Before, between, behind, above and underneath the formation of every thought is silence. Without silence, no thought, no vibration, no form could come to be. Without silence, thought would not be possible at all.
“Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Silence is not a dense nothingness, It’s not an absence of thought. Silence is the subtle soil out of which every sound, each subtle vibration arises, takes unique form, and into which it rests.
Silence has quality. From the denser silence of resistance through to the thinner silences of non-verbal atmospheres, it is a language in itself. Silence speaks a language beneath the time-based polarities of the thinking mind.
In silence, there are no borders, just gradations, slopes, rifts and valleys. In silence there is inherently no disconnection. Silence is invitation to unity, which is why we can so often feel ashamed when silence is here between us.
What is this shameful silence? Is it the shame that is unclothed when the borders between the private inside and the public outside are touched? Is it the pain of exposure of a layer of resistance to being here as one, together in peace? Can this shame of silence teach us where we are not free to be? Is shame not also silent? Where does the silence of shame end and the silence of love begin? Who could say where the silence deep inside ourselves is separate from the silence out there, which we can hear with our ears? Where does private silence end and and melt into the boundless, natural, universal silence?
Silence is the language of our sentient universe.
When we listen to the silence of another, we listen at a layer deeper than their words. We can hear the anger behind the obligation of kindness. We can hear the language of personal survival speaking through words that pretend togetherness. In the silence we can sense the fear underlying the most enraged diatribe, or the insecurity beneath the empowered dictation of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.
“Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. “
Franz Kafka
Listening to the silence is not surrender, Listening to the silence brings us simultaneously to the causal layers of the energy playing out in symptomatic sentences expressed by us, to us, around us. Silence needs no translator as she speaks. Words are optional.
Many of us are formed by a silence that has been used as a weapon to try and annihilate our souls.
We are the children that should be seen and not heard when our father speaks. The babies that impoverished their families and bothered them with questions.
We are the women that when they expressed themselves were castigated, imprisoned, humiliated and condemned.
We are the minorities who should not attract attention, and be silent to survive. We are the injured ones, who learned that lack of silence means death and that silence is death.
How did we learn to believe that the right to silence belongs only to the powerful few? Who gave them the authority to order silence, to break it, make it and impregnate it with lies?
Stay silent. Don’t say anything. Conceal your thoughts. Conceal your face, for it also speaks. Conceal your eyes because expression is also an outrage to a national order where you have no right to belong. Bow your head. Lower. Lower your head and be still. Be silent. Surrender. Wait for the blow to come.
One tragedy of the dynamics of power and abuse that have left their footprints on our personalities is that the magnificent resource of silence has been barred from our perception. Where might is right, because it can beat you up, exclude you and rob your body of air, there we find that silence, or silencing is used as a weapon. And the experience of silence gets encoded as punishment.
It’s time to reclaim the silence. The deeper we move into the free-fall through silence, the more natural our expression can become. The more we allow silence, the more precise and refined our expression. As we fall through the veils of silence, the listener opens up and we might realize that we were never alone, but always heard.
The more we reclaim the inner and outer home of silence, with its qualities of reflexive care, peace and indestructibility, the more our voice deepens to express these qualities into the world. And we must express these qualities into the world.
Be silent. Not as a punishment. Not as a retreat. Not as an obligation.
Be silence in freedom, out of which every form of expression can emerge through our body, cells, voice and through the melodies of the soul. Be silence in deepest, living peace. Be silence beyond and through all forms that get born and die.
Be silence in freedom, that an unfettered prayer of universal care might rise with the resonance of the truest voice alive, sung by the goddess for the creator, in his ear, so that he might know himself again.
