“Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb.” Pythagoras (570-495 B.C.E.)
For many of us, the busyness of Christmas and New Year’s Day is broken by a week or so of slower paced days that exist between these holidays. Is there a way to take these quiet times and go deeper into the silence? Here is an excerpt from the recent book “Your Life, Live it Well: Spirituality” that may point you in one direction:
There is value and importance to the practice of silence and meditation in your life. Yet, in our culture, spending time alone and in silence is often discouraged. However, if you want to diminish dissatisfaction in your life, learn to sit quietly in a room alone and meditate. How so?
It has been estimated that the average person has sixty thousand thoughts each and every day. The problem is that we repeat these same thoughts tomorrow and the next day. Our minds are filled with the same chatter day in and day out. Learning to be quiet and meditate involves determining a way to enter the spaces between your thoughts. In this silent and empty space between your thoughts, you can find a sense of total peace in a realm that is ordinarily unknowable. Here, any illusion of your separateness is shattered. However, if you have sixty thousand separate thoughts a day, is there literally time available to enter the space between your thoughts?
Most of us have minds that race with continuous dialogue day and night. We think about schedules, money, sexual fantasies, grocery lists, concern about children and the carousel never stops. . .
And so you probably have no training in silence. You keep the inner dialogue inside your head going just like the outer. Yet it is in the silent place where the ancient teacher Pythagoras tells you to let your quiet mind listen and absorb, so that confusion will disappear and enlightened guidance will come to you. . .
There are many courses of study, manuals, and audio guides to give you instructions on how to meditate. Moreover, meditation is not just for those spiritual seekers who want to spend the hours, days, and years of their lives in deep contemplation, void of productivity and social responsibility. Meditation is a practice that can greatly benefit anyone who engages in it.
[Excerpt from “Your life, Live it Well: Spirituality” copyright 2013 by Ann M. Babiarz & Lori Vargas, all rights reserved. Used by permission.]