Len’s second post to me tonight is closely related. Have you noticed that the quieter we get, the less stressed we are?
Surely the fact that we attend meditation workshops to quiet ourselves should provide us with a clue about stress and about who we are.
If stillness and quiet relieve us of stress and stress destroys our awareness, then surely who we really are is related to that stillness and quiet, would you not say?
Imagine if we did meditation workshops so that we could become more hyped than we are. If we did, would you not say that who we are is hype? But, no, we do more meditation workshops so that we can settle down, become still, become quiet.
In other words, the universally-recommended ways to realize our true identity point us in the direction of stillness and quiet. Why would they do so, and be accepted as useful disciplines, unless stillness and quiet are who we are?
I have become more quiet in the last few days and I feel better, more joy is released, life is better. Surely this is a road sign pointing the way to wellbeing. And surely it says that who we are at essence is stillness and quiet.
Essential Silence
by Vicki Woodyard
https://www.vickiwoodyard.com/
There is an essential silence that continually blesses us all. I feel it as I type words into the void. It unreels like an old movie, the kind where no voice was able to be heard. It breathes life into the words of this world. It animates everything. Trees know it and rocks absorb and emit it. Stars beam it down to us in the form of light.
How blessed we are to be that silence and to share it freely. We do that because it is effortless. A strained silence is noisy whereas essential silence is a benediction on this weary world.
The silence seeps in around the cracks of suffering. Like light, it is who we are. As love, it transforms ugliness into grace and grace into miracle. I tend a piece of this silence. I am farming it so that flowers grow tall and the soul’s lushness is revealed petal by petal, word by word.
Silence is the essence of us all. The void from which we spring peppers the world with hallelujahs. It softens the suffering soul and revives the desert landscape. It also shows us the beauty of the desert and the dark valleys of loss. Lest I become overwrought, I shall stop on a dime’s worth of words so you can feel like a millionaire within it all.
Vicki Woodyard
https://www.vickiwoodyard.com