The Sound of Silence<\/p>\n
Spiritual leader, Baba Ram Dass, wason a ten-day silent retreat. He had a roommate, someone he didn\u2019t know, who neatly\u00a0folded the corners of his bedsheets every day and laid out his clothes. Ram
Dass didn\u2019t tidy up anything, he felt like a slob and he began to think that\u00a0the other man must hate him. He was so upset he could hardly concentrate when\u00a0he was meditating. He felt that he was being judged. He was so sure, that aftera few days, he began to hate his roommate for hating him.<\/p>\n
When the retreat was over and theywere getting ready to leave, the roommate said, \u201cI can\u2019t tell you what an honor\u00a0it\u2019s been to share a room with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a waste of ten days,\u201d Ram\u00a0Dass said. \u201cI was convinced that this man hated me. I was filled with\u00a0negativity and self-loathing when I could have used my energy to become enlightened.\u201d<\/p>\n
While silence has great benefits\u00a0spiritually and emotionally, it\u2019s also a ready place to breed paranoia. Ourworld is so loud, there is so much coming at us from every direction, we haveto practice being quiet and listening. We have to learn to go inside, bevulnerable and hear our own voice. That\u2019s often a challenge because when we\u2019re
honest with ourselves about how we really feel, we may not like what we find. That leads us to the next lesson – learning to accept who we truly are\u00a0without\u00a0judgment or self-loathing. Without making excuses. Without trying to fix\u00a0ourselves. It\u2019s a tall order. Once again, it takes practice. We aren\u2019t used to\u00a0shutting up and listening without forming what we want to say next.<\/p>\n
It’s easy to hide behind our words.cI know a man who is kind and compassionate, but from the moment we get together\u00a0to the moment we part, he talks. The silence is so uncomfortable for him, he \u00a0tells stories about his past. He talks about how he wishes he could live his]\u00a0life differently. He talks about what he wants for his future. He apologizes to\u00a0me for things I didn\u2019t even know he did. If I want to add anything to the\u00a0conversation, I have to interrupt him which I don\u2019t like to do. And the kicker\u00a0is that he goes into intermittent accolades about how great I am, which strokes\u00a0my ego and at the same time, makes it hard for me to be myself. I feel like I\u00a0have to live up to his image of me. Being with him becomes so tedious, when I\u00a0leave, even though I care about him, I feel exhausted and unseen. I feel empty.<\/p>\n
I once went on a three-day Sufi\u00a0retreat. I tricked myself. I hadn\u2019t read the description and I didn\u2019t know what\u00a0was in store for me until I arrived and one of the facilitators whispered in my\u00a0ear, \u201cThis is a silent retreat.\u201d I was stunned and upset as she wordlessly pointed\u00a0out the dining hall, the meditation room and where I\u2019d be sleeping. I didn\u2019t\u00a0think I could do it, but I was surprised to find out that as the hours and the\u00a0days passed, I began to feel more connected to myself and more comfortable with\u00a0the silence. We all ate together, we sat in meditation together and we were\u00a0polite and unhurried. It was a new way of being with people and it felt good.<\/p>\n
When the retreat was finished and\u00a0we began speaking again, we lined up for our last lunch. We exchanged numbers,\u00a0we were friendly and pleasant until someone cut the lunch line. Someone began
talking in a loud, annoying voice, asking inappropriate questions, and someone else\u00a0rushed to her car so she could get to a meeting on time. The spell was broken.<\/p>\n
Like Ram Dass, it\u2019s easy to fantasize\u00a0what someone else is thinking of us. It\u2019s easy to decide what we like and don\u2019t\u00a0like about the other person\u2019s point of view, even though we don\u2019t know what it\u00a0is. In my writing classes, I encourage my students to stop trying to write. Fancy words and overbearing descriptions make our pieces boring. I ask them to tell their stories on the page, simply and authentically, which makes the work interesting. It’s much the same in talking with friends. When we speak constantly and try to be seen as intellectual or all knowing, we\u2019re not interesting. Our words lose meaning, we sound arrogant, we lose the connection and we walk away feeling empty. When we speak candidly and to the point, when we allow the silences so we can think before we speak, we\u2019re interesting, we become connected and we walk away feeling full.<\/p>\n
I walk three times a week with a\u00a0friend. We laugh a great deal of the time and\u00a0the challenges that come up in our lives. As entertaining
as it sounds, and it is entertaining, we also go into silences that nurture our\u00a0souls. It feels as good to be quiet as it does to talk. There\u2019s a peacefulness\u00a0that shows up and a trust in our friendship. There\u2019s comfort in the space\u00a0between the words. It allows us to consider what we\u2019re thinking and to avoid\u00a0blurting out things that have no meaning in order to fill up the space.<\/p>\n
Master composer Claude Debussey\u00a0said, \u201cMusic is the space between the notes.\u201d I think of it as an echo, an\u00a0interval, a moment when we pause to listen to the musical notes that continue to\u00a0waft through the air before we move on to the next ones. When we take \u00a0the time\u00a0to pay attention to what is going on between the words, we have the opportunitto listen and be heard, the things that human beings need and desire.<\/p>\n
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The Sound of Silence Spiritual leader, Baba Ram Dass, wason a ten-day silent retreat. He had a roommate, someone he didn\u2019t know, who neatly\u00a0folded the corners of his bedsheets every day and laid out his clothes. RamDass didn\u2019t tidy up anything, he felt like a slob and he began to think that\u00a0the other man must […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2508,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions\/2508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}