Silence
“You should get some rest,” I have found is a really funny statement. Whomever is receiving it is often past the point of rest being the only antidote needed. When we are generally in balance, we know to say, “Oops, time to get some rest.”
When we are out of balance, we say, “I have to keep going.”
Here comes disclaimer: Sometimes we go through periods where we have to keep going, I get it. Believe me, I get it.
Anyway, Saturday someone said to me: “Get some rest!” cheerily. And I had planned to, but when I got home that morning something else happened. Without precognition, I looked at my phone and turned it off. I placed it on the table face down and walked away. I sat down at my computer to work and I drafted an email to the necessary humans that read:
“My phone is off and will be all day. Here is the landline. Please only email me for emergencies, I will reconnect tomorrow.”
I shut down that constant pulse of information. I closed off the pull of my attention. I went on to have a deeply productive and inspired day, easily creating the first waves of content for my class. I got tired and I went to sleep, around 8:30 pm (if you are new here I am a single mama of a healthy and fast moving four-and-a-half year old boy) and I woke just after the sun. I sat into the morning and reached into a spaciousness I hadn’t felt in a long time. I felt into the silence.
My phone remained off. I had a stirring inspiration for our last week of audio meditations. I worked on manuscript work; I attended a Zoom call with my family of healing work practitioners. I completed a writing piece and I looked around at the silence. (Granted I had an unusual offer of 48 hours without my son). But I was not hurried or rushed, and I was not tired. I was in that flowstate of being fed by what you love.
I ate a lot but exceptionally light, and I noticed I was eating mainly green and fruit. Meaning, I was gravitating towards green: olives, avocados, lettuce, kale, seaweed. Plus cherries and watermelon A lot of watermelon You know what I saw? Liver support. Clearing out the filter, letting go.
I sat inside myself and notice the ample amount of clarity and silence. I also noticed that as soon as I turned my phone on later that day, even though it sat facedown on the same table, I was compulsively checking it. I was noticing it. Then I was looking for it.
Right now, the phone and I are in a bit of standoff. Because I had thought, I was just overwhelmed. Or overworked. Or wasn’t making the right dietary choices or maybe I had gut issues. All possibly true, but with 10 hours of sleep and no phone interaction my body-mind self was dramatically more intact, more clear than I would have imagined.
What exactly are we trading off to our phones? Exactly how much of our energy is being siphoned? To which we then willingly, and subconsciously, assume the blame and the burden, doubling the weight.
I wonder it we appreciate the profound healing sound of silence.
I see the connection too, perhaps more readily since teaching others about the precious necessity of cultivating inner silence. FYI The Everyday Meditation method opens June 21, 2022.
It’s summer-ish now and that expands, whereas winter contracts. I notice the pulse of the source and the blooming of flowers and growing of gardens. I love the frivolity of summer, and I am sitting with the need to have boundaried silence. Boundaried space. Place a more curious filter upon my technology —and I am not even one who has a lot of apps on my phone or understands the outreaches it can do. I don’t want to. I won’t even use the voice function. I won’t give my voice over to it. Call me crazy, but that has been my boundary and now I am wondering where I have already given too much.
I think we are on a precipice. Each precipice has the reward of gorgeous view, and the hazard of a treacherous fall. Silence activates and communicates on the subtle realms. Speaks intuition. Places your foot on the more solid rock, or helps you duck before you know a brach is falling. Silence is a precious nutrient for being human.
This reminded me of an episode from On Being I heard years ago but apparently I am not the only one who thought to revisit it. Check it out here. Gordon Hempton, acoustic ecologist, talks about the disappearance of silence. Hempton says, “Silence is an endangered species on the verge of extinction.”
So I again I ask, what are we trading for the constant flow of known information? Because dynamic and inner realm work is catapulted when we press up against the unknown or the silent beat of everything existing harmonically.
Be well and thanks for taking the time to read,
Kate