The message of Silence

Silence. Do you nowadays still recognize silence? Is there any place you still can find silence? What does silence bring you?

Really, all around us is noise. If it's quiet then we just make noise. It seems silence makes us feel crazy. What makes us so afraid of silence? Sound seems a wanted distraction we need to not connect with ourselves. Silence connects you with the war that’s often going on within yourself. A war between ratio and feeling/emotion. A war encouraged by personal (past) experiences and suffering. A war stimulated by worrying in relation to fear for the unknown, the future.

My first real experience with silence was when I stayed for a week in a Benedictine monastery (St. Benedict's mountain in Vaals, The Netherlands). Actually, and certainly with my experiences I had at that moment about self-development and spirituality, an inexplicable experience. I felt secluded and at the same time it made me happy. Immediately I got in contact with deeper life questions. With fear, grief and also with joy and gratitude. In that monastery I had the mystical experience that my hand suddenly felt caught by something bigger than me, or someone I could not see, when I was writing about my feeling. Something or someone took over my hand and began to write down the answers on a question I had about my son. I still have that hand written paper somewhere and described that experience in a diary that I kept for many years after our decision to get divorced for my children.

At about a one hour and fifteen minutes’ drive of the place where I live, there is a huge cave in a mountain (Bua Tong Cave). I regularly visit that place with personal guests. It is definitely not (yet) a tourist attraction. You can enter the ground floor of that cave or (together with monks) go into the catacomb. Also in this cave you can experience total silence and to be honest, it’s still a very strange phenomenon. Certainly if you have had the real experience feeling/connecting with real silence.

Silence makes listening a deeper and more intense sensation. You become much more sensitive for the art of listening. You expand your consciousness. And not only your consciousness in relation to listening. You widen the sensation of feeling, tasting, watching and smelling as well. All your senses will be more open and more sensitive. Some people call it a deeper connection with your authenticity.

Sound has turned into a ‘tool’ to run away from a deeper connection with yourself. To escape yourself. Silence, on the contrary, brings you in touch with yourself.

Silence is not the absence of something. It is your awareness, open your mind, for everything that is available for you.

It is quite common, getting older, you deal and engage with deeper (life)questions in your life. That you are looking for answers and directions to go. Life, after all, is a continuous expedition in relation to growth, personal development and sharing your uniqueness.

The strange thing is that we are used always to search for those answers and directions to go in the outside world. Silence does not work with that but, on the contrary, brings you in connection with your inner world. There, and nowhere else, all the answers on this type of questions are already available and waiting for you. You only need to discover them (discover/uncover = to remove the cover because those answers have been covered so far). It’s just to take the cover, the lit, the dust, of. You do not need to look for and will not find the real answers on this questions in that outside world.

In relation to your uniqueness, your way of life/life style, your passion, you already since birth, have everything you need inside to grow and share as it’s best meant to be for you. Because you are not aware of this (yet), you try to find and follow a different road, acting as your own personal helmsman telling him the direction you want. However, your life often has a something different ‘treasure’ for you. Something you might not want yet, but after all it will work out to be the best choice for your growth.

The message of silence is to connect you with your inner source. To create space to anticipate instead of abrupt react. There is nothing to ask. You only will receive. To be willing to receive that what’s waiting for you (and you are ready to receive) in the understanding that this several times is not what you want (yet). To surrender to life in full confidence that your life can not go wrong. You only have to live it…

Frans Captijn

Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight: “Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow in life and work. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.” 

www.captijninsight.com

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