Silence

Pujya Gurudev Pt. ShriRam Sharma;s Kripa

Silence

(Akhand Jyoti Nov.Dec.2004)

(An excerpt from Catherine Ingram’s Book - Passionate Presence) Published with the Author’s glad consent Catherine Ingram is a compelling force in the western spiritual arena. She is a renowned Dharma teacher. Since 1992 she has led Dharma Dialogues, which are public events of inquiry into the nature of Awakened Awareness and its benefits in life. She also leads numerous Silence Retreats each year and is the founder- president of LIVING DHARMA, and educational organization dedicated to spiritual inquiry and service. She is also the author of In the Footsteps of Gandhi: Conversations with Spiritual / Social Activists (1990). Her writing clearly flows out of her realization.- Editor.

In the deepest recesses of ourselves there is most familiar quietude. It has been through all our seeking and craving, as well as all the other events of our lives. It is a point of peace, a silent witnessing awareness that is fundamentally unperturbed no matter what happens. Stepping in this awareness, one is at ease in the present, fully welcoming what comes and fully releasing what goes, feeling alive throughout. This awareness is not something far away and in another time. It is already occurring here and right now. For instance, while watching a movie, we may swirl in a sea of emotions - fearful, romantic, humorous or tragic. If the story is especially potent, we might feel all these emotions in a single film. Yet no matter how swept away we might be by the movie or how gripped by emotions of the experience, there is within us a quiet witnessing awareness that knows perfectly well that we are sitting in a theatre all the while. If that were not so, we would surely flee the room as soon as any frightening situation occurred on the screen.

We would run for our lives upon seeing the first weapon or firestorms coming at us, were it not for some part of our awareness knowing that the visions on the screen are not our fundamental reality. In a similar way, there is a field of silent awareness containing all the events of our days. Although we may sometimes be gripped by emotion or lost in a particular story, there is throughout each of our dramas a deeper reality of silent presence. 

This is a silence of the heart rather than an imposed cessation of speech or activity. It is a silence that is, we could say, the background of all activity. We don't need to find it because it is not lost. If this is so, why is there so much searching and craving? Seeking is compelling because it produces a way for the mind to have a job. It seems that we are almost genetically programmed toward restless mental occupation with desire and avoidance, a desperate squirming out of now. Perhaps nature has demanded that we keep on the move in order to stay alive, but this is becoming detrimental to life. We have evolutionarily outgrown the usefulness of being in a prevailing state of fear and greed in order to compete and survive. We can no longer afford it. It is driving us to disaster. Nevertheless, it is strange how much we resist the inherent peace and quiet that is always possible. Perhaps this is because resting in simple presence is so foreign to a lifelong habit of mental complication, and we may have confused complication with sense of aliveness. We might assume that having no particular mental object would result in boredom. Or we may be overwhelmed by how vast and free life suddenly feels when our minds are not on the hunt. 

As the prisoner who, upon being released, quickly finds a way to land himself back in jail, or the bird who resists the flight out when its cage door is opened, we are sometimes daunted by freedom and retreat into cramped but familiar closet of a busy mind. Yet in the awakened awareness the mind acclimates itself into an expansion in silence. It gets used to letting neurotic thoughts drift and fade into nothingness, and it gradually loses interest in them even as they continue to arise. 
Disinterest in neurotic thoughts limits their power. What becomes interesting is the open expanse of awareness through which all thoughts and everything else emerge and dissolve. And because this is ongoing, the perception of it can sneak up on you at any moment.(Continue)

Thanks GOD, Thanks Sadguru,

Shiv Sharma