Silent encounter with silence!

As most of our daily routines go, we would be interacting with friends, colleagues, clients, boss, family etc and for this we ofcourse use words. Otherwise, we are either hooked onto a book or a television or the internet, again a source of more words. We are so accustomed to feeding on words that we cannot even for a minute sit silently.

What prompted me to write this post is that the whole of today I have been alone with myself at home. And what normally is perceived as boring or lonely can be really a beautiful experience, a great opportunity to dive within and experience the silence within. Thanks to our Master, this is possible for me today.

If we see carefully, every word we utter is like a drain of energy. Mind you, even every word we listen to is a drain of energy. This is because, each of these words that are fed into us trigger long thought chains inside our system. These thoughts are usually external, towards the outer world and hence drain us. Now, imagine you were to just turn this entire energy inward, how energizing it would be!

In fact, Swamiji puts people into silence in ashram, sometimes for weeks. He once narrated this incident where one of His disciples was talking a lot, being overly jumpy about things, shouting and fighting with fellow disciples in the monastery. Swamiji asked him not to engage in any conversations henceforth with anyone. The dedicated disciple, without questioning a word to the master went into silence unconditionally. He didn't even question how long he had to practice this vow. After 18 months, the master says, this disciple had flowered into a new being and from then on was blessed by the master to carry the master's vak (energy behind speech/words).

Forget about being silent for 18 months! Let us at least consciously make use of the wonderful opportunities we get when we happen to be alone. If we are left by ourselves even for an hour, our mind would race all over the world and come up with ways to avoid this silence. We either switch on the TV, read some novel or find some friend to catch up with. Why? Because we are afraid of facing this silence.. because facing the silence means facing ourselves.

So how do we actually make use of these moments of being alone to experience the vibrant silence inside? First of all, let us not avoid these moments of silence. Let us treat the times when we are alone as an opportunity to introspect, contemplate and go within. Here's a beautiful technique that Paramahamsa Nithyananda gives:

When we sit alone and there is a thought or a stream of words that pops up. Our first reaction would be to give meaning to these words. We take the words too seriously and go after the meaning. Instead, if we just watch them in a relaxed and detached manner without bothering about what they mean, we would gradually be transported to the space from where words arise. Ironically words arise from silence!

As Swamiji says, words are a call from consciousness. They happen in us simply to remind ourselves to look into the source. They are just calling us to that space. Let us take the call seriously and not the words itself!

I leave you with a related video by Swamiji. N!joy!