The Joy of Silence
I remember my first encounter with silence was in India. That was 18 years ago.
It was a month of silent retreat in an ashram. It wasn't planned as such.
My Indian friends, who were like family, invited me to visit their guru.
I wasn't really into any guru or ashram trending at the time. I grew up on Bollywood movies and was more interested in that than in spiritual practice.
The invitation, however, made its way to my curiosity.
I stayed a month, exploring, observing, listening to the guru, and deep within.
The silence in the ashram was to encounter the guru within, repeating a mantra given individually.
A couple of months later, I encountered silence in a different context. Burundi was my first mission to the field of conflict.
I would sit with my colleagues after work to have a drink and sit in silence for hours.
This was a no-purpose silence. We didn't agree or set the framework for the encounter with silence. But that was the cultural practice.
It was hard for me to digest that silence in the beginning.
It felt a different silence than I had just experienced in India in the ashram.
Here we are going out for a drink and sitting in silence. I found it the weirdest thing ever.
We would sit silently, saying nothing, for an entire hour or two.
Yet slowly, the fear surrounding the silence dissipated. I got in touch with the comfort of silence, sitting back, and having no pressure to fill in the silence.
This practice helped immensely with my facilitation skills and the training I delivered.
As a facilitator, allowing silence to take over a buzzing room of participants was like magic. I started enjoying the practice of silence and became comfortable with it.
I then re-encountered silence when I lost my eyesight. Not able to move anymore to my liking and having the social life that I used to have, I spent time primarily in silence. But that wasn't a comfortable silence. That was a silence loud with unspoken words and emotions.
Making a silent retreat as a practice differs from an imposed silence rather than being chosen.
The Joy of silence lies in this distinction. It is in choosing to hold a safe space for silence to take over the mind chatter.
When we practice silence, we allow our brains to process our emotions and information.
We explore and express our feelings rather than suppressing them and remaining on autopilot.
Some emotions are uncomfortable to feel, but it is in processing them that we can move forward in life and evolve. Silence helps us process those difficult emotions.
With silence, we become more self-aware and embrace the present moment as is.
Silence is relaxing, comforting, and loving.
When we give the other person our silence, we offer a part of ourselves. A precious part that acknowledges the ease and safety of that relationship
In a world where we are constantly communicating, the Joy of Silence fills in an essential part of creativity.
It allows the brain to have non-interrupted conversations; An idea can come to fruition. And creativity begets creativity.
For me, the Joy of silence is linked to the Joy of creativity.
The four days retreat I organized at the end of last year helped me encounter a deeper level of silence and abundant Joy.
It allowed me to access wisdom and creativity that my fast pace wouldn't allow me to access. And it is at the birth of this blog.
Silence got me here. `
As Rumi says: Let silence take you to the core of life.