The Great Silence is forever present. We have only to notice it. Many say that words obstruct the silence. However, words are much like birds flying through the sky. They have no impact on the backdrop. As silence, we are much like the sky and appreciate a multitude of objects: the thought "I" and all of its other thoughts, the body, emotions, mental images, senses, energies, the breath, the stars, the moon ... the entire universe of experience. Experience simply flows through like a river without leaving a single footprint on the radiant field of silence.
When we mentally fixate or identify with a word, attention immediately narrows. Suddenly, we are no longer conscious of the silence. It is remarkable that we are an unfathomable sound of silence that vibrates the entire universe and yet we habitually narrow and fixate on one tiny word.
The word is not problematic, but our fixation is an obstruction. The obstruction does not mean that the stillness is no longer here. We just cannot be conscious of its presence and get caught up in form. In the end, silence speaks louder than word.
The invitation is to be true to the vast openness that we genuinely are, while everything temporal dances through. After all, words are only pointers toward that which they represent. When I write the word "rose" perhaps it invokes a corresponding mental image. That image is based on past experience. If you read the word "rose" and you had never seen one, no mental image appears. The appearance or disappearance of the mental image is just as meaningless as whether an image is beautiful or ugly. It has no impact on the radiant silence that you are. Image after image appears and then fades away.
During awakening, some have great uncertainty, when the ego's life situation is falling away. However, every dream fades. The content of this instant is different from the content of the next. Each present moment is new and fresh. In fact, the only thing that is certain is change. While the mind might call it falling apart, the truth of the matter, it is renewal. The pain and suffering comes when we try to hold on and resist the fading. If a butterfly held on to its comfy cocoon, it would never fly free and complete its transformation.
Just as the so called ego falls away, the same is true for the collective ego and all of its systems, structures, beliefs and assumptions. If we look at this from the individual ego's viewpoint of collapse, it strikes fear. Noticing it as silence, it has the infinite potential of total rebirth.
As we become more conscious of the silence that surrounds us, we notice an ever expanding silence within. One fine day, this stillness breaks away from form and even the loudest noise cannot touch or disturb it. We realize that this indestructible, rock-like silence is who we are. It is permanent and free of change.
Experience then becomes mystical in nature. Everything appears as Bliss. Out of blissful silence, a bird chirps, the clock tics, the breath expands and collapses, a slight smell of jasmine in the air ... and then fades away.
As Heart Friends, we are pretty much scattered around the globe as far as bodies go; from California to Finland, from Manitoba to South Africa, from an island in the middle of the Pacific to Australia, and most of everything in between.
However, as Rumi so poetically wrote: "Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a Field. I'll meet you there."
That Sacred Field is the Great Silence and its power is an enormous playground of peace. Each moment that you notice a kiss of stillness, we are whispering the language of Love, without even a heartbeat of separation. In this newly found world, the finite is a pool of infinite, blissful possibility. I'll meet you there.
Katie Davis Website, Author, Awake Joy www.KatieDavis.org
