to live according to the Inner Rhythm, focusing on
the Inner Life.  I am just an ordinary person wanting to know
the Truth of Existence in the waning years of my existence here...

It's not so much that I want to "take" a "sabbatical" *from*

life - well maybe sometimes - :) as I want to find a way to *live*

"sabbatically" - living a quiet life, unencumbered, according to
my own natural rhythms, and the deeper Rhythm within.  I don't
see it as an escape from life, but a call to a way of being in the
world, and yet it eludes me most of the time...

When I ride the waves of this Inner Rhythm in meditative Silence,
I can feel the chaotic surface waves dissipate as I fall into
Sacred Silence - and rest.  At times it is easy to make the distinction
between life as it is and the *idea* of "sabbatical life" - creating a
separation between the two where there is none.  In fact, it is more
one's orientation to life and living that matters - one's relationship
with life as it is - and with "The Ineffable Mystery"...
I'm still working on that balance...

I know that ultimately it's not either/or, but both/and:
living in acceptance of life as it is - surrendering to where Life
wants to flow - reflecting the wholeness of Being that we are,
and living fully from a deep, abiding *awareness* of the Sacred
Silence that perpetually flows through us - and - the awareness
that it's really all "The Mystery" living ItSelf out here anyway...

So I may have romanticized the "sabbatical life", but it still
calls to me.  Silence and Solitude feel like a very deep and
vital need - like breathing.
The Silence is Home.

The "key" seems to be - to be willing to face into the realities
of living life as it is, the requirements of daily living - while
at the same time being deeply *aware* of the deeper Rhythm
within; not having any preconceived ideas of what "sabbatical
life" should look like, but being open to The Flow of the Inner
Life - while learning to ride the waves of daily life as they come.
They are not in opposition to each other, but flow together.

~

Mystics are people who quest for wisdom or for God,
[or for the Truth of Existence, etc.], not in the world of
externals but in the microcosm of their own soul.  There
they allow themselves to be fully present to the experiences
of a deep-felt joy or sorrow, or beauty or suffering, of gain
or loss, so that these opposing poles might in time reconcile
and grow and ripen into a harmonious whole - which wells
up as peace that defies all rational explanation...

Anne Mari Kidder, Editor of
Etty Hillesum: Essential Writings

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Solitude - Thomas Merton

If you seek a heavenly light
I, Solitude, am your professor!

I go before you into emptiness,
Raise strange suns for your new mornings,
Opening the windows
Of your innermost apartment.

When I, loneliness, give my special signal
Follow my Silence, follow where I beckon!
Fear not, little beast, little spirit...
I, Solitude, am angel
And have prayed in your name.

Look at the empty, wealthy night
The pilgrim moon,
I am the appointed hour,
The "now" that cuts
Time like a blade.

I am the unexpected flash
Beyond "yes," beyond "no,"
The forerunner of the Word of God.

Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers.

For I, Solitude, am thine own Self.
I, Nothingness, am thy All.
I, Silence, am thy Amen!

Thomas Merton

via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering