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

Silence and self

Silence is tough. Take a second and think about the last time you sat in silence for more than a few moments. Most of us avoid silence for any particular length. We need to do something. Thus, when I ask about silence, I ask about the space where there is no noise and no activity. This is true silence - just being. The Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh puts it beautifully:

I have the impression that many of us are afraid of silence. We are always taking in something - text, music,radio, television or thoughts - to occupy the space. If quiet and space are so important for our happiness, why don't we make more room for them i our lives?

Keeping busy is a wonderful way to avoid what is really going on for us emotionally. Of course, keeping very busy is seen as a sign of success. How often have you said or heard something like, "Wow, I've got so much on my plate right now I can't keep up." We reward people who work long hours and rarely find time to take days off. It's a status symbol. Why is that we do not reward taking time to be just with who you are in order to better the relationship with self? Why is it we don't demand that time?

Part of why we might buy into the "busy" is in order to keep the self at bay. Really coming to know ourselves is tough and uncomfortable work. I recall some years ago being taught a therapy approach that required going through the therapy itself. I dove in only so far as I feared what was too far inside. Mightily resist I did. Yet I continue the journey.

When we look inside, what are we prepared to see. Silence gives us the space for the journey. So, we need to give ourselves permission to trespass our inner self to know it.

To look is to consume

To consume is to edit

In each of our gazes

We decide that upon which we will focus

By definition each gaze 

Avoids something else

Each perspective consumed 

Eliminates another view

Each turn of our gaze

Takes us away from another sight

What we see we take to be truth

But we see only with our perspective 

Wee are wilfully blind to things

We do not wish to see

We edit out

That which is painful

Change is in seeing

What we have previously unseen

© Peter Choate, 2016