Silence is not for avoidance

In meditation we are told so often to seek silence - be comfortable with it. This allows you to manage your inner journey. Being silent with yourself is a way to get to know what is going on within. You understand your reactions, emotions, barriers and triggers through this sort of introspective presence. The opportunity to gain such insights is life changing. With this knowledge you can take control of reactions and help to alter habitual patterns. Of course, you must be open to seeing the muck within that is not pretty. But when you get honest with yourself, you know the muck is there, you have been reacting and managing it for years, and doing something different is desired, even if change is challenging. The good news, in meditation you see how change is occurring as reactive patterns will begin to look different and weaker.

Silence gets misunderstood though. It is not meant as a way to hold within things that need external managing. Depression, guilt, grief, being harmed or needing to assert for yourself are all examples. In meditation, we can get to know the realty of these experiences but then address the external needs - is there someone you must talk with; do you need therapy; do you need to change a relationship or leave a toxic one - and so on. Silence in meditation should not be confused with actions that just leave you disempowered or victimized.

Grief Interconnected

There is  no such thing 

as absence of grief

No life is untouched

It is as universal as the universe itself

Just as the sun and moon make themselves

known to every corner

So too grief slinks into every life 

It can sink us into an overwhelming ocean

or treat us with lightly recurring episodes

Like the gull that swoons down upon its prey

So how are we to deal with grief

from the presence on whom I think

I must adore

There is the mother so present within me

Even after she is gone

She lives within my DNA affecting every choice 

every response

I have this grief seeking to be abandoned

But whose own death is impossible

I understand my mother

through this ongoing grief

The web of love and grief present

unresolvable ironies

For which I seem to spend a life

trying to understand and resolve

© Peter Choate, 2016