What is Silence?
The type of silence that I practise is not one to make my mind go blank or to create ‘empty’ silence, it is rather the time that I take to look inside in order to come into the awareness of the inner being that I truly am. Deep at the core of every human being there is inherent goodness, love, truth, beauty and dignity. The purpose of the type of silence that I practise is to enable me to realize and re-connect with this core.
If you say to someone, ‘be silent’- well it may be easy for them to stop talking, however, to stop the mind talking is a different question… In fact it may not be until we sit to be silent that we realise how much is going on in our minds and how it is draining us of energy. It can actually be a bit of shock when you see how much energy (thoughts) one’s mind is wasting on things that are useless, mundane, ordinary, negative or weak. Some instruction is invaluable at this point to to overcome being flooded with the realisation of how astray our mind has gone.
When we sit to go into silence usually what happens first is that the superficial thoughts of our day-to-day activities come into our minds.
At this point:
a) Remind yourself that you can be selective about your thoughts; that you can choose your thoughts.
b) Choose to set those of your day to day activities aside for now
c) Say, ‘okay, now I am going to go deeper inside’.
Next, you may find that memories of things that you have suppressed; that you do not allow yourself to remember too often come into your mind.
At this point:
a) Remind yourself that you also have many beautiful memories and that just as we can be selective about our thoughts we can also be selective about our memories.
b) Don’t dwell on these memories of pain -there are lessons to be learnt from them- for now do not linger there…
c) Emerge those other memories of joy and love; those that bring with them feelings that are both beneficial and empowering.
Then, having emerged happy memories and letting their feeling fill us up we can then go even deeper and go into the deepest part of ourselves which is goodness, joy, peace and love.
What are the benefits of practising silence?
The first benefit = to get to know the self more and more. “Of course we know who we are, then…. of course we do not really know. To know the self is a very beautiful experience and a very important one.”
The other main benefit = silence allows me to deepen my relationship with God and this brings me the possibility of truly changing my deep-seated habits and tendencies -developed and acquired over the years- that I know are not so helpful but on my own I have not been able to change.
