I said the prayers at the ANZAC Day dawn service in my local town this morning and the occasion was deeply moving. Whatever one thinks about this public holiday with all its nationalistic overtones and how it can be co-opted for the glorification of war, it was still a remembrance with meaning and sombre feeling. One phrase stood out for me - ‘securing our freedom’. It is such an interesting phrase. Almost an oxymoron. How can freedom be secured by an act of securing? Yet it is about doing something, often something difficult, that protects something or someone we hold dear. Freedom is something to be cherished and I am grateful for all those people before me who have sacrificed so much to secure it. There are layers and layers to freedom. There is physical freedom, political freedom, social freedom, freedom of thought, the freedom of conscience and the freedom of expression to name just a few. Then there is the freedom that we humans can gift each other each moment. You see, I think we bind each other in the narratives we create about the world and the person to whom we are relating. We hold stories in our head about the people around us. He or she is this or that. He or she must think this or be effected by that. We weave threads of assumptions, interpretations and criticisms around our friends and family, around our neighbours, around our colleagues and leaders. Sometimes our weaving is so tight, so secure, that the person disappears under all the colour and texture we lay around and on them. It is of course impossible to ever know or see someone clearly in all their wonder and beauty. In the end reality is interpretation. Everything is filtered through our limited human capacities to truly see and hear. Of all the possible sounds and colour in the universe we see and hear only a small spectrum. Beyond our basic animal abilities we can only measure that which for which we have invented the instruments. Each human being is a glorious mystery whose facets and depths are beyond our limited understanding and sight. However, at the very least, we can stop the noise of the stories we tell ourselves about each other. In the practise of silence the threads can unravel and we can behold the mystery of each other. Maggie Ross (whom, if you have been reading any of my other blogs, is a key source for my musings) says that the work of silence restores our true humanity for it restores our subjectivity and the subjectivity of those to whom we relate. Through silence we let go of the noise, the self-conscious critical, analytical narrative that turns the world and others into an object. As we dwell more fully in silence we begin to open up the channels between our heart, our deep mind as Ross calls it, and our self-conscious mind. With heart and mind working in harmony, more fully as one, our perspective is changed. The other becomes not an object to codify, to box, to safely assume we have understood, but a holy other to behold and hold in loving wonder. As we engage with the work of silence more and more, quietening down our interesting but no doubt faulty stories about each other, we find that freedom is much more than the freedom to think or say or do something. Freedom is won when we let go, when we sacrifice that which we hold dear - all the layers of story and meaning we tell ourselves and have been told - and simply meet the other, listening to their deep truth, listening to their beauty, their wonder. “He calmed the storm to a silence: and the waves of the sea were stilled Then they were glad because they were quiet: and he brought them to the heaven they longed for” (Psalm 107.29-30) Peace & Love Rebecca _____________________________________________ “The term work (of silence) may be slightly misleading for the only effort involved is to choose to be still, to allow the noise to fall away, to be receptive and to ungrasp so that we may be grasped by illumination” (Ross, M. Silence: A Users Guide. 2014 p23)
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“To be truly silent before God is one of the loveliest things in the world” Evelyn Underhill Lovely = synonyms: beautiful, charming, agreeable, captivating, delightful, alluring Who would have thought that a simple thing like silence is so very precious, so very beautiful. It is of course more than lovely. Some of the greatest writers on prayer and devotion and life itself say it is essential. To be truly silent is a skill that is possible for anyone to learn and practice. It is free. It is simple. It does not need gurus or teachers or degrees or athletic ability. All it takes is surrender, the ability to let go and ungrasp. As a monk once told me, “let all melt way before God’s love like snow melts away before the sun”. To be truly silent opens us to the warmth of Divine Love’s presence and in that place we discover our true home. To be untruly silent is to be in struggle. Untrue silence is a mechanical silence, a forced silence. It arises from a violent suppression of our inner turmoil. Untrue silence is denial and oppression of our humanity. Untrue silence tells us there is a right way to pray, a right way to sit, a right way to feel, a right way to think or not think. We twist and turn ourselves into a misshapen shape that cannot hear and thence cannot respond. It is not silence at all but yet more noise that creates more noise. However, if we can surrender and let go we encounter deep peace and the ground of our being. The noise, the thoughts and worries of our mind, the external sounds of life around us, will still be there. Silence is not necessarily the absence of noise. Silence is the place beyond the noise where everything is held in the depths of a loving gaze. Thoughts may come and thoughts may go. Sounds may come and sounds may go. Silence is the realm in which they all dance. When we let go and surrender, as in not identify with any of the thoughts and sounds, we find we are one with silence. Silence that is both empty and full. Silence is lovely. The practice of silence is simple. It is also challenging. Maggie Ross says it is a challenge for four reasons. What follows is my take on her four points. (Please check out her book, Silence: A Users Guide. Darton, Longman & Todd 2014. I am expanding on part of page 32) It is so simple we dismiss it…. We live in a culture that believes that if something is worthwhile it should take effort and striving. The more complex and difficult something is the more we think it worth our energy. We are enthralled by people of skill and ability who have put in hours and years of effort and striving. In comparison silence is effortless. The only effort needed is the willingness to let go. It requires perseverance…. Like any knowledge or understanding the loveliness of silence is only discovered in the practice. Perhaps more than any other epistemology silence is truly all in the practice. Like any commitment to any practice what will stall that commitment is the distraction of other things, other paths, other voices. When we sit to be still and begin our set time of silent prayer other demands (mostly from ourselves) will arise that want our attention. When we sit to be still and begin our set time of silent prayer the chatter in our heads will distract us from our focus. To abide in the land of silence we must persevere through boredom, fear, convoluted thoughts, doubts and outside distractions. Yet the only skill needed to traverse this noise scape is surrender, yet more letting go. Abba Moses word to the brother monk can be a word for us as well. The old man said, "Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything." Persevering through those set times will help us discover we dwell in the fecundity of silence every moment. We find it hard to accept that there is more to our mind than our brain…. Our whole being is our mind. The brain stores and processes bits and pieces of it but our mind is expansive and creative. Our mind is more than our self-consciousness, more than our thoughts, more than our identities, more than our memories and hopes for the future, more than the electrical firing of neurones and the flow of hormones. Beyond all of this is what Ross calls the deep mind. This term is her attempt to find a neutral word to describe the place that encompasses the ‘unconscious’, the ‘nous, and the ‘heart’. The deep-mind can be influenced by the self-conscious mind through intention and focus. Silence is the simple practice that opens up the flow between the two and thereby opens us to the depths of creativity, of continual beholding and of changed perception. The language we find to describe it is always inadequate. I think nothing truer was ever said. It has not escaped my notice that I am writing a blog and making a lot of noise about silence. It is also not escaped my notice that there are many more writers, prayers and contemplatives that could say it better than I. Yet everything we all say and in what ways is only ever an approximation of something that shifts and changes. That is both the beauty and the terror of silence. The only certainty is the expansiveness of silence itself and the creative Love that springs forth from its depths. __________________________________________________ Silence is not just a reality that is reached through meditative practice. It is a land that is always within and without us. It is the same way we are. Existing. Being. It is the nothing from which we come and the note with which we resonate. With love & peace Rebecca Let the soul banish all that disturbs; and let the body that envelops it be still, and all the fretting of the body, and all that surrounds it; let earth and sea and air be still; and heaven itself. And then feel the Spirit streaming, pouring, rushing into you from all sides, while you are quiet in this Peace. ~ Plotinus, AD 205 Hashem - the Name J. Janda Like Gold hidden deep in the earth so dwells Emptiness deep in our souls often unknown often undiscovered sometimes denied yet the Presence the Empty/Fullness is there - Hashem waiting to be found discovered, claimed believed in regardless the cost, the labour The world is a noisy place. I woke early this morning to find some space and time to be alone and in quiet. Instead of silence my next door neighbour was up early cleaning the garage and playing canned music. The birds, which are numerous and diverse in my neighbourhood, were making their early morning song which were not the dulcet sounds of honeyeaters but the screech of parrots. Perhaps the honeyeaters were in there but I couldn’t here them for the hundreds of Polly’s. And then there was the noise in my head - “I wish the music would stop”, “why are the birds so loud?”, “I have so much to do” - and then listing off all the things to do. There is no real thinking in this space of internal and external noise, only reaction and survival. Real thinking, (I think!), is a marriage of emptiness and fullness. To hear ourselves, our deep creative selves think, we must quieten down our self-conscious minds, our emotions and relax our bodies. I used to believe that this was just a practice for times of designated meditation. I now understand that this is the practice for each moment. The Gold is worth digging for in every moment and the only effort needed is to let go. Let go of grasping, struggle, assumptions, expectations, internal and external noise. Letting go does not mean the noise disappears. It is all still there - the music, the birds, the monkey mind, the frustrations and desires. Letting go means not identifying with any of it and instead discovering the empty place wherein fullness arises and wholeness begins. “I went fishing this morning. Caught nothing. Was about to give up. Heard a voice tell me to keep trying. So I did. Then I realised the voice was the voice of my beloved friend standing on the shore. I let go and jumped into the water and swam to my friend. I stood there and listened and died". As I was preparing to write this piece I scene came to my mind of Jesus on a surfboard. This was surprising - to say the least. I am not in the habit of imagining Jesus in such a strange setting or any settings for that matter. However, this picture paints many words that could be written about balance. Stay with me a moment as I try to describe the picture. There is Jesus standing on the surfboard, one foot in front of the other, arms and hands outstretched. There is the wave behind him, curling in that beautiful way they do with the white cap and blue water. As the wave moves forward Jesus moves with the wave. He bends and crouches, stands and shifts his balance, moves his arms and hands, even his fingers and head. He shifts his weight changing direction and speed. He changes feet position and where his eyes are gazing. He is intent, focused, alive and at one with the wave. He of course rides the wave beautifully and skilfully into shore, timing his dismount perfectly. Can you feel those movements in your own body? I can - a little. Of course Jesus never rode a surfboard. This is a metaphor 😊 The ocean and waves are life. The surfboard is this moment. Jesus is the guy who shows us how it’s done and the core skill is balance. To navigate life, move forward and not continually get dunked, fall off and hurt ourselves or anyone else, we need the ability to stay balanced. It is a skill that needs to be applied to every area of our lives. I am obviously writing from a spiritual or religious perspective but balance is important in every area of life. From politics to ecology to dance to relationships to bodily health to riding a bike and kicking a football and everything else I can think of balance is key. Even the breath we take is a bodily mechanism reliant on the movement of air across a balance point. The body, the beautiful, miraculous gift we all have, is always seeking balance. The medical word is homeostasis which is not a static reality but a dynamic flow of the various systems of the body communicating with each other, fine-tuning and adjusting in every moment so that optimal health is maintained. A good way to describe our culture, our western way of life, is that it is critically unbalanced. Frighteningly this imbalance is threatening not just our own health but the health of earths ecology and the prospect of lasting peace between nations and peoples. Our way of life is so unbalanced that we do not even see how far we have allowed ourselves to tip dangerously out of alignment. Just think of all the ways we put unnecessary pressure on our bodies, on our daily lives or on our relationships and how we and others are put off balance. There are our habits and addictions - workaholism being one of the craziest yet - that consume our attention and energies; rampart, excessive consumerism and gross materialism; the objectification of the human body and the pornification of mainstream culture; the incessant cacophony of canned noise in every public space; the packaging and marketing of ‘experience’ and religious faith; the ex-carnated surreal world of digitally mediated engagement. We are tossed and thrown about by extreme waves and influences and it seems to me at least that we struggle to maintain our equilibrium. Maggie Ross in her book Silence: A Users Handbook says that “life hangs in the balance…..the choice for silence or noise, for carefulness or carelessness, is ours in every moment” (Darton, Longman & Todd 2014. p11). Ross’ work focuses on what she calls the work of silence and how it counterbalances the cacophony of our self-conscious mind and the world we inhabit. Her point about choice is applicable to the choices we can make each moment and the value we may place on balance and equilibrium. We do have a choice. However, making that choice and then putting into practise the habits and actions that will foster balance is not easy. Wanting things easy is actually a form of imbalance because the midpoint of effective living is a careful mix of effort and rest. That is if by ‘effective living’ we mean a life that is joy filled, abundant and radiant, a blessing for others and self. Despite the challenge it seems to me that choosing balance is the only option. The how of this is really the heart of the matter. Come with me back to Jesus on the surfboard….. If you don’t have any particularly religious persuasion please bear with me as I mention some aspects of Jesus life that point to a life lived in balance. There are other key religious figures I could point to but Jesus is the one I have studied the most and the one who speaks most clearly to me. If you take even a brief look at the four gospels you find a portrayal of Jesus the man as someone who walked an effective line between solitude and public engagement, silence and speech, reflection and action, feeling and thought, mind and heart. The theological words we use to describe this balance are of necessity paradoxical - he is both divine and human, God-with-us, incarnated. Even the central symbol of Christianity, the cross, is a pointer to balance. The vertical line joins heaven and earth. The horizontal line spreads this line outwards and beyond the centre. In the life of Jesus we see someone who was completely centred in God and completely able to give up himself in love in each moment. It is in each moment that we have the choice to come back to centre, the ground of our being. In each moment we can choose to be present, ‘in our bodies’, listening attentively to what is, not what we want, assume or imagine is real. We can quieten down our racing minds and with gentleness gaze at the other - the other person or any other part of creation. We can pull back from that which takes us out of life and wait for the movement of the spirit that leads us towards a better choice. We can wait. We can let go. We can ungrasp. How extraordinary would it be if we could step up on the surfboard, the present moment, plant our feet and stretch out our arms. If we trusted Divine Love to uphold us. If we let go long enough to feel, with our body and soul, the energy and movement of that love that is always present and always moving us towards a path unknown and surprising. How beautiful it would be if we could adjust and change our actions in response to what comes to us through careful attention and listening. Most of us will never be able to ride surfboards but we can all come back to centre and practise balance. Peace |
Rebecca Newland:
Exploring balance, silence and contemplative living Archives
November 2016
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