Listening For The Silence.
The mind can be a noisy place. Desires, fears, addictions, grief, sadness, excitement, anticipation, chores, work, other people’s needs, relationship issues, climate change, death, destruction, politics, the non-stop news, all of it, takes place in such a small place, all inside whatever it is that we call a mind. All in that invisible arena. From the morning when you wake up, until the moment it turns itself off miraculously for it’s nightly sleep re-boot. IF it does turn itself off and allow you the peace of sleep.
I’m trying to pay less heed to my own noise. To live in a quiet space. Meditation helps with this. I only do 20 minutes. I focus on silence, I focus on my breathing, I focus on the sounds I can hear outside of my head, the early morning traffic, or the boiler coming on, or the last of the mosquitos whining about somewhere in the room with me. I also focus on the silence around and between those sounds, the underlying quiet of it all.
When I walk to work now I pay attention to the world around me. I hear the sound of the wind in the leaves of the trees, how the sound changes pitch, and volume and intensity. I look up at the vastness of the sky. I note the feeling of the air on my skin. It makes me feel solid and real. Unlike when I’m flitting around in my head, my brain alighting on past failure, or future ambition, or hope or pain, or a task that needs doing, or how busy everything always seems to be.
I try to drink it in, so that during the bustle of the day I remember the silence, and try to function from that still quiet place.
