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AHYMSIN NEWSLETTER, ISSUE - January 2014 | ||||||||||||||
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The Gifts of Silenceby Aditi M GaurA sadhaka’s record of her inner journey during a vow of ten day silence. This past December I took on a vow of silence for ten days at SRSG. I had prepared for this mentally a few weeks before arriving by asking myself to not expect anything. I had never taken on a vow of silence before and I didn’t know what to expect or how to prepare for it quite frankly. So the best attitude seemed to be one of openness and a willingness to discover what the experience would bring me.The first day seemed to just breeze by. Not talking was not difficult for me at all, I generally like to only speak as much as needed so it wasn’t proving to be difficult at all. How wonderful, I thought. This is so easy to do. The sense of calm I was feeling I attributed to the environment of the ashram and the energy that pervades it. I discovered that I woke up happy every morning and the feeling of joy stayed with me through the day. Wow, I thought to myself. I am enjoying this so much. It had been long since I had experienced continuous joyfulness. It had occurred when I was initiated and had stayed through the weeks that followed, but somehow in my life in Mumbai it would disappear and then reappear almost unexpectedly and sometimes over the smallest things. Now, that feeling of joy had become my partner so to speak. When I awoke, he was there to meet me and when I went to bed, he was still there. However, this constant joy was interrupted on the fourth and fifth day by a surge of negative emotions that came up almost unexpectedly. I would wake up happy, but after a couple of hours I found myself becoming restless, wanting to go outside the ashram premises. I was beginning to feel ‘caged’. One of the guidelines for observing the silence involved staying on the ashram premises, and my mind had started to reject that. I longed to go to my favourite café on the banks of the Ganga and have a cup of cappuccino. That cup of cappuccino had never appealed to me as much as during those days of silence! I began to feel very impatient and restless, not quite sure how to explain these feelings to my mentor. How would I explain that I just wanted to go out for a while, just get out for a little bit? My answer to the question arrived on the fifth day when I was at the Bio-feedback lab with Dr. Prabhu for an experiment that was being conducted. On being asked about how I was feeling emotionally, I started to write about my feelings on a piece of paper. And I didn’t exclude the longing for that cup of cappuccino. It made Dr Prabhu laugh and made me feel really small, but I knew I had to be honest. I didn’t know what was happening within me, but I wanted to understand it. “Become aware of your attachments,” he said. And I realized the depth of what he was saying. It had never occurred to me before and I saw clearly my own restlessness, my attachments as well as the tricks the mind was playing. The whole purpose in this journey is to become a ‘sakshi’ (witness) and finally I was witnessing everything that was within me. The ‘need’ to go out of the ashram came from somewhere, the ‘need’ for that cappuccino indicated something – and I had to face all of this instead of blindly indulging it. I remembered how casually I treated these things in my life outside the ashram. Feel like a coffee, go ‘grab’ one! I would apply no thought to it all. But I discovered that there is a difference in wanting something to fulfil one’s appetite and doing something on automation even though the body doesn’t require it. My body didn’t need the cappuccino; the need for it was the expression of something else. And I had to discover this ‘something else’. What was this ‘something else’ that was driving me to get out of the ashram, to indulge in that cappuccino, so much so that it had made me increasingly restless? I distinctly remember not enjoying the food I was eating or even enjoying the simple pleasures of admiring the flowers around me during those couple of days. This need to go out and have a cup of coffee had overwhelmed me so much. Before going to bed on the fifth day, I made a resolve to myself that I would not give in or give up. I recognized where these urges were coming from and indulging them was not the solution to it. I would not give in, I would dig deeper for the cause of it, I decided firmly. I awoke on the sixth morning feeling wonderful and the impatience was not there. I did look for it, but couldn’t find any trace of it. That morning I started to write and my mind started to bring things to the surface with great clarity. It amazed me. It felt as though a tap had been turned, and everything was just flowing! I discovered memories, patterns that I didn’t know still existed and I welcomed them and told them I was letting them go. There was no place for them in my life anymore. I wrote, wrote and wrote. And things became more and more clear. The source of my restlessness started to surface. After the seventh day, the joy returned and I felt light. The flowers seemed even more beautiful than I could remember them to be. The grass seemed greener. The people around me seemed more beautiful to me than I could ever remember them to be. I wanted to hug everyone I saw. I wanted to tell them that I felt love and wanted to share it with them. On the tenth day, I felt sorry to end my silence. I wanted to go on for another ten days. Look at all that came to the surface in these days, I thought to myself. Imagine what 20 days of silence could give me, I wondered. Having returned to my life in the city, I find that a part of me does miss those long beautiful days of not having to speak. But those ten days gave me an inner ‘grounding’ that I carry with me everywhere now. Even while I speak to others or am listening to them I can feel the silence within me. And I am enjoying its presence. It’s a place I return to very often during the day. I find it hard to describe what the silence feels like and I don’t think words will do it any justice. Just ask anyone who has experienced it. It cannot be described but can only be experienced and I urge everyone to experience it at least once. Editor’s Note:Aditi is a student in HYT-TTP. We invite you to visit her blog: http://yogalayablog.com/ Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama (SRSG) in Rishikesh, India, offers guided silence retreats as part of the guest programmes. Inquiries can be made at this link: http://ahymsin.org/main/accommodations-reservations.html We invite you to read “Silence after 2013” by Swami Veda Bharati at http://ahymsin.org/main/swami-veda-bharati/silence-after-2013.html Dr. Prabhu is the head of the Meditation Research Institute, the lab at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama. To read “Silence Which Speaks Loudly about Body and Mind”: http://www.ahymsin.org/docs2/News/1307Jul/05.html The lab often tests people who have taken silence retreats.
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