In the silence of my heart

Mount the stallion of Love and do not fear the path
–Love's stallion knows the way exactly.
With one leap, Love’s horse will carry you home.
However black with obstacles the way may be.
-
Jalal-ud-Din Rumi (Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)

The invitation for our weekly meditation group read, "Once again we will gather to explore the quiet. This time let’s examine the contrast of our Sounds Like Soul and our usual diet of daily tunes. Let’s see what plays."

It was the diet of daily tunes that intrigued me. What is my daily diet? Is it CBC FM on my car radio? Or the meditation music I listen to every morning. Perhaps, it's the hum of voices outside my office or the constant ringing of phones in offices all around me. Finding the silence is challenging amidst the day's constant cacophony of sound. Feeling my way into the richness of space between every sound is daunting.

I am accustomed to noise. to constantly hearing something going on all around. So accustomed that I do not sometimes recognize silence. I do not hear its vastness beckoning me into the quiet where I am at peace with the world around me. There is always the hum of my computer. The tup, tup, tup of my fingertips on the keyboard. The squeak of my office chair when I turn to the left. The schirrrr of tires on a car spinning against the asphalt outside my window as it drives by. I hear in another part of the house a ticking. The clock by the front door. Ellie snuffles in the bedroom, "Is it breakfast time yet?"

Around me there is noise encompassed by silence. Around me is silence filled with noise. One is not separate from the other. They are not different. They are part of the whole.

Last night, as we sat in our meditation circle and shared the quiet, I felt the silence envelop me. I felt its soft, velvety embrace and let myself sink into the glorious richness of its warm, welcoming lightness of being. And yet, in that silence there was noise. The rustle of our guide searching for a reading. The changing of a CD. There was music. Sonorous voices. Tenors. Sopranos. "Kyria Eleison."

There was a richness of sound and in each sound a depth of silence.

"How do we carry this energy, these feelings out from this space into there, the world beyond, into our every day?" asked our guide.

"It is the same for me when I am in Tofino," I said. "I feel part of the flow. I am the flow. Creativity oozes from every pore. My entire being is immersed in wonder. And I wonder, how can I sustain this in the concrete world of the city? How can I transport this flow to my everyday? How do I hold myself in the flow?"

There is not one and not the other. There is no "flow here" and then "no flow here". They are not different. They are all part of the whole and I am the whole sum of my flow parting ways with the silence. The concrete doesn't block me from flow. The blocking is from within me. Not the world around me.

I shift perspective and embrace the flow. I hear the ocean's roar within my mind. I hear my heart beat roaring within me.

In the meditation last night I rose high up into the sky, up above earth. I became the light. One with the Universe. One with the Divine. I let the Love flow from my heart, onto earth, around earth, into the earth. I felt it flow and felt my body soften. There was such sorrow. Such woe. Tragedy. Suffering. Joy too. There was so much here on earth to contend with. So many words to describe what was happening. And no matter what was present -- fear, joy, hatred, discrimination, terror, war, fighting, abuse -- there was Love.

Always Love.

What was stripped away for you this evening? Dal, our guide asked me as I left.

The noise.

It was the noise.

The constant chatter of do this, buy that, get here, go there. Be this way. Don't be that way. The constant cacophony of sound pulling me away from Source. Pulling me out of silence. Pulling me out of my heart.

Yesterday's Daily Om reading said, "We spend a lot of time attempting to put the feelings in our hearts into words, to communicate to others our passions, our emotions, and our love. Often we are so busy trying to translate our heart’s roar into language that we miss the most profound experience the heart has to offer, which is silence."

I am a busy translator. Always searching for the 'right' word to create the perfect picture to explain what is happening within me, and without me. I am a master of words listening to the roar of my heart and missing the silence in every beat.

Listen to the silence of your heart. Hear its invitation to expand into the wonder of knowing your daily diet of tunes is just an old song you play to keep you from knowing the silence within.

Listen to the silence of your heart.

In the silence of my heart
my soul listens
to the beat
of my being
called home
to Love.

Nameste.