THAT IS
PURE SILENCE OF ORIGINAL CREATON
THE CORE OF ALL
<
FROM THAT QUIET DEPTH
SOULUTIONS ARISE
ew
5:55 AM-4/24/19
so utterly alone,
that we withdraw into our innermost self.
It is a way of bitter suffering.
for we find that our innermost self is the spirit,
that it is God, the indivisible. .....
yet undisturbed by its multiplicity,
for our innermost soul
we know ourselves to be one with all being.
— Hermann Hesse
- John Roger Barrie
The eloquence of the deepest silence echoes from the eternal.
Originating there and reverberating
through the ripples of time and space.
It bursts forth in shimmering waves, forming light
and color, shadow, and dimension.
But it remains unchanged.
Never affected by the slightest permutation of outer phenomenon,
silence interweaves the temporal
but is forever untouched by it.
overlaid with the mutable
patchwork garment we know as the visible universe,
silence forms
the woof and warp of all things seen and unseen.
Yet at any instant
it is immanent and accessible.
To the mystic,
silence is the ground,
the core of reality.
All else relates to and emanates from it.
It is God,
it is Buddha; it is Allah.
But, to paraphrase Lao Tzu,
to name it is to elude its essence.
It can only be experienced.
envelops and permeates us?
Merely affirming its existence will not garner for us
its experiential realization.
It is spiritual practice [like meditation]
that provides us with the means to fine tune our faculties
so that we perceive it for ourselves.
Such practice enables us, in due course,
to experience a blistering,
conscious realization of silence
that
suffuses the core of our being.
an aspirant is attempting to encounter silence firsthand.
This is the quintessential journey in life - the inner sojourn.
It is returning to a source long ago forgotten
but often glimpsed unawares.
periphery of awareness is the goal of the mystic.
The mystic consciously dives into silence, at first unfelt.
With repeated practice it becomes
a living, palpable Presence
filled with immeasurable
vitality and boundless,
nondual continuity.
But what causes this
gradual revelation?
The simplest answer is that we are habituated to noise.
We are addicted to novelty, sensation, to ourselves.
Fuss and commotion,
mental chattering and outer stimulation
occupy our minds from
dawn to dusk.
rightly noted that we are overflowing
with our own ideas and opinions.
When one is clattering away
on a keyboard sixteen hours every day,
the capacious pockets of silence are kept well at bay.
We thereby deafen ourselves to the
underlying silence we would
otherwise clearly hear.
and calling a temporary
halt to the random noise
- inner and outer -
to which we are subject,
we create an environment conducive to
the manifestation of silence.
Welling up from within,
this silence subtly engulfs us,
drowning out
all the noise of existence.
When constantly engaged at the forefront of our minds,
our awareness restlessly flutters about
from thought to thought,
sensation to sensation,
thus pushing out silence.
(...continuing this AFTERNOON ...)
AFTERNOON
through the surface waves of the mind
forges an inward path
to the deepest levels of silence.
When deliberately sustained....
this inner drilling displaces the obfuscatory debris
that clutters the mind
with a matrix of noise.
exhausted, genuine silence emerges.
But, many prefer the comfort of noise,
the bustling of crowds,
the constant engagement of
new thoughts and interesting repartee.
a certain arena of the familiar and venturing
into uncharted territories.
While one may fruitfully participate
in communal spiritual activities,
quite often the deeper stages of this voyage
are undertaken
by oneself.
is to point the inner compass in an outward direction.
This is the most subtle trap
to which the feeble mind continually succumbs.
For to interact constantly with the objects of the senses
is to eclipse entirely the realm of silence,
which is first experienced within.
When repeatedly accessed,
the decibel level of true silence will deafen
the resolute mystic.
silence is known by those who take the leap.
The adventuresome hiker seeks areas untrampled
by the masses.
The successful inner voyager treks to the precipice,
and then, having encountered the Unknowable,
brazenly discards map and
compass and boldly treads onward.
cry that seized the Psalmist:
"Be still and know that I am God."
John Roger Barrie
Excerpt from
Parabola
via - No Mind's Land
https://parabola.org/2018/09/26/the-deepest-silence-by-john-roger-barrie/
all else is poor translation.
Rumi