How is it possible to be in silence when the world around you is moving so fast and you’re noticing fear, conflict, jealousy and competition? The energy clash is enough to steer your attention toward it and amplify the “negative” energy experience.
Immerse yourself in your own breath. Inner peace is possible regardless of opposing energies. No matter where you are “planted”, it is possible to slow the inner self down and allow a new peace and quiet to take root. Even if it is over a cup of coffee, standing in grocery lines or walking in the rain to your parked car. Noble silence is a gift that can be captured by your intention to do so.
Stepping inward.
Stepping inward is a way out of the fray. It is a path to empowerment, intuition and freedom. And a place where you can choose more powerfully where you want to place your attention. Because, attention directs your energy, your concentration and inevitably creates more of “that” focal experience.
If you feel distracted and notice it, you can get pulled in and caught in an “attention” vice grip. Noticing “it” creates a spiral of more distraction, becoming more stressed about wasting time and then, escaping it with, yes, more distraction. And, with enough repetition, it becomes a bad habit that holds us back from what we really want to achieve. Break the pattern with noble silence. Don’t let time-wasting activities destroy the quality of your life and cause you to miss it, entirely.
If you’re suffering, you’re thinking.
Quote from Intelligencer article: Andrew Sullivan “My Distraction Sickness___and Yours. 2016/09
A simple act of breaking that stronghold with silence-works. It just requires one simple thought, “Tune in”. Listen and pay attention to the mind chattering, fighting you a bit with nothing to do. Use your breath to clear out the mind clutter. Surrender to the present moment.
Here are 2 simple exercises you can do right now to clear out a negative state.
- Follow your breath in and your breath out. Focus on it. Let everything else go as you immerse yourself in the moment.
- Feel your inhaled breath energize your entire body. Imagine yourself sweeping out negativity, energy blocks and thoughts that distract, cause fear, dis-ease and doubt with each exhale.
Being able to immerse yourself in inner silence takes practice. You learn to “shift” inwards and command your own energy. You automatically improve concentration. Just by choosing to focus inward, your mind is being re-trained to sharpen and focus.
Retreats and your own holy monastery.
When we think of noble silence in the Buddhist traditions, you might imagine an exotic retreat. Days of complete silence. Surrounding yourself with spiritual masters who are there to catalyze a spiritual experience in you. Or, maybe you see it as an invitation to a mystical or holy experience? Or, as a disciplined retreat that has the potential to break the undisciplined meditator in minutes.
Broken or about to be, we have a lot of resistance to inner silence it seems! But it isn’t all about suffering. Deep relaxation and “bliss zones” can change us in unexpected moments. It just takes the willingness to explore the discipline of mindfulness and the freedom it brings. And, better. You don’t need to travel to remote places to experience profound changes or progress.
Holy retreats can be created wherever you are. We are all divine beings. Appreciating yourself as a God-given expression can be done anywhere. Just choose to create time to retreat inward and connect with yourself deeply by listening and feeling the present moment for what it is and all that it is.
Connecting to the present moment.
When you sit still, it is possible to make a connection to the present moment. But it is also possible to connect with the moment with repetitive movements as a type of mindfulness training. Simple movements can also have a calming effect on the mind. It allows it to focus on one thing and instantly brings itself into the present moment and expands it. What you feel, hear, smell, taste and see are merged into being present and noticing being alive. For those who struggle with sitting still, using movement as meditation will set your mind free. And, as your ability to focus gets stronger and stronger, then try more sessions sitting still.
Even with practice, you will still have thoughts that will interrupt your noble silence. But it is just as easy to be distracted as it is to learn how to close that door in your mind and remain peaceful. Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh describes his experience as a young monk leaving a room and being told to come back and mindfully close the door. Knowing how to be present as you do things, shifts your awareness to another level of consciousness.
Learn how to be more present, aware and focused. When you become more aware and present, you can mindfully close the door on any conflict, anger, fear and distraction. Whether you sit still or engage in repetitive movement meditations to manage stress and heal your body, mindfulness allows the body to deeply rest and take back its own power by what it discards and notices.
There are 2 types of “tired”, I suppose. One is the dire need of sleep, the other is the dire need for peace.
Deep Listening.
The inner peace and silence we experience when we close our eyes and relax deeply in meditation is not always the same day to day. We need to learn how to adjust our radar to listen deeply. Even though inner silence is the foundation of deep listening, they are distinctly different, yet, intertwined.
Inner silence, to me, is a feeling and an experience. Deep listening is a “knowing” that taps into the flow of energy throughout the body and translates that feeling into information. We learn to receive information and a knowing about something imbalanced in the body. And, we can learn to heal ourselves with allowing deep rest and deep relaxation.
Wellness travel goes inward.
There is a lot of hype over creating inner peace. A lot of pressure in fact, to sit still and to find peace when we are being bombarded with distractions and deadlines. But noble silence needs to be reconfigured as part of our own wellness travel and a way to create a spa for the mind through meditation practice. Just finding the time to travel inward and creating a type of mental get-away, a way to purge thoughts that are causing us anxiety, fear, doubt and confusion in day is essential. Mindfulness while drinking your morning coffee or sitting on a bench near a park or a tree with your phone off, will empower you. Over time, these pauses will add up to more inner peace and comfort with this silence and more opportunities for the higher mind’s wise counsel.
Daily bites of inner peace can create:
- Improved quality of sleep.
- Stress relief.
- Reduced blood pressure.
- Deep rest and accelerated healing.
Discovering the energy of Oneness.
Being alone in silence doesn’t mean you are cut off from other people. It becomes the opposite. When you engage the heart and mind and experience what scientists call “heart coherence” we become powerfully linked to everyone energetically.
Scientists have experimented with meditation and its ability to shift consciousness and reduce violence. Holding the intention to create peace meditators were asked to focus on certain cities at a specific time. Each zone noted a significant reduction in violence. Coincidence? or a demonstration of the power of Oneness. You decide.
Boredom vs Peace and quiet.
Are we becoming confused about peace and quiet?
We are conditioned to respond to short messages and images. Ten second windows for your attention are now three seconds due to the massive bombardment of images and text and information feeds to capture our attention. As a result we are being trained not to relax or pay attention. So that, the prospect of sitting still to mediate might seem terrible, an excruciating exercise to “resist” looking at your devices. It’s all we can do not to get up and do something else. All these downloads of information conditions us to confuse boredom with peace and quiet. But it is nothing of the sort.
The new peace and quiet is a growing expansion of aliveness and awareness. Your personal power grows as you “decide” what YOU want to focus on. Allow energy to flow through you and become a vessel that is awake and open to intuitive and creative inspiration. Here, it is possible to ignite high performance states, flow states, through focusing on the present.
Silent pauses invite massive changes in productivity. We gain insights. Solve problems. Open our thoughts to free flowing ideas and new ways to observing them inside our own mind’s eye. Just when we feel that we are being left behind somehow, with deadlines, and where we feel we should be, a small opening appears in our day that will give us an incredible edge, a speed bullet of an insight.
Trust in small time slots of noble silence. They are healing, inspiring, calming and empowering. And, a prerequisite to high performance and your own freedom from distraction.
Have a peace-filled week.