The Gift of Silence

One Conscious Breath: Issue 15

One Conscious Breath: Issue 15

Awakening begins in the settling of silence.

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Before we begin, I invite you to take one conscious breath.

Feel the cool air as it enters your nostrils. Follow it as deeply as it goes into your body.

And then exhale. Out of your mouth. Slowly. Elongate the release as much as you can. And as you exhale, feel your shoulders drop. Feel your jaw soften. Feel your feet firmly on the floor.

Now pause.

Give yourself permission to simply be. In this silence. For just one conscious breath. And then gently meet whatever arises ~ whatever has been waiting underneath all the inner and outer noise ~ for a moment like this one.

And when you're ready ~ let's begin.

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Before I found Vipassana, I was no stranger to silence. Nor the wisdom found in nature.

The summer before my first retreat, New England became my respite from the cacophony of New York City. I left the concrete and the noise ~ the organizing, the meetings, the vigilance to scan a room before I entered it, the people to manage, monitor, soothe and save ~ and I journeyed north.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt myself exhale.

That summer wasn't particularly dramatic. But it was profound. My nervous system, running at a high intensity for years, maybe decades, finally had the space it needed to slow down. I began to feel my breath, the ground beneath my feet, and a softening within that I hadn't even known was hardened.

Without knowing it yet, I was beginning the longest and most important journey of my life.

And it's partly why, when the fire came for me the following year, on day four of that Vipassana retreat, I already trusted what stillness could reveal.

Enough to continue sitting.

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As we return to that fire ~ after the dam broke, and decades of suppressed emotion began to release ~ I continued to sit in silence for six more days.

People assume the fire was the transformational part. It wasn't.

The gift of silence allowed the fire to rise. The transformation was in discovering what was waiting for me underneath all that the fire burned away. The transformation was in what the fire revealed.

In the space that was created, something I hadn't felt in a very long time began to rise. Slowly and gently I began to feel and hear the faintest sense of something solid within me. Something constant, faithfully emitting a signal, ever so faint, buried beneath all of the noise. It was my own true knowing. Irrefutable wisdom. My own heart.

There's a difference between knowing you are wholly intact at your core, and actually feeling it. And for the first time, underneath all of that noise, I didn't just know it.

I felt it.

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And here's what I hope you understand about that difference.

You've always been there ~ at the very core of your being. Your own true knowing, your heart, is not something you have to build or find. It's not lost. It's patiently, wholly intact, waiting for enough stillness and space to simply re-emerge.

This is not a practice reserved solely for long silent meditation retreats.

This is what I know to be true. And it's why my newsletter is called One Conscious Breath: the space needed for your return is available right here, right now. In this one breath. In the pause between the exhale and the next inhale. In the space between one thought and the next.

It's simply waiting for you to notice it.

You don't have to journey to a ten-day silent retreat to find you. But if you choose to one day, I wholeheartedly champion you in that endeavor. All I'm inviting you to do, in this moment, is take one conscious breath. To drop, even briefly, below the surface into the depth of you that's always there, waiting ~ clear, whole and present.

Silence is rarely what we think it is.

We often mistake it for absence ~ absence of sound, absence of response, absence of engagement. In a culture that rewards immediacy and productivity, silence can feel threatening. Even unsafe.

But silence is not absence.

It is presence. Undiluted. Unforced. Profoundly alive.

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Imagine a pond during a storm. The muddy bottom stirred. The grey clouds obscuring the sunlight. Unable to see the depth beneath the surface, so many of us, understandably, dare not wade in.

But pause. Give it a bit of time.

Storms always pass. And ponds always settle. The clouds begin to move again. And sunlight eventually re-emerges. And with it the ability to see a beautiful blue sky. And a thriving ecosystem just below the surface of the pond. What was once too murky to explore, with stillness and illumination, begins to reveal itself.

This is what silence offers. Not by doing, or fixing, or striving. It simply provides the conditions for what was always there to simply be revealed.

Just one conscious breath begins to open the door.

What you find underneath all of the noise, within the silence, is you.

The real you. The wholly intact you.

And it's been there all along.

Simply awaiting your return.

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A Practice for This Week

At any moment during your day, perhaps right now, take one conscious breath. Focus on

it in the quietude of this one moment. And then take another. And simply notice what may be there underneath the noise.

Your mind may pull your focus away from your breath back to your thoughts. This is what the mind does. No judgement. Just notice when it happens. The gift is always in the return.

Gently, perhaps with a smile, bring your awareness back to your breath.

One conscious breath. And then another.

Notice what begins to settle. Notice what begins, ever so quietly, to rise.

That quiet rising is your own wisdom, simply getting louder.

With love and One Conscious Breath,

Jody