“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” ~ Rumi
Life is loud. There is rarely a moment in the day when most of us stop moving and stop the noise. For most of us, we are working, we are moving, we are driving, we are listening to things on our headphones, we are watching things, we are filling up the little pauses and spaces by checking our phones.
This isn’t wrong — it’s a very human tendency to want to be busy, productive, filling every space with something useful or entertaining. We humans don’t like just to sit.
But what if we could let ourselves become quiet?
What happens is something magical: we start to discover a new way of being alive, and a deeper experience starts to reveal itself.
What does it mean to become quiet? Aren’t we quiet when we are sitting, thumbing through our phone apps? That is not the same thing I am talking about here. Quiet doesn’t have a simple definition.
Some thoughts on quiet:
• Quiet means slowing down for at least a few minutes, physically — refrain from moving around doing a lot of things, refrain from doing a bunch of tasks on your computer or phone, but instead just sit or come to some kind of stillness or slowness.
• Quiet does not mean you need to meditate — though of course that’s one way to do it. Instead, you could go for a quiet walk in nature, or sit watching the sunset, or lie in a hammock and just feel the breeze, letting your mind drift, and not land.
• Quiet is moving away from technology, at least for a few minutes. Disconnecting. Letting go of reading and listening as well. Just sitting still or moving slowly, not trying to get anything done or consume anything.
• Quiet means letting go of being productive or being entertained, dropping the need to achieve anything, prove anything, or be excited. You let go of these kinds of compulsions, even for a few minutes.
• Quiet means letting go of the need to feel a certain way, or avoid feeling a certain way. Letting go of the need to feel productive, competent, entertained, or worried about feeling bored, lonely, sad, helpless.
• Quiet means we can allow ourselves to feel however we feel, just allowing it to be our experience. This gives us a freedom for life to be just as it is, and for ourselves to be just how we are, however we’re feeling.
Stillness and quiet aren’t the sexy, where you can make a lot of money or get a bunch of followers or viewers. We don’t usually realize we’re craving quiet. This is where the deepest experience of life lie, in the quiet.
What might you hear in the stillness and quiet? What life has to say.
“In stillness, the world is restored.” ~ Lao Tzu