As I walked the school halls today, I was reminded of how much it seems we fear silence. I could hear a teacher in another pod, around several corners, laughing loudly, obviously unaware of how her voice was carried and how it bounced off these cold, concrete walls.
The one place, one would assume, we would insulate for sound is a school, but that does not appear to happen. This, along with ultraviolet hanging lights that are known to aggravate anyone with attention issues or other neurological dysfunctions such as seizures, make the average school an incredibly difficult place to be for sensitive individuals.
What has happened to our world that we fear SILENCE? We seek to eradicate it at every opportunity. Soon the students will be back and the halls will be filled with loud voices and clanging lockers and running feet. On one hand, it is good to hear the lust for life reflected in this noise and the exuberance for exploration and new experiences. On the other hand, it is sad to hear so strongly reflected our fear of silence - our fear of hearing ourselves think.
“Listen to the Silence. It has so much to say.” Rumi
We need silence. From silence, all things grow. We grow ourselves. We grow beauty and love and all things wonderful. But within our modern world we seem afraid to experience silence. We drown it out at every opportunity.
I am remembering my experience of skydiving and answering the question of “Why?” I now realize the reason I gave this experience to myself was to fully experience, to fully embrace life. I experienced the sacredness of silence, rolled into the vastness of space, and I felt life surround me in the fullness and emptiness of silence. But silence is not empty; it is full — full of potential - my potential. If we do not experience silence, we do not/cannot experience the potential of who we are as humans.
Why do we fear this knowledge? We fear knowing ourselves as expressions of the Divine seeking to know itself as human. We prefer to keep ourselves as innocent onlookers of life, living without responsibility for who we are. We start this young and especially in schools where it is rare to hear silence or to take a break and experience silence. Imagine sitting with a class quietly and allowing them to hear what is happening around them. Allow them to hear birdsong; allow them to hear their own breathing, their own heartbeat. Have them take deep breaths and feel what happens to the heartbeat as they do. Have them become excited or scared and then feel and listen to their heartbeat…and then watch what happens as they learn to deepen it.
Let children sit and listen to their own thoughts. In this process they learn to think and to act for themselves without dependence on an external entity telling them what to do or say. So few adults have reached a point where the locus of control for their own behavior is within them and not driven by external circumstances. But how can we learn to trust our own intuition, if we never listen to what it says? By sitting quietly, we learn to hear and to trust this inner voice. We learn to know who we are.
When we move into silence, we move into a vast space filled with potential energy. It is the energy that fuels our creative abilities. It fuels our intuition and gives us the ability to be present to ourselves. This energy is expressed through us through art, writing, composition, baking a cake or making a welcoming home. It expresses itself in a myriad of ways, but most importantly, it allows us to know ourselves for who we truly are. We see clearly what is within and are not dependent upon the external voices that tell us who we are. For most of us, who we are, our own self-definition, is formed by the opinion of others, not by our own knowledge of ourselves.
Recently my cousin wrote me a note for my birthday. I had told her what an amazing grandmother she had – she was my honorary grandmother, since I never knew my own. She said she remembered how “bright, gifted, and generous of heart” I always was. She felt I always kept so much inside. This took me aback because this was certainly not the message I received as a child. It took me decades to see myself as this. Intelligent, yes, but that was a problem, not a gift. When I grew up, bright women were not appreciated within the Mediterranean culture, nor were they appreciated within the American culture. We were told we would never be able to marry unless we learned how to “dumb” ourselves down and not threaten a man. So many weird messages we were given. As for being generous of heart… no, that’s not what I heard. The message from outside was the opposite. I developed a very strong ego to defend me and who I was truly, from the outside world. Recently, this ego finally felt safe enough to curl up within me and sleep. It does come out to play when I lift weights, as it loves the challenge to perform within a safe environment – and it is safe now. But that childhood message, in one form or another, is still being given to children, based on sexual choice, race, age, and so many other choices.
It was the lack of silence that blocked me from my own creativity, and it was learning to sit and listen within it that finally released me to freedom. Let us teach children to trust their own judgment, to listen to their own internal voice for guidance. Let us allow children to see themselves truly as they are, expressions of oneness, and to learn to respect and honor this within themselves. Allow us adults to guide them to bring forth their individual creativity to honor and to love themselves and the role they have, as messengers of love, within our own lives. Let us teach them to embrace, not fear the Silence.
Polish the mirror between the breaths by Rumi
Go with him, beyond words.
He knows your every deed.
He is the one
who moves the wheel of heaven,
in silence.
Every thought is buried in your heart;
He will reveal them one by one,
in silence.
Turn each of your thoughts into a bird
And let them fly to the other world.
One is an owl, one is a falcon, one is a crow.
Each one is different from the others
But they are all the same
in silence.