Namaste Consulting Inc.

“We’re fascinated by the words–but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”

~ Ram Dass

Silence can be such a precious commodity.  There seems to be so little of it in today’s world.  Even going to a nearby state park, thinking I can run away and forget the world, and I hear the sounds of the traffic from the highway rushing by the park.

Maybe it’s because I am so introverted that I love silence and am comfortable with it?  Maybe it’s the years of meditation?  Or training as a therapist.  Coming from a small family?  Who knows, but I really do like it.

Silence can take on so many flavors and nuances if one can stand it long enough to touch it.  Right now, I work at a job where silence could be fostered much more than it is.  There are many situations with the clients that we work with where silence would be soothing and deflate situations that become volatile.  But silence is the last thing that is thought about, let alone practiced, when we have our agenda of where we need to be and how things should happen rather than letting things unfold before us.

There is such beauty in being able to sit with someone and being so comfortable in your self that you don’t need to fill the space with words.  Sometimes it’s just that that you can be present to the experience of the anxiety that accompanies the long pauses but I think that is an acquired gift.

Silence can be such a precious gem that we can bestow upon someone. . . a client, an aging relative, someone whose heart has been shredded by grief, or someone is who dying.  There’s no distraction in silence, no busy-ness, no nonsense.  Silence is intimate as two people sit in a starkness and nakedness that can be some uncomfortable and yet might be just the thing that two people are craving — the acceptance that comes with that being-with in silence.

My role is to often be silent with the person I am with. . . to hold a hand, to sit attentively, to bear withness to a person’s story or experience.  Meditation is an ideal practice for slowing down and opening the heart.  One learns, through practice, acceptancce of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and sensations.  One practices having a gentle touch with that which comes into consciousness.

We learn not to get swept away, but to allow an idea or a feeling to come up and release it after labeling it.  We learn to have compassion  for the unending streams that our are brains create.  And it is in fostering this acceptance that we can cultivate this openness for another person.

So much can be created in silence, just think about the phrase a pregnant pause.  Things gestate and grow and become when they have light and space.

As we practice silence with others, we allow them the room to grow before us and in doing so, the roots of that experience grow to unimaginable depths.

Metta

Related articles

• Silent Meditation: Spirituality for the Religiously Wounded (blogher.com)
• Meditation is not just for the troubled. It can be life-changing. (namasteconsultinginc.com)
• Inner Metamorphosis University Announces Meditation Retreat – For Inner Silence And Harmony (prweb.com)
• How Complete Silence Helped Me Figure Out Where I Was Going Wrong (entrepreneurs-journey.com)
• Is Silence Golden? (thereinventiontour.co.uk)
• 18 Ways To Raise Your Vibration (cntrovrc.wordpress.com)
• How Meditation Can Change the Brain (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
• If Your Meditation Is Only A Personal Matter; Then It Is Not Meditation. (vincarriuolo.typepad.com)
• Getting Similar Effects of Electrical Brain Stimulation Through Yoga and Meditation (cultivatingourselvestogether.com)
• Finding Silence (teachingsofmasters.wordpress.com)
• Scientists Still Seeking Answers to Questions About Meditation (bigthink.com)