The Power Of Silence

Making moments of silence an integral part of our lives

For most of us, our younger years are spent engaged in a flurry of different activities. It is for this reason that we stereotypically portray the youth as being energetic and restless. This characteristic, which we often use to distinguish the difference between youth and adulthood, was perhaps more so the case in our collective past, however, in our modern era we are starting to become aware of the fact that this restlessness is increasingly permeating all age groups and divisions within society.

One of the reasons why this restlessness is more prevalent in the youth, generally speaking, is because of the fact that we generally have a higher degree of vitality in our youth. In other words, there is more energy available to us that can be used at this stage of our lives. Thinking in more simplistic terms, we can imagine each person to be like a battery of sorts which is fully charged when we are born. This means that our youth represents the period of time in our lives when our batteries are still almost ‘full’, whereas old age would be the period of our lives where our batteries are close to empty, relatively speaking.

This increased amount of energy available to us in our youth can be greatly beneficial if it is used wisely, because it is at this time in our lives when we typically begin the process of laying the foundations for much of the rest of our lives, as we generally find ourselves beginning to become independent from our families. Another reason for this is that with wisdom comes the understanding that our life represents a certain quotient of energy, and any wasted energy is, on some level, not the best way to pay our respects to the life that we have been given.

It is ironic then that wisdom is usually gained via the internal integration of the experiences that enter into and become a part of our lives, which means that by the time we have developed the wisdom to know what is most appropriate for us to do with the energy that we do have, we are usually much older and we find ourselves with less of this energy available to us. This is not always the case, and will be dependent on the various circumstances we find ourselves in as well as how we approach these circumstances, but it could be considered to be a general rule of thumb.

Some people are fortunate to have gone through, and integrated, various life-changing experiences from a younger age, and therefore under these circumstances will have ‘accrued’ a certain understanding and wisdom of the world much earlier on. It is therefore often the case that you will find that a person who we would generally classify as being ‘wise’ is someone who has gone through a variety of different life-changing experiences. Important to note though, is not just that they have experienced certain things, but that they took the time and effort to integrate those experiences. Without this integration having occurred, a significant shift in the conscious perception of that individual cannot have happened, which in turn means that they have not developed wisdom based on those experiences. 

It is for this reason that we generally find it more commonplace to be aware of a large number of people around us who have gone through a variety of difficult experiences, but only a handful of these who have fully translated those experiences into wisdom which can then be passed onto others. The reader should take a brief moment to realise that there is a distinct difference between developing wisdom and developing one’s intellect; they are two very different things. It was a number of intense experiences that became a part of my own life, which were then fully integrated by embracing the ‘power of silence’, that became the basis for much of what is published here. 

These periods where we integrate various different experiences can appear to be strange from the perspective of any external observer, because to this outside observer it often looks as though everything in the person’s life that they are observing has come to a standstill. This perception of things is primarily based on the fact that the external observer is unaware of the internal activity which is occurring for the individual that they are observing. The difference between the concepts of internal and external activity will become clearer to the reader as we continue on through the article. 

Understanding the value of this integrative period has become increasingly difficult in a modern age where we constantly think we need to be moving or active in order to ‘make progress’. It is hoped that these writings are able to help the reader come to a deeper understanding of the process of integrating their external experiences internally and, in so doing, help them to understand not only how to engage with this process, but also helping them to see the value of engaging with it. Looking into this more closely allows us to come to see the distinction more clearly between the appearance of the phenomenal world and something which is often referred to in these writings as the ‘underlying reality’. This means that, even though there can appear to be very little activity occurring on the surface of things in our lives, underneath the surface, internally, a flurry of activity can still exist. Unless we have developed ourselves though, we will not be able to become aware of this internal activity within others or ourselves.

To that end, to gain a deeper understanding of all of the topics being mentioned here at the start of the article, the focus of this article will be on the concept of silence. Although we commonly use this word to indicate an absence of sound, the reader should be aware that here we are going one level deeper than this more literal meaning of the word, in order to look at the principle which lies behind the phenomenon of silence. It is this principle that is also the same principle that lies behind the phenomenon of stillness. Silence is the instance where that principle becomes related to the concept of sound, whereas the phenomenon of stillness is the same principle, only now this is the instance when it is related to the concept of movement. Even though they manifest different phenomenally, it is because they relate to the same principle that these two separate phenomena have, in some way, become linked to each other in our minds. 

This principle can also be seen manifested in the world around us in a variety of different ways. Think of how, at certain times of the day or the year, you can go out into nature and find moments when this stillness or silence can be directly experienced by you. In these moments it is as if the world you are so aware of has come to a brief stop, which gives you as the observer an unmistakable feeling of a ‘presence’. What I am alluding to here is that this principle is not only something that is experienced by us through our eyes and ears, but there is an internal feeling associated with it which we can become aware of that also relates to it.

Us experiencing this presence, silence or stillness is really our conscious perception coming in touch with a truly incalculable potential. It is a potential which cannot so easily be quantified, but rather a certain quality exists as a part of it, which goes beyond any quantity that we could ever try to associate with it. The nature of this quality and the reasons for how it interacts with us in the way in which it does will be covered in future articles and is beyond the scope of the discussion in this article. 

The principle of silence is often not understood but our understanding of it is a vitally important part of the self developmental process. Internally realising this principle creates drastic shifts in our conscious perception. This is because, for most of us, our conscious perception is lost in the phenomenal world around us rather than being focused on the deeper reality which lies beneath these various different phenomena. Anything which you have not internally realised will be something which you can only perceive the phenomenal nature of, and therefore naturally you will be unable to perceive the reality of. This lack of internal realisation exists for any individual in these cases because a block in their conscious perception is preventing the full internal integration by them of a particular phenomenon.