Silence.

When my spiritual journey started, I was going to some full moon meditation gatherings quite a bit far away from my home. On the way to the events, I would often turn on Om sounds on my headphones and close my eyes in the cab.

I used to have significant experiences during those rides – spirals, darkness, smoke, and a pain in my third eye. I often wondered what to make of them but as I always do, I left it to the universe to lead me to what beckons me. It was in the third or fourth such gathering that a profound image emerged in front of me –

Everything was golden in color – the participants, the apparatus kept on the podium, the singing bowls, the chairs, the particles in the air and we were all connected by golden pipes ear to ear. And I could feel the presence of beings behind my back right outside the window. I could feel supported, loved, and an incredible urge to cry.

Why am I telling you guys all of this when this post is about silence?

Here’s a bit of a back story to that experience. I was working on getting significant answers about my life during that time and one of my guides in the physical world was present there right beside me. She had been working with me on my gender, sexuality and significant esoteric issues that I would rather explain in other posts. We had come out from an incredibly heavy meditation and had been relaxing. I had been feeling a void within me. Like I was devoid of words, or any other form of expression. I remember she repeatedly had been checking on me for about an hour, repeating the same questions – how do I feel? Is there something I needed to ask? Is there something that I still didn’t understand? I felt no gravity for I felt no mass, but I knew it was there for I would not be sitting. It was hard for me to assimilate coherent thoughts. And I had promised another of my guides to be a part of her full moon meditation later that evening. So I stayed at the center and waited, drinking a lot of water, trying to ground myself by working with soil, listening to the sounds of the shallow river flowing beside our place. I was feeling a quiet that I hadn’t felt before. Like another chapter was about to start but I felt no pulse of it, just a silence, a pause that I had waited for all my life. I was 33 then, the masters number.

It’s never about the actual silence, one where you experience no sound. It’s about where and how you experience silence in your heart and in your mind. You could be doing anything, anywhere – you could even be listening to thrash metal music, or anything that is perceived by others as cacophonous – and yet YOU by yourself will feel a strange calmness, relaxation, an ability to centre yourself. That’s silence. Someone may even find it in the random traffic jam or even tractor noises. It’s then that a quiet breath passes your lips and you feel your system slow down, the vision gets clearer, hearing gets more acute, it’s then that you are listening to your heart, it’s then that you are truly tapping into the entropy of the universe. You’ll then start experiencing rather than coming from knowledge or perceptions.

I find such silences in between songs, right before the crescendo kicks in and just after it breaks, after every foot step, I’m learning to instil silence between my breaths but it is HARD. I find it in between the changing direction of the wind, the rise and fall of the waves in the ocean, that sudden silence between grinding machines that are currently giving our lives the background sound. I find it when I break my concentration from TV or any sound source to listen to the wind chimes in my house. I find it between heart beats. Ever noticed how there are troughs between 2 adjacent mountain peaks, Silent Notes.

Not every silence will evoke the same sensation or emotion though. Some of these feelings are rather troubling for they are unwanted at that moment. They will feel like disruptors. Others are pure LOVE. They’ll melt you and you may even feel presence of God. No thoughts, just an empty slate to scribble upon later. But these moments are often only fleeting, and it requires practice to stay in them for longer. Some people feel just staying quiet will give them their silence but I feel they heavily discount the activities in their brain and subconscious.

How does silence help me? I’ve found that it centres me to myself, making me the eye of the storm and never the storm itself, the storm of thoughts that is. I get a chance to witness them from the inside and not having to witness them from the outside like many other practices make you do. This way, I render myself less culpable of the path I’m taking, feel a lot less guilty of the choices I’ve made, am making or the ones I’m going to make. I get a chance to surrender to the universe to evoke whatever is required from everything that pertains to me and take me towards my destiny. I need not know anything but my faith in the knowledge that I am as much a part of the universe as is the universe of me. I feel connected although I do disconnect a lot too but those experiences are for later posts.

Till then, all of your power lies in your capacity to observe and find that spot that makes you feel complete and not a lesser person and learn to stay there for longer, staying positive longer.

Aho!