Many years ago, a spiritual teacher freaked me out at a retreat by saying out of the blue, “Soon will come the teaching of no words.”
No words? How was that supposed to work? Surely, I wasn’t going to have to read my teacher’s mind? Was that what he wanted? Was that what he was saying? Wildly, I looked around at the several hundred other eager students sitting on the floor around me. They all looked as worried as me.
Apparently wanting to give us a taste, the teacher then proceeded to close his eyes and fall silent.
After about a minute, somebody in the audience moaned softly. Another minute passed and then came another moan of bliss. Clearly a woman. More silence. More moans, some carrying erotic overtones. More silence. Somebody shrieked.
Great, I fumed. Everybody’s getting it but me. I’m such a loser!
After a few more agonizing (not so silent) minutes, our teacher opened his eyes and started talking again as if nothing had happened. In the remaining ten years I listened to my teacher talk, he never mentioned the teaching of no words again.
Sweet relief
I bring this up today because Wednesday is the day I write my newsletter and everything within me is beautifully quiet. Yes, the world is still spinning at a frantic pace. Clients and Facebook, YouTube and emails, phone, texts, calls and messaging are all sounding their clarion call. Bold headlines scream about Ukraine, debt ceilings, the Pentagon’s forced closing of an Air Force base’s drag show in Nevada, NASA holding a meeting on mysterious objects, COVID and Wuhan, how Elon Musk is (once again) the world’s richest man … blah blah blah.
There are so many things I could write about. Should write about. Gender issues and the transhumanist agenda. AI. Media violence and programming, the social castration of men and the desexing of women, the debasement and trivialization of love … blah blah blah.
Enough.
Let’s just be quiet for a while and see what happens.
Seriously. Take 10 seconds. Close your eyes. Breath deep and just be for 10 seconds. That’s it.
Ready? Go!
1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10
Can you spell sweet r-e-l-i-e-f?
I didn’t want to stop. I wanted the quiet to keep going. How about you?
Jesus walked alone … a lot
Through the desert, along the shores of the Sea of Galilea, up into the mountains, around people’s gardens, outside of towns. Any chance he got, Jesus apparently did his best to get away from the madding hordes and out into solitude and nature. If he were alive today, I’m sure he’d be one of those people constantly leaving his cell phone under the sofa pillows or behind the car seat or back on the table at the roadside diner.
He knew the value of silence.
Increasingly, so am I.
All the answers to all the problems of the world lie in the silence. Not in words. Not in blogs and newsletters, philosophical tomes and political commentary. But in silence.
In the silence, life can finally be heard.
And what is it saying? It’s saying what my teacher was saying, standing momentarily mute, all those many decades ago.
That the truth lies within you. It doesn’t come from any outside source. It wells up from within, pure and untainted, real and trustworthy.
Amazing how long it’s taken me to realize this most fundamental teaching.
Almost any information will do
I was wildly jealous of all those people moaning around me that day, obviously in receivership of some powerful, invisible, downloadable message from above that I wasn’t privy to. I was so envious! So filled with shame at my lack of spiritual attunement that I never bothered to ask any of those people what the message was that they “got” that day. For all I know they downloaded a message from ET to phone home. And if so, how cool would that have been?
But seriously. As a civilization we have elevated the importance of outside information to unimaginable heights. Preferably we want God speaking to us. Or an archangel or an angel. But even some passing disincarnated soul wandering lost through the Elysian Fields will do. The basic assumption is that anybody and anything—as long as it’s NOT physical—has it over on us in the knowledge department and is therefore a trustworthy source of intel.
And if God or an angel or some lost soul aren’t available, maybe we can find a priest to tell us what’s what. Or a psychic. Or maybe a palm reader. Or an astrologer. Or a politician. Or a philosopher. Or CNN. Or Snapchat. Or … (see the devolution here?)
And what do we get from all these outside resources? Noise, noise and more noise. Sure, some of it is (fleetingly) interesting. Some of it even seems valuable. And yet … “The kingdom of heaven is within you.”
This line from the Gospel of Luke has got to be the most famous of all Jesus’ quotes. So, what does he mean by that? What does he mean when he refers to heaven? Doesn’t he mean the place where all questions are answered? The place where peace reigns supreme? The place where love bathes us all? The place where uncertainty and confusion, pain and suffering are no more?
Which begs the question — if all this and more is available within me … why am I running around in a panic seeking data and answers and everybody else’s solutions? Why in God’s name am I reading The Washington Post and breathlessly awaiting the next Q drop? (Is that still going on? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.)
You see my point of course.
I could say a lot more about this. I could talk about how and why we’ve been cunningly programmed to constantly seek external answers and bow down to external authority. But that would take a lot more words, and I think I’ve said enough for today.
Now … back into the silence …
Much love and aloha ~
Cate