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For anyone seeking balance and serenity, inviting silence into
your life is an important practice. The practice of silence helps
you to access your inner stillness, the place from which you renew
spiritual strength and uncover your true self.
Depending on your interpretation, it is also the place from which
you can connect to the spirit, God or the life force that connects
us to everyone and everything. Practicing silence in this day and
age requires a certain amount of commitment.
The fast-paced nature of life today makes moments of silence seem
less and less apparent. Even when opportunities to experience
silence arise, we often choose to fill those spaces with sound or
activity - turning on the radio, making a phone call, reading a
magazine or surfing the Internet. The next time the opportunity to
experience silence arises, notice all the ways you are tempted to
fill that space with the noise of activity, and instead, welcome
silence and stillness into your life.
From there, you will be able to give both your mind and body a break
from the constant chatter, and, with practice, experience peace and
rejuvenation. Try these simple ways to create moments of silence in
your life - and take advantage of the ones that are already there!
Perfect quiet
Much of the practice of silence is finding quiet in the presence of
sound, and then within you. Often, silence is what lies just beneath
the layers of sound. Sometimes those layers are thick, such as when
you're in a crowded mall. At other times, such as on waking or going
to sleep, the sound layers are thin, consisting of ambient noises
from the environment. The ambient noise that surrounds you shouldn't
deter you from the essence of silence, which really resides within
you. In The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra writes,
"Practicing silence means making a commitment to just be." So even
though you may not be able to find perfect silence in this bustling
world, you can experience perfect quiet as a state of mind.
Six ways to practice silence:
1. Day and night
It is a very beneficial practice to begin and end each day in
silence. The most natural times of day to experience silence are
just before getting up in the morning and just before going to bed
at night. In the morning when you wake, don't get out of bed right
away. Instead, lie at rest but awake for 10 to 15 minutes and
experience the silence of the moment. Inevitably you will discover
that silence is really full of sound - the birds chirping, your
heartbeat, your stomach rumbling, the rustle of leaves and the sound
of distant traffic. When you take the opportunity to experience
silence in the morning, you are experiencing your being waking to
itself. You become very aware that you are alive and so is the world
around you.
(next column)
03/05/2009 11:30 AM
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You can also take the opportunity to experience silence at night.
When everything and everyone seems to have turned in for the night,
stop and take in the silence for another 10 to 15 minutes before
going to bed yourself. Not only is this activity both relaxing and
rejuvenating, it is also the ideal segway into meditation.
2. Silent listening
Many meditation exercises begin with the breath, which helps to focus
the mind and center the body. You can just as easily begin a meditation
with a focus on silent listening. Just as meditation helps sift thoughts
until the mind is clear and fluid, a meditation that involves silent
listening enables you to sift through the layers of sound around you
until you reach the silence within.
3. Vow of silence
In your practice of silence, you can also make a commitment to refrain
from speaking for a couple hours a day, a few days or even a whole week!
You might notice that once you stop speaking and begin listening to the
inner and outer silence, your mind is still chattering. It will take
some time for your mind to cease making its own noise. If you persist,
the mind will grow tired of its chatter. Once your thoughts have stopped
spinning and swirling, you will experience profound silence. If this is
something that appeals to you, there are many groups that offer guided
silent retreats lasting anywhere from 3 to 10 days long.
4. Communing with nature
Spending time in nature is a great way to get in touch with the
stillness and quiet that resides within you. Walking or sitting by a
stream, looking out over a grand vista or just quietly resting on a rock
while listening to the silence is one way of connecting with the bliss
and creativity that resides in the natural world, and in you.
5. The long commute
Do you have a long commute or does your drive to work usually involve
sitting in traffic? Instead of plugging in your iPod, turning on the
radio or slipping in a book on CD, allow yourself to sit in silence in
your car while driving. You will still have to pay attention to driving,
but you can take advantage of your car as a cocoon, and enjoy being
protected from the many sounds that surround you. Just by paying
attention to the silence around you, you will undoubtedly arrive at work
more clear-headed and refreshed than you expected!
6. Unplug
Last, but not least, if you want to invite more silence into your life,
it also means freeing yourself from habit-forming gadgets. Two of the
main culprits: television and the cell phone. Music, television, phone
conversations, movies and radio are all things that bring fun and
enjoyment into our lives. Yet once in while, we just need to unplug and
tune in, not to the latest reality show on TV, but to our own reality
show.
The practice of silence is a simple way to check in with
ourselves and with the world around us. Creating moments every day to
reconnect with silence and stillness improves state of mind, boosts
energy, relaxes the body and promotes spiritual wholeness.
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