in fullness we dwell in emptiness we resonate in space we stand in and with and from and to we live and move and have our being Jean-Luc Picard stood on the bridge of the space ship Enterprise and looked out at the vast blackness of space. Vast in its emptiness yet full of wonders and potential. "What next?’ he said. ‘I know’ said first office Riker, ‘there’s a lot of useful room out there and it feels a bit boring and colourless. Let’s fill it up. Let’s decorate it and bring in some nice objects to look at. Let’s make some noise. Let’s make the view from this window really interesting. Morale is low. Let’s be entertained and forget the mission for a while. Filling up space will be a nice change”. I know - its a silly story isn’t it? Filling up the vastness of space just to be entertained and distracted. The problem is that is more or less what we humans do each day of our lives. We fill up space. We fill up the silence that is a given. How do we fill up space? Let me count the ways: We fill it up with stuff: We fill it with mostly completely useless, needless stuff of a thousand varieties and types. We fill it with the packaging we wrap all the stuff in to transport it from one part of the world to another. The stuff crowds our shelves, our houses, our garages, our storage faculties, our cars, our world. When we throw the stuff out and buy more stuff it clogs our waterways, pollutes our beaches and is buried in our earth. Even our thermosphere and exosphere are full of junk stuff. We fill it up with noise: There is no such thing as material silence. The universe itself hums in B flat. Nature sings and our own breath sounds in our ears. Yet on top of that we layer more noise. Every cafe has speakers and music, train stations blare radio programs, televisions blare and blast our senses, churches pulse with chatter and clamour and big screens and little screens in our houses beep and sing at us. We fill it up with stories: We have a story to tell about everything. We have interpretation after interpretation about the world, ourselves and others. Everything we touch, everything we see, everything we experience is already an interpretation because we filter and process everything. The self-conscious mind wraps itself around reality and weaves a narrative about that reality. Mostly what is woven is all about us because we are a supremely self focussed, self absorbed creature. We do it for survival and when we don’t need to worry about that we do it anyway. We fill it with ourselves: We project into the world ourselves. At a psychological level we unconsciously endow other people with aspects of ourselves we don’t particularly like. We also endow them with our positive characteristics. We see only that which we are. We are looking at the world through a mirror created by our own constructs and the mirror reflects back to me me. At a basic physical level all that we see, hear, taste, touch, smell and feel has been created from the data fed to us by my sensory organs. All we ever know of the world around are the images produced in the mind. We fill up space through a process of conscious thought and choice. We fill it up through unconscious and uncontrollable physical and mental processes. We fill it up with what we physically create. The final part of this process is that we identify with what we or others have created, narrated and projected. We believe the stories we weave about ourselves and end up trapped in the maze. The fuller our space gets the less room there is for our unfolding selves, others and the rest of God’s creation. Our ‘stuff’ crowds out other people, possibility, creativity, emerging truth and counter-argument. Is there possibly another way? I think there is and it has been explored by countless people through the ages from many backgrounds and perspectives. It is the way of dying, of decreasing, of surrendering, so there is room for the creative Love at the centre of all to emerge and bless. This is the Christian way of love revealed through Jesus the Christ. It is kenosis, self-emptying, that makes room for the other. The concept primarily comes from Philippians 2.7 where Paul states that Jesus did not cling to equality with God but emptied himself taking the form of a servant and became obedient, even to death on a cross. Theologians over the centuries have speculated that if, as Jesus said in John’s gospel, when others see him they have seen God, then God too must have this quality of kenotic, self-emptying. Creation, initial and ongoing, happens because God makes room for All to emerge and become. It is an act of love. When you sit with Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity you get a sense of what this kenotic love is like. Each of the three figures sit around a table with heads bowed in restful pose but what is predominate in the picture is the space between them. It is as if they hold space for something else to emerge or for someone else to join them. This depiction of the Triune God is not of a hierarchical superpower but a relationship of love. Love between three - co-equal, co-eternal, co-existing. The genius of the icon is that the viewer feels part of the picture. How we surrender and make space for the other, for creativity, for emerging truth and possibility is relatively simple that but takes ongoing practice. It is a daily, moment by moment decision to let go of what we grasp - the narratives and stories, the preconceptions and assumptions, the attachments and energies, the passions and desires. It is a daily decreasing of the ‘self’, the self focussed, self-conscious part of us that takes up so much room in our being. In letting go we create space. Of course, if a person manages to surrender and let go and finds that spaciousness within and without, they quickly find they are again holding tightly. It is a continually process of becoming aware of that with which we identify, of the stories we are telling about ourselves and the world, of the ways in which we crowd out our deeper selves and our God and then taking a step back to centre once more into silence and spaciousness. The repetition of sacred words and phrases can help this process. The practise of stillness - also called meditation and still prayer - and the practise of simple awareness of reality in all its mystery and beauty are also key parts of un-grasping and dwelling in spacious love. The literal decluttering of objects and noise plays a part. The recognition that we are the loved child of God is central. And when we think we have finally understood and grasped the truth we let go of that as well….. And maybe, just maybe, we will find that more and more we are no longer entrapped by our 'stuff' - mental or physical - but simply contained in love and acting in love. Peace & love Rebecca _____________________________ Silence: “It is an overarching sense of both containment and potential, of vitality ever emerging and not yet grasped” (Maggie Ross, Silence: A Users Guide 2014)
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Although this is a blog devoted to exploring balance, silence and contemplative living there is actually no such thing as material silence, as in the complete absence of sound. Even at the quietest retreat there will be the sounds of your own breath, the blood in your veins, the wind in the trees and the living, breathing world around. The universe itself sings. Astronomers say they have heard the sound of a black hole singing and apparently for more than two billion years it has been singing B flat - a B flat 57 octaves lower than middle C. That is an unimaginably low note but it is still a sound. A slow pulsing sound, perhaps like the pulse of incredibly slow breathing. Even in the darkest space, the place of black nothingness there is sound and there is energy. Astronomers also speculate that this sound is not just an interesting form of black hole acoustics but a key to the formation of stars and galaxies. So if we still our tongue, calm our spirits, relax our bodies and turn off all distracting noise, there is still sound. Searching for an experience of material silence is futile and misses the point, for the point of silence is not to have some type of spiritual experience but is a way of being in the world and a way to open to the world. So silence is not about external silence. It is about a practice that opens up our being to Being. It is about connecting to the deep reality of existence, esse, through the quietening down of distracting noise and the quietening down of our self-conscious mind. There is so much noise in the world. I was in Sydney on the weekend and enjoyed myself immensely wandering around that busy, noisy, full and exciting city. Yet the self-conscious chatter in my mind was just as noisy and full. No wonder so many people were plugged in to their devices and in a state of perpetual distraction. It is exhausting coping with the cacophony of inner and outer noise. Yet, if we can quieten down the inner noise, through attentive beholding or watchful awareness, something wonderful can happen. We see the city- the people, the buildings, the pigeons, sculptures and food outlets - differently. Not with a different story and a changed narrative but with new eyes and ears, that are simply open and present. We see with eyes and hear with ears beyond narrative. The esse of what is around us hums in the depths of silence and we may find ourselves in loving wonder, even for just a fleeting moment. We may also find ourselves with more love and patience to spare, even for just a fleeting moment. There is no magic to this. There is no special formula. There is simply the practice of silence itself. In fact it is all in the practice. The same practice day after day, year after year. The practice is straightforward - letting go, attention, awareness, beholding. When you find yourself distracted by yet more thoughts and stories, more noise and clamour, then come back to centre and refocus. It is like a spiral turning or a figure eight in motion. It is the same principle as in meditation but as Maggie Ross points out, meditation is just a beginning - “an entry-level, beginning step in an all-encompassing commitment”. (Ross, M. Silence: A Users Guide. 2014 p32) With Peace & Love Rebecca The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. One day tells it to another: and night to night communicates knowledge. There is no speech or language: nor are their voices heard; Yet their sound has gone out through all the world: and their words to the end of the earth. (Psalm 19.1-4) ___________________________________________ A major source for these reflections is the work of Maggie Ross, (particularly her latest book "Silence: A Users Guide",2014) whom I acknowledge gratefully. One of the weirdest things for me is when I have made a major decision about something - getting a new/second hand car being one main example - and I then see the same model car, including colour, everywhere. Well not in my back yard but around and about on the streets and parking centres. I think to myself that lots of people must have the same good taste as me and that my taste is pretty common. Apparently there is a phrase for this - “frequency illusion”. In the internet world of memes it is also called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. The phenomenon is caused by the way our minds work. When we are struck by a new word, thing or idea our selective attention is triggered. We then unconsciously keep an eye out for it and notice it more and more. Another process also kicks in, “confirmation bias”, that seems to assure us that the thing as gained overnight importance and omnipresence. Putting it simply this phenomenon is a result of our focus. Just as the phrase, ‘we are what we eat’ describes the way our bodies, our being, is formed by the substances we ingest so our perception is formed through our focus. Literally our focus changes our perception and the phenomenon happens unconsciously. (A related concept is intention, which I intend to look at next week). So when we embark on the practise, work and study of silence we begin to see signs and wonders of it everywhere. Psalms we have long prayed with now speak of silence. As we listen to music we have returned to again and again we hear the non-sound between the notes, the non-sound that joins it all together. As we still the internal chatter and commentary we find our lover, the forest, the birds and the sea all reveal something beyond description. Our focus also leads us. It is like a thread that weaves in and out of our experiences. Study, or the learning of something, is most satisfying when we have the time to follow the thread. A stand out example of this for me was my recent discovery, or rediscovery of psalm 65. Here is the thread: During my daily study I came across the phrase ‘competens silentium’ ,which lead me to a series of articles on monastic silence, which lead me to an obscure masters thesis on the development of medieval Dominican theology, which revealed that psalm 65 verse 1 has had an interesting translation history, which lead to the revelation that the numbering in the Hebrew Tanakh bible is different to the Latin vulgate, the King James Version and every other version except one (but don’t quote me - I could just be very lost), which eventually lead to a comparison with the literal Hebrew text and the usual English translations and lo and behold….. what we usually read as something like “You are to be praised, O God, in Zion” is actually, “For you silence is praise, O God, in Zion” (*). A whole word, a whole concept has completely dropped out. A whole word, a whole world and way of living is gone as if it was never there. Interestingly, the Message Bible has it back in. No doubt there is a whole story as to why our translations are bereft of this idea. However, I am at least silenced by this verse in its original Hebrew. Dumb struck that our translations seem to have missed something so special. Awed that in following the threads thrown by focus and intent we stumble across beauty and deep truth. “For you God, silence is praise. Silence is praise. Silence is. Silence” Peace & Love Rebecca "One of the reasons why communal worship or private prayer seem to be so dead or so conventional is that the act of of worship, which takes place in the heart communing with God, is too often missing. Every expression, either verbal or in action, may help, but they are only expressions of what is essential, namely, a deep silence of communion" (Anthony Bloom, Living Prayer Darton, Longman & Todd 1975 p vii) (For those who may be interested, the original Hebrew verse, the one with silence in there, was a key part of Meister Eckharts developing theology). |
Rebecca Newland:
Exploring balance, silence and contemplative living Archives
November 2016
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