The Sanctuary of Silence
Over the last several years, I have gradually moved deeper into the Pacific Northwest, seeking something I could not name. I now live in a city with a population of about 55,000 people that feels outlandishly small compared to my beloved Bay Area. I am situated at the bottom of the Puget Sound, right where it begins. If I felt so inclined, I could paddle a canoe for all one hundred miles of its length, from Olympia to Deception Point. Maybe I was after more water. Or space. What I found was silence. A deep, hushed quiet that was almost terrifying at first. But I soon recognized it. My very first guide for my Depth Hypnosis practice introduced it to me quite a while ago.
This is not a harsh, absolute silence, but a spacious, receptive quiet. The quiet of trees and mist and dawn light on large bodies of water. A silence that allows the person in front of me to express what they need to express. Or to sit with their own experience. Within this unfolding silence, I can hear subtle guidance. I often hear the din of my thinking, chattering, and rushing to classify and name whatever is in front of me. The practice of silence is the buffer that dams the racket in my head from spilling out of my mouth.
Silence seems especially powerful with folks I “know” best. People with whom I have built rapport over many years, through listening to their situations and breakdowns, and coming to know the inhabitants of their lives. Here, I find it is most crucial to practice silence as a kind of curiosity, an “unknowing” of sorts. New questions and new insights bubble up from the ever-flowing spring of quiet spaciousness. It can act as a container, like a warm blanket, when folks are spilling out everywhere. It can also act like the open road: letting a person who has been silent too long to run out everything they’ve never been allowed to say.
As I review the last twelve months, I see that silence, and its lack, has been a significant theme for my life and work this year. Building the capacity for silence is a skill that requires conscious effort to generate, and I plan to cultivate more of it this year. The world is loud and only getting more cacophonous; there are people and devices, problems and vices, all clamoring for real estate in my head. It is important and ever more challenging to maintain that center of quietude within. May this Sanctuary of Silence meditation assist you in the sacred task of being a keeper at the well of your own silence.