power of silence

This year for me started with a most amazing week of silence. It was Maharishi’s tradition to begin each year with a week of going deep within the Self, so as to start with an impulse from those depths. Since I have been living in Holland, on the campus where Maharishi lived, I decided to follow that tradition myself along with many of the people there as was the custom for the last many years.

I have to say that the experience of silence was like being at sea… sometimes like being at sea in the middle of a huge storm with tidal waves and sometimes it was like floating peacefully with an expansive view of infinity. I spent a lot of my day in meditation and was fortunate to be able to eat very healthy organic foods and read Vedic literature and other deep knowledge.

While I was going through this whole process, I must admit I felt so many things going on inside of me that I had no idea how I would come out. In the beginning, I processed all kinds of emotions that were linked to deep romantic and personal losses as well as questions about where I was and where I wanted to be… but as the week passed that type of thinking became less and less and somehow the weight of it all became less and less and what I experienced the last few days was quite beautiful, even if I did not totally understand it at the time… and even now I only have a glimpse of it.

During those last days a small part of my broken heart began to open up again little by little… I had not even known that it was closed, at least not in that manner… but something in that experience reminded me of the joy that it was capable of. That is not to say that I had not been able to enjoy things, but that somehow it was as though the cloud that was hiding the sun was starting to drift away. As though up until that point, the day had been bright and yet not entirely sunny, if that makes any sense…

And when I came out of silence it felt as though I had come out of a deeply refreshing waterfall… so much so, that the depth of experience of that silence was still very much in my daily life. I did not think much of it though, until a few weeks had passed and then I started to wonder what was going on…

To be honest I was not used to feeling so well for no apparent reason. Nothing had changed in my life from the year before and yet everything was different. I did not feel any particular attachment to anything and yet I found great joy in everything. I felt a sense of freedom and adventure that I had long forgotten was even possible. And while my life was just as simple as before, in a little forrest in Holland, it felt more and more unbounded every day.

I commented this to my friends from time to time, but did not make much of it because I did not know if there was any lasting value in the experience. I always commented on it with a bit of incredulity as if poking fun at myself. And I was also very aware that I was in a very pure and settled environment whose softness was probably greatly responsible for these experiences.

Yet I found myself engaging in activity and delighting in it more than I was accustomed to and from a deeper level. Its something that is so hard to express… you can see it in my writing as I blogged about my daily experiences such as Pool of Transcendance, You are or High in Holland.

I started to live life as if I were witnessing it and then commenting on it, even as it was happening. It was as though I could be aware of the impulses within me and choose to go with them or not… and even when I did I was still able to watch myself in the process.

It became clear here in India that this experience continued into a more active everyday life and I find myself delighting in the smallest of things often times being moved to share these experiences with you all here, yet wondering if it is something that makes any sense to anyone else…

I have tried to understand where all of this has come from, what it was that started it for me and how it is that it continues… but all I seem to be able to come up with is that it was born in that one week… in the mirror that the deep silence offered me and in finding, in whatever small way, a sense of peace about myself and the world around me.

There is no way to know how long this might last or what it means to how I choose to continue this path… but it makes me ever so grateful to life that I have been blessed to have such an experience… such a glimpse… of the power of silence and to have that Wholeness, that transcendence, lively in my life in such simple ways and with such a sweet nourishing quality.

Its that power of silence upon which this accidental monk aims to be anchored…