Silence

The more we drop into the meditative state, the louder the sound.

‘Silent’ is an anagram of the word ‘Listen’. At the other extreme of the spectrum is the
coming together of all colours into white. Analogous with this is white
noise, a meaningless static of unintelligible noise, or the possibility for
clear thought, the white sheet of paper that awaits the word or the image
carrying a new vision. White noise….When you pick it up it has within it a whole range of frequencies. It is not a single frequency like a bell. It has thousands of frequencies within it. It varies and changes constantly both in pitch and volume. It is far from static. Step into a silent space and you will hear it. And of course, just like the breath, it is always with us. So like the breath, we can use it to anchor ourselves when life is kicking off. The more you practise with it, the more apparent it will be.

When we go in to the sound of silence it can teach us many things. Firstly, notice if you have a resistance to it. Maybe you are focussing on other sounds that are more usual. You hear them because, like the objects in the room, they demand your attention. But just as we can start to notice the space in the room, we can move our attention away from the more obvious sounds and listen to the constant sound behind them

Letting go of self. For those of you new to meditation this is probably the most difficult concept to get your mind around and to be honest it’s probably best to let this arise naturally. After all, we want to experience this, not think about it in an academic way. By letting go of self, we learn to connect more deeply with the world around us. As we connect more deeply, we let go of self more and more. So the sound of silence is an incredible way to explore this. In order to hear it, we seem to have to really connect with space. With the world outside of us. But because we don’t “hear” it in the traditional sense, it is more our mind that is connecting with the space around us rather than our traditional senses. So you really get a feeling of softening the boundary between self and the world. The more that boundary softens, the more we hear the sound.