Silence

“The universe within your mind is greater than the one outside it.”

This is the penultimate line from the Day 60 lesson, something I have always known.

I used to sit in silent meditation, waiting for a great revelation to come. I can’t recall how many years I did that – I started meditating circa 1976. People I met over the course of time who meditated told me of the marvelous experiences they had and I just had emptiness, a vastness, a blackness, nothing, no-thing. For a while, a long while, I thought I was doing something wrong, that the astral journeys and spiritual experiences others were having was just not open to me. I just enjoyed the emptiness.

As I studied more healing techniques – qigong, the esoteric use of sound and color, acupuncture, etc., etc., I had more ‘mystical’ experiences, but I realized these were only another step back into the silence. Once a few years ago during a meditation after being in a group with a chanting master I experienced the land of no-breath. The only thought that came to me was that breathing was optional, there was no difference between physically being here or not. It was a little like dying I suppose.

When I studied the Voice for Love technique, which is really just extending love to all one’s own thoughts, blending with one’s higher self/Holy Spirit/God and asking a question, that is when I learned that there was a clear communication from Spirit which was very open to me. For me it has been through words and now through painting. I do not ask any questions, Spirit speaks to me and through me if I want. Otherwise I just sit every morning in silence and spend the day quieting my mind when I notice it is running away from me, the True me.

As I have been reading about some of my Facebook friends (see Regina Dawn Akers’ posts) who are embarking on a year of silence, I salute you. My job requires talking although now that I am doing only geriatric work with those who no longer communicate much verbally, I have little to say too.  

Although I am now feeling a need to communicate more from what I have learned from being in this state of openness, and having written a book from that empty space, for those of you who are going into silence, you will find an inner joy and peace, the vastness that I have always known but thought I was missing something.

It is everything.