Oakville Zen Meditation
Listening to silence
Have you ever tried to listen to the silence for a few minutes? If not, try, it because it is a wonderful exercise to teach your mind and body to rest, be still, and…quiet.
When it is quiet outside it will become quiet inside
How to listen to “nothing”? Whenever there is silence with or without a few sounds/noises, learn to be just mindful of it w/o any
analytic thinking. When we focus on the silence around us, we are freezing our thinking mind because it does not know what to listen to since there is no sound to receive and analyze. Listening to nothing triggers a “short” in our neural circuits because, again, our mind listens to “nothing” and does not know what to do! You reach a state of simple non-thinking awareness, and this is, eventually, the initial key to serenity and equanimity.
So: what is awareness?
Awareness is BEING in an almost selfless mode since it defines the main attribute of our essential nature called consciousness. Awareness is a critical part of our inner self. Without it, there would be no sensorial experience, no perception, no thoughts, no sound, and no words. In fact, our genuine True self is awareness or consciousness incarnated into a biological self-centered person.
Practicing mindfulness-based awareness of external silence triggers 3 important states:
1 Creating a non-thinking state or pure genuine consciousness as the background to all our sensorial perceptions. In fact, it defines the egoless being.
2 Getting quietness, stillness, and alertness of our body and mind.
3 Bringing body and mind into the same space-time that is now is rarely the case since o
our mind is usually in the future or in the past and seldom in the present.
Any disturbing noise can be helpful when you focus on silence. How? By dropping your inner resistance to the external noises and by allowing them to be as they are, your acceptance also takes you into the realm of your inner peace called stillness.
Final words:
Again, the equivalent of our external noise is our inner thinking. On the opposite: the equivalent of external silence is our inner quietness and stillness that we can achieve and experience quite easily by being aware of our surrounding silence in a mindful way. Inner quietness and stillness define our non-thinking, non-ego-driven, non-biological, selfless, being, very close to pure immaterial consciousness.
I found that listening to silence is the most effective way to achieve body and mind relaxation, and daily meditation has been of great help in this practice.
Silence is one of the best tools to anchor our noisy restless minds.
