It has been 2 1/2 years since I began this project, and I have not made any more blog posts. Even I, over-achiever extraordinaire, must confess that all the plans for weekly 5 hour sessions were too ambitious!
But I have made progress behind the scenes. Silence is an ongoing interest, and it has grown into something like a value or an ethic. This is particularly ironic because I am often chatting, whistling, playing guitar and singing. Generally I am a noisemaker-so it is curious to me why I am so drawn to silence. Save that for another post.
I attended a yin yoga class this week that was conducted in silence. After a short introduction, the teacher stopped giving verbal postural cues. Instead she asked us to look to her when she rang the bell. Each pose was held for five minutes and then the bells would ring and I would need to open my eyes to look at the teacher's pose. At first this was disrupting my meditative flow because I couldn't keep my eyes closed as I normally would.
But at some point I had a major personal insight spring forth like a frog leaping into a pond. I was laying in reclined cobblers pose, stretching my hips and inner thighs, when I suddenly realized the significance of a dream that was puzzling me a few days before. It came to me in a flash, a complete and ancient knowledge. Once I understood the meaning of the dream, I began to cry. I wept silently in that class, tears streaming into my ears, allowing negative feelings to wash over me while I bravely held the pose. I was reminded of that wonderful poem The Guest House by Rumi and I gave myself attention and support, just allowing whatever this mysterious feeling was to happen. At the end I was spent and cleansed.
This deep and incredible experience perhaps only happened because that teacher was brave enough to take the intervening medium of language away from the kinaesthetic experience. It took me out the mind I live in everyday, and introduced another sort of mind.
I am also coming to believe that silence can help connect to other people as well. In relationships, it slows processes, creating a liminal place where relationships can unfold. It allows for a sense of "holding space", where a person can be compassionate and fully present to others, aware of what is happening on multiple levels: physical, emotional, energetic, and intellectual. It is where wonder and creativity can surface. It is also the space where we can sit in what Jon Kabat Zinn called the "full catastrophe" of living, the full meaning and feeling of it, regardless of what is judged to be good or bad.
There are places and relationships where I can naturally slip into this role of making space, and those friends that I can sit with in comfortable silence, enjoying our togetherness. I feel nurtured, calm and energized around these friends, where we have given one another a kind of permission to be vulnerable.
But in most of my life and with most people I am terrible at "holding space". I often jump in when they have shared, to try and fix their problems or I get overly involved in their lives. I feel so focussed on them that I forget myself, and I just react to the emotions rising in me. I chatter away to keep them entertained and to actually prevent this sort of nurturing silence. All this has the effect of what my husband calls "steamrolling" another person: rather than meeting them where they are steamrolling takes over their experience of it and crushes their reality underfoot. Ironically it is my attempt to connect with others that drives me to jump in and try and fix their problems, yet it drives them away.
Remembering silence can help me with this problem. It is a social skill to maintain inner calm while acknowledging one's own emotions, and it is something I can learn. I can maintain appropriate boundaries to be open with others emotions and experiences, not need to change anything. The goal would be to maintain a sort of Buddhist mind within the relationship, rather than just saving it for meditation.
While a rising swell of emotion normally corresponds with a verbal act of interjecting, in this new mindset I would be able to hold my tongue, hold my thoughts, make my body a container for all that energy without using my mouth as a steam-valve.
Silence helps us reconnect to nature. Krista Tippett's wonderful interview with Gordon Hempton explores the idea of silence as an endangered space in the world and what this means for us as a species. Silent spaces are disappearing at an alarming rate and Mr. Hempton is recording them in their auditory glory. His interview explores the world as an "Solar-Powered Jukebox", one that spontaneously creates symphonies of melodious sounds, from brilliant bird songs to windy rustlings, to ecstatic sunrises. By listening openly we learn to pay attention, and this paying attention is the very state of being that brings meaning into our lives. Krista Tippet's On Being also interviewed the great cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who talks about the silence in between the notes is what makes the music, not the notes themselves. I didn't understand this concept until he described it so eloquently.
But I have made progress behind the scenes. Silence is an ongoing interest, and it has grown into something like a value or an ethic. This is particularly ironic because I am often chatting, whistling, playing guitar and singing. Generally I am a noisemaker-so it is curious to me why I am so drawn to silence. Save that for another post.
I attended a yin yoga class this week that was conducted in silence. After a short introduction, the teacher stopped giving verbal postural cues. Instead she asked us to look to her when she rang the bell. Each pose was held for five minutes and then the bells would ring and I would need to open my eyes to look at the teacher's pose. At first this was disrupting my meditative flow because I couldn't keep my eyes closed as I normally would.
But at some point I had a major personal insight spring forth like a frog leaping into a pond. I was laying in reclined cobblers pose, stretching my hips and inner thighs, when I suddenly realized the significance of a dream that was puzzling me a few days before. It came to me in a flash, a complete and ancient knowledge. Once I understood the meaning of the dream, I began to cry. I wept silently in that class, tears streaming into my ears, allowing negative feelings to wash over me while I bravely held the pose. I was reminded of that wonderful poem The Guest House by Rumi and I gave myself attention and support, just allowing whatever this mysterious feeling was to happen. At the end I was spent and cleansed.
This deep and incredible experience perhaps only happened because that teacher was brave enough to take the intervening medium of language away from the kinaesthetic experience. It took me out the mind I live in everyday, and introduced another sort of mind.
Silence as a skill and space for connection
I am coming to understand that silence can make us feel whole by connecting us to parts of ourselves we may be unwittingly trying to ignore, as it did for me in that yoga class. Maybe silence is the auditory equivalent of space, where we can swing our arms around and not worry to hit someone else, or not have to put on any appearances.We can take a really deep breath and not need to suck in our gut. It gives us time and space to tune into ourselves.I am also coming to believe that silence can help connect to other people as well. In relationships, it slows processes, creating a liminal place where relationships can unfold. It allows for a sense of "holding space", where a person can be compassionate and fully present to others, aware of what is happening on multiple levels: physical, emotional, energetic, and intellectual. It is where wonder and creativity can surface. It is also the space where we can sit in what Jon Kabat Zinn called the "full catastrophe" of living, the full meaning and feeling of it, regardless of what is judged to be good or bad.
There are places and relationships where I can naturally slip into this role of making space, and those friends that I can sit with in comfortable silence, enjoying our togetherness. I feel nurtured, calm and energized around these friends, where we have given one another a kind of permission to be vulnerable.
But in most of my life and with most people I am terrible at "holding space". I often jump in when they have shared, to try and fix their problems or I get overly involved in their lives. I feel so focussed on them that I forget myself, and I just react to the emotions rising in me. I chatter away to keep them entertained and to actually prevent this sort of nurturing silence. All this has the effect of what my husband calls "steamrolling" another person: rather than meeting them where they are steamrolling takes over their experience of it and crushes their reality underfoot. Ironically it is my attempt to connect with others that drives me to jump in and try and fix their problems, yet it drives them away.
Remembering silence can help me with this problem. It is a social skill to maintain inner calm while acknowledging one's own emotions, and it is something I can learn. I can maintain appropriate boundaries to be open with others emotions and experiences, not need to change anything. The goal would be to maintain a sort of Buddhist mind within the relationship, rather than just saving it for meditation.
While a rising swell of emotion normally corresponds with a verbal act of interjecting, in this new mindset I would be able to hold my tongue, hold my thoughts, make my body a container for all that energy without using my mouth as a steam-valve.
Silence helps us reconnect to nature. Krista Tippett's wonderful interview with Gordon Hempton explores the idea of silence as an endangered space in the world and what this means for us as a species. Silent spaces are disappearing at an alarming rate and Mr. Hempton is recording them in their auditory glory. His interview explores the world as an "Solar-Powered Jukebox", one that spontaneously creates symphonies of melodious sounds, from brilliant bird songs to windy rustlings, to ecstatic sunrises. By listening openly we learn to pay attention, and this paying attention is the very state of being that brings meaning into our lives. Krista Tippet's On Being also interviewed the great cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who talks about the silence in between the notes is what makes the music, not the notes themselves. I didn't understand this concept until he described it so eloquently.
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