Living Silence: A Path to Sacred Service

An excerpt from Silence, a book by

Robert Sardello

Copyright Jo leeds 2006

Like all phenomena of a soul or spiritual nature, Silence quickly disappears as soon as we leave a contemplative or meditative state, whether we enter such consciousness through the happy circumstance of intimacy with natural or artistic settings or through conscious inner work. The world of our usual commerce is too strongly with us and anything of a subtle nature withdraws from the onslaught. Our functional lives demand a different, more focused, goal oriented, and mental consciousness and being with the Silence all the time would make the practical life difficult. Nonetheless, we can inwardly develop in such a manner that it becomes possible to enter into aspects of Silence anytime we wish, remain in full consciousness doing so, and be fully present to the world and what we are doing. We can allow the ground of receptiveness into daily consciousness. How we do things then begins to change quite radically. We can live a ritual life of Silence.

In his book, The Quantum Mind and Healing, Arnold Mindell gives an exercise, which I found that, when done regularly, develops the kind of soul flexibility that makes it possible to go into the Silence in the midst of whatever we are doing and to perceive the world as wrapped in Silence. This practice concerns developing a fully conscious capacity to perceive the world as image-qualities. Image-consciousness is a bridging form of consciousness between interior Silence and outer perceiving that breaks through the limitations of perceiving outer things in strictly literal ways. Image-consciousness consists of perceiving in such a way that what is within us and what is before us are not sharply divided.

The exercise consists of closing our eyes and entering into the Silence as previously described. Once the currents of Silence are experienced, the practice concerns developing the ability to bridge this form of consciousness with perceiving the world around us. When we enter into the Silence with eyes closed, stay there and let Silence pervade us, it is always somewhat of a shock to conclude the meditation by opening our eyes. We enter back into ordinary consciousness and the experience of the qualities of Silence quickly recedes. Notice, however, that it takes an act of will to go from inner Silence to ordinary perception. We have to will our eyes to open and, in a split second, also let our will adjust to outer reality. It is this act of will that has to be softened, for it makes too great an abyss between the two realms when we open our eyes suddenly.

We can modify this usual procedure by opening our eyes extremely slowly at the end of our time in inner Silence, so that the eyelids remain partially closed and we have a more blurred vision. Notice then what perceiving the world through that blurred, softened, vision is like. We find that the world presents itself in image form. Something will begin to appear, our attention is attracted to something in the world around us. What appears, though, will not be objects or things as we usually know them, but a surface or a reflection or a light, or some partial aspect of a thing. And, such things will be filled with a liveliness not usually experienced. When something presents itself in image form we are identified with what we perceive. Thus, we do not experience a separation between our perceiving and what we perceive.

In this state, we do not know what we are seeing. For example, once, after being within inner Silence, I slowly allowed my eyes to open, using the soft will to let my eyelids partially open and remain partially open. I let my attention go wherever it wanted to go. Something appeared. I did not know what I was seeing. It was somewhat shocking to be within the world of sensing and not know what I was seeing. I saw something that seemed to be a long, narrow, gray, living and moving thing. It seemed as if it might be a snake, but I let that conception go and simply tried to remain with what appeared. It remained gray, round, thin, moving, and approaching me and it felt as if something magical was happening in the world, for I was aware that whatever this living thing was, it was not independent of my consciousness. However, I was also aware that I was not simply making something up or having a fantasy. I was in a new and different reality, one that was very real and objectively there, but one that required that I bring to it the living presence of Silence for it to persist in consciousness. As part of this reality of

Silence-pervaded presence of the outer world, I let the image reveal its significance to me. I listened, and allowed it to reveal its possible meanings. Was the natural world letting me know how alive it is? Was something of the world of the shaman revealing itself? Was the inanimate world also, at a deeper level, showing that it too is animate? I didn’t hear a voice or anything literal, but there was an immediate inner knowing that I was in the presence of something of importance, something I not only consciously have not experienced before, but would, in usual rational consciousness, reject. But, here it was, and I inwardly let go the impulse to reject what is being revealed. When I did fully open my eyes and was back in ordinary consciousness, I saw that I was now looking at a dead branch of a tree outside my window.

The intention of doing this practice for a few minutes daily is to develop a capacity that allows Silence into our ordinary consciousness. Perceiving gradually changes, but only under the condition that there is a conscious intent to perceive the world bathed in Silence and that we slow down enough to be present to it. Each time the exercise is done something different will appear to image-consciousness. It is not important to try and interpret the meaning of what appears; in fact, that is an unnecessary distraction, though there is an urge to want to know what the image means. This impulse is our usual judging wanting to get back into the center of things, and is best ignored.

Our perception of the things of the world, and of others, changes from one in which we perceive surfaces and have the impression that there are only things and persons in the world and each occupies its own space, separate from what is next to it, to perceiving the soul qualities of what is around us and that we live in a fluid medium rather than a world of separate entities. There are no “its” in the world diffused with Silence; there is only the holiness of the “thou”. Perceiving becomes meeting. Once we have entered into this kind of experience we realize that we previously had not really perceived the depth of the world, but only our pre-conceptions of the world. Even more, we had not perceived the soul-presence of other persons. We had unknowingly perceived others as objects, and had, also unknowingly, been using other people solely as things upon which to project our own needs, desires, and fantasies. And, in order to keep the illusion going, we had been allowing others to do the same to us. Without the presence of Silence it is not possible to truly meet the world and other people.

When we perceive the Silence within everything there is a complete absence of negative consciousness. It simply has no place within the world wrapped in Silence. There are, of course, negative-like silences. Silence can, under certain conditions be terrifying, deadly, hurtful, filled with anger, divisive, and cruel. In these instances, however, Silence itself does not convey these qualities. Rather, Silence has been usurped by the presence of fear and these kinds of silences are actually experiences of fear. The complete absence of anything negative that characterizes perceiving the world in Silence is due to the fact that if we have practiced linking the inner world of Silence with the outer world of appearances, we have by virtue of that practice eliminated judgment. The full range of emotional and feeling life goes on when we have come to be able to live more fully with Silence, but the inner evaluating that typically goes with such experiences withdraws.

There are aspects of Silence that can be strongly emotional – sometimes there is a strong sadness, even a grieving, but the quality of unconditional intimacy is never broken, and even these emotional qualities are miraculously without negativity. In the presence of Silence, emotionality transforms into soul-feeling. Emotion is a reaction to something, a drawing toward or a moving-away from something. Feeling is a being-with something.

We cannot speak of the intimacy of our Silence-filled connection with the world as a “positive” experience. This kind of evaluating polarizes the wholeness of imaginal consciousness, and somewhere there is bound to be an equally illusionary “negative” experience lurking. Besides, I want to assiduously avoid the new-age mentality of everything as positive. In our intimate connection with the world in Silence, the ego is not excluded, and judgmental consciousness comes through the ego. But, judgment is not present when we are fully conscious and in the presence of Silence. Here, ego is magically transformed by Silence. Since Silence is all-encompassing, nothing of our psychic make-up is left out. When Silence also pervades ego we are able to carry out our more usual daily actions without ego wanting to usurp the whole of consciousness. Typically, our ego exists in fear because it exists by separation – I am not this, I am not that, I want this, I need that, I am afraid I am not getting what I need. That sort of constant buzzing. Silence completely calms the fears through which ego exists as separation. We do not lose a sense of individuality in Silence. In fact, it is enhanced. We do not enter into any kind of dimmed or trance state in Silence. We are, in fact, more alert, more awake and more present.

It is the unconscious aspects of the ego that typically keep us spectators, looking at the world instead of being with it. We typically think of ego as our consciousness, so it is surprising to discover that there are unconscious aspects of ego-consciousness. Further, it is important to understand that “unconscious” does not refer to the activity of what exist unconsciously. What exists unconsciously is highly conscious. It is we who are not conscious of what goes on underneath usual consciousness. It is these unconscious, but very active aspects that are transformed in Silence. On the one hand, the ego, in its fear of the world, lives within the non-conscious fantasy of escaping the world – either by having power over it or power over others, or by imagining itself as already spiritualized. We live this sense of the ego unconsciously. It is present all the time. On the other hand, the ego fears the very possibility of the reality of spirit, for then it would seemingly have no place at all. So, ego coaxes us into believing that all the comfort imaginable, everything we will ever need or ever want is present here in the earthly world and can be possessed. We live, within our ego consciousness, a sense of complete self-sufficiency that denies the presence of the spiritual worlds. In this manner, this unconscious aspect of ego-consciousness makes us completely forgetful and unable to turn our attention toward the spiritual worlds. Silence transforms these two unconscious aspects of the ego. It does so by virtue of the fact that Silence takes fear away. Silence heals fear.

In Silence, then, we still have the capacity of focus that characterizes the functioning and true purpose of ego-consciousness, but we also have the new capacity of diffuse and whole consciousness that characterizes soul/spirit consciousness. When these two forms of consciousness meld, the world is perceived as holy.

When ordinary perception combines with Silence we perceive everything in its holiness. The world and others have a liturgical quality. By liturgical I mean that holiness here is not experienced in a static form, and the experience is something more than emotional sentiment. The ever- present movement of the currents of Silence takes us into the world as dramatic performance. We have dramatic form whenever there are polarities, opposites, and contradictions woven together in active motion. The world perceived through Silence reveals the utterly particular in tension with the deepest meaning of things around us. There is, before us and within us, the breathtaking moment of perceiving something – a rug, a chair, a person walking by, the leaves of a tree, cars on the street – in its absolute particularity, and the mark of this particularity is that it is accompanied by the emanation of a holy presence. We usually perceive things in terms of categories – just a rug, or a chair, or a person walking by – and miss the presence of the individuating soul that reveals itself. In Silence, things resonate within our soul, and each thing is experienced as “mine” and as “autonomous” at the same time; this is the experience of true intimacy and mystery. Something is within me and yet is totally free and independent of me. Ordinary consciousness cannot perceive in this way; it bifurcates the experience, and in usual perceiving, things are either possessed by my consciousness or left out there, alone as independent, abstract objects.

The image-filled qualities of the world perceived in and through Silence is further characterized by being filled with a subtle but unmistakable sense of anticipation. It is an anticipation that seems to belong to the things themselves rather than belonging to our inner state of being. This quality more than any other of the qualities of the world perceived in Silence makes Silence compelling. It is not the peace that Silence brings to us that makes us want to move toward it, but rather this aspect of holy anticipation within the very things of the world! An anticipation of what? By whom? The answer to this question is not given within the experience itself. The sense of anticipation is simply present and opens for us the experience of the world as on-the-way, as unfinished, as still in the process of being-created, of coming into being – and, as moving toward some unknown completion. Any sense of the world coming to an end is completely dispelled in Silence-filled perceiving. We also realize with this felt sense of anticipation, that our soul/spirit participation in Silence joins us with the ongoing action of the world coming-into-being.