 |
|||||
| AHYMSIN Newsletter, Issue - Jan 2013 | |||||
|
|||||
Speak to Me of Silenceby Nandini Grace BishopPlease speak to me of Silence There is movement in the tossing of the waves Then there are the shallow deeps, each In the depths a different song Sometime ago, Swami Veda invited me to do a 40 day silence. This was beautiful, but that is another story. Later he invited me to do a 90 day silence. What a gift! And last year it should have happened, but due to unforeseen family circumstances, it was postponed until this November 2012. Now I am here. I arrived determined to fulfil this wish although I had been sick for a good week before leaving my home in England. I hoped that the change in climate would improve things. It didn’t, and I developed bronchitis. I began that 90 days determined that I would get better soon. I was completely blocked, so the 90 days became a 40 day programme. Yes, I felt let down, disappointed, having travelled so far for this purpose! But only for a short time. Things slowly improved and I re-started my silence. It felt right. It felt good. I asked myself ‘Who’ is being let down and disappointed? Slowly, all these negative feelings left me. There was no clear guidance about how to approach this new set of circumstances, so I went one day and sat in the Ma Tara Temple and devised a plan of action. One thing I decided to do was to give myself a helpful phrase or an inspiring word to guide me through each day. For example, I used “Joy and Stillness.” So, in my thoughts and actions, joy and stillness would infiltrate my consciousness and influence my every moment. This brought me to the ‘here and now,’ not thinking about these past problems or future hopes. On my first day I walked beside the River Ganges with “Joy and Stillness” as far as Sadhana Mandir Ashram. I sat beside the little lotus pool in the garden and contemplated the beautiful reflections of the clouded blue sky slowly drifting across the surface. All was quiet: so peaceful. A good place to start! As my retreat progressed, frustrations arose due to constant noise everywhere. It seemed I was surrounded by shouting kids and noisy neighbours near my cottage. So what could I do? Well, I have heard it said that Silence can be practiced ‘in the market-place,’ so I have to ‘let go’ of all my pre-conceived ideas about having a ‘nice silent retreat in a quiet place’! I have to say that it has not been easy. In one of the silent evening meditations with Swamiji, I focused within and asked “What to do?” “Listen within” came the reply. So, I listened within and incredibly, some sort of light-illumination washed through my interior being and the frustrations disappeared. This seemed very promising. Now the question arose ‘how to move on?’ Another couple of affirmations I had was “Be positive,” “Let go,” and “Contentment.” So with these thoughts, I found myself in the ashram bookshop and to my joy, I discovered and bought a copy of The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. Wonderful! It changed everything for me. This little book was the simple guidance I needed. It is full of the Perennial Wisdom, and in the forward, it says:
Silence, I realized, is not something we can ‘obtain.’ It is already there within us. As Swamiji once said during a talk on the Yoga Sutras, all that needs to be done is to “remove the blocks.” Once these are gone, all is revealed, I discovered. Another time I used the phrase “empty out.” So I went and sat in the Yagña Shala for an hour or two, just sitting, being, listening within and emptying out. This proved to be fantastic. No thoughts, no feelings of frustration, just empty of ‘stuff’ yet full in a luminous sort of way. Light seemed to fill those spaces where ‘blocks’ had been. I felt clean and clear. ‘Silence’ as a witnessing process was slowly and surely seeping into my consciousness. I could smile with others. I could even write notes, and discovered an a most extraordinary thing, that now, my interior silence and stillness remained steady whilst things came and went and happened on the surface without disturbing my inner equilibrium at all. Silence has become a process of ‘letting go’ on many levels, a journey into progressively more profound levels of stillness until one finally ‘disappears’ or gets immersed into That Vastness, which is eternally ever-flowing from one still-point center. Indeed, silence is a journey to the Self, but in truth, there is no ‘journey’ to anywhere as we come to know in the silence that we are already ‘That.’ If only we could just allow our minds to stop blocking Its Presence. That silence is one natural state is such a beautiful discovery I realized and so freeing. Sound comes out of silence and not the other way round. This is one true nature. Happily, I also discovered that “quantity” was not the important factor here – whether I did 90 days or 40 days, but what was important was the ‘quality’ of this retreat and that Divine Grace could descend at any moment, giving that inner awareness of the timelessness and beauty of silence. Editor's NoteNandini has written four books. They are:
|
|||||
 |
|||||