A Peek Behind the Curtain
For any regular readers, this may be a different sort of newsletter. It is a bit of a peek behind the curtain into Greg’s life.
We had a visitor in town the other day who spent the night here with us. She, like us, lives out in the country where we do not have the typical noise of a city. She commented as she was getting ready to leave about how “quiet” it is here. She went on to say, “I live in the country too, but there is something different about the quiet here”. Oh yes there is! And it is a comment that we have heard before. And she (and others) are right. So, what follows is my way of talking about the phenomenon she had identified. I find it useful. This newsletter is all about Waking Up, and what follows is all about that for me!
What our house guest was describing was her awareness of the “silence” that is here. Quiet can be thought of as the absence of noise. It is something you experience through your ears. Silence is different. It is something that you feel or sense, and it is not the absence of noise; it is the dynamism of consciousness, which is full of life and the ground from which all of creation arises. It is not just present in our little corner of the globe. It is present everywhere. It is alive and vibrant. You can sense it anywhere and everywhere, though it is the experience of most that it is easier to sense in a settled environment where there are fewer sensory-related stimuli to obscure it, stimuli such as noise. What makes this Silence more apparent to some visitors is that there are many people where I live who make a practice of dipping into that Silence every day. There is what Rupert Sheldrake describes as a “morphic resonance,” or in quantum theory what would be called a “field effect,” that makes the connection to the Silence stronger and more “visible” because so many people are doing it in close proximity to each other. (Both of these explanations are theories and not scientifically validated, but nobody who engages in these practices questions what is happening, even if scientifically validated explanations do not yet exist. That our house guest, and others, notice the Silence enough that they comment on it is certainly validation that something is happening! What these guests do have in common, however, is that they also have some sort of practice they engage in regularly that connects them to the Silence. So, they are tuned in to it already.)
For me, waking up and becoming more aware of the dynamism of consciousness are the same thing.
This “practice” I keep referring to, of dipping into the dynamism of consciousness, goes by many different names. So, whether you call it meditation, prayer, mindfulness, concentration, contemplation, transcending or some other label, there is a practice within all major religious traditions that will allow you to dip into the silence. (And it is important to realize that some of these labels also get applied to other activities that may not have the same effect.)
I’ve been dipping into this silence for decades. As a result, I am happier, healthier (physically and mentally) and stressful events have less impact on me. Oh, yeah, I am also much more financially prosperous while working fewer hours (in case that is important to any of you!). But that doesn’t mean this is right for you, because like most anything worth doing, it requires tradeoffs and there are obstacles on the path. It seems for most the biggest hurdle is “time”. So many of us have our days jammed full of activities that carving out time for a practice just doesn’t seem practical. And the “results”, for many, are not instantaneous nor initially obvious. So they think it isn’t working for them. (It always works. Actually, it can’t not work).
Here is an analogy: You have two buckets of water and you put yellow dye in both. Into each bucket, you immerse a pure white cotton cloth. After a while, you pull the fabric out of bucket “B”, but leave the cloth in bucket “A”. You lay the wet fabric out in the sun and, though it is yellow when it comes out of the bucket, by the time it is dry, it is pretty much white again. Back into Bucket B it goes. After a while you pull it out again and dry it again. Some yellow tint starts to remain. You repeat this process over and over and over and gradually the white cloth changes and becomes permanently yellow after it dries. THEN, you pull the cloth out of bucket A and lay it out to dry. This cloth has been immersed the whole time. The sun dries it out, and you know what color it is? It is white. It is the dipping in and out that sets the color. The results come from going into the dye and then out. Dipping into silence and getting results can be thought of in much the same way. For many, there are some results that do come quickly. They experience a peacefulness and emerge rested and clear. Things like that. But the big payoff is that, over time, when the practice ends the silence you dipped into comes with you back into daily life. (You might say it is “sticky”!)
But finding the time for a practice of dipping into that silence is both challenging and not challenging. It is challenging because we live busy lives and there are always competing demands. I’ve been dipping for decades and I still deal with the reality of the competing demands. But, really, it is not challenging. Pretty sure most of you, no matter how busy you are, manage to find time every day to eat, to bathe, to sleep. So you can make the time for this, too!
I am not, however, going to attempt to teach/instruct on the mechanics of dipping into the silence. There are plenty of sources you can explore that can do that. But I will give you a tip. If you are “trying,” you are not doing it right. The process is as simple, easy, and effortless as seeing a sight, hearing a sound, or smelling a smell. It is natural and effortless. If you are curious, try it. Just notice what happens when you let yourself rest in that deeper place, even for a minute! This silence isn’t separate from life; it's what life is made of. Once you start noticing it, you realize it's been there all along.
So that is a peek behind my curtain and what could be yours as well!
If you found this issue helpful and want to hear more from Greg, be sure to subscribe to his podcast, Pants Around Ankles Prevention, where each episode delivers a punch of truth to help you wake up, gain perspective, and live with greater clarity and purpose. Listen and subscribe now on Apple Podcasts or YouTube.
This issue was originally published by Greg Hayne on Substack.