15 minutes can be either a very short amount of time or a very, very long amount of time. It all depends on what you're trying to do in it. If you only have 15 minutes before your hair appointment and want to stop and pick up your prescription at the pharmacy, 15 minutes isn't nearly enough time and at least 5 minutes of it is gone before you get out the door and into the car. If you're trying to sit still, in perfect silence, alone in a room, 15 minutes can feel like a very long time.
After reading Listening Beneath the Noise by Anne LeClaire, a book where she spends two Mondays a month in total silence, I decided to spend 15 minutes a day in total silence to just experience a little bit of the incredible journey she went on. So….how's that been workin out for me?
Well, in a previous blog, I wrote about an epiphany between God and me that happened when I found myself accidentally in a silent moment. That was the day I bought and read Anne's book and was taken aback by her experience. I muddled her thoughts around for maybe a week and Monday morning I decided I'd try it. I turned down the TV and went into the other room and settled into my rocking chair. First I read my daily meditation. Then I waited. Ok, God, I'm here and I'm silent, where are you? I waited some more and began drumming my fingers on the arms of my chair. The only epiphany I was having was that patience, stillness, and total silence, even for 15 minutes, might be a little out of reach for me. In the background I heard the TV from the other room because I just lowered it instead of turning it off. Ahh..that's what's wrong. My silence is being disturbed. I didn't do it right. I can't believe I sat there telling myself I didn't do "silence" right. Sometimes I don't know how I live with me.
Tuesday Day 2 – Ok, today I was going to do this right. I muted the TV before going to "the silent room" as I now was beginning to think of it. I settled in my chair and read my usual morning meditations. Then I thought of something my yoga teacher said – try to have an empty mind – stay in that space between two thoughts. Anyone who knows me even a little bit, knows I never have an empty mind and there isn't even a smidgen of space between my thoughts because I'm always onto the next one even before I finished the one I was on, but I'll give it a try. I looked at the grates in the window across the room, picked one square to focus on and tried to put my mind in the small window pane and find that elusive "space between two thoughts". Well, the schoolbus went by and I suddenly thought of how much I missed teaching children, felt sad, and…well, that ended day two of 15 minutes of silence. I returned to the TV and resumed the Early Show.
Today – Day 3 – This silence thing is beginning to get to me. I don't want to do it anymore, but I can't stop. So once again, I muted the TV and ventured into "the silent room". I read my morning meditation and gained some insight from it. Then I just tried to sit and let the universe work. Ahh…I think I feel some energy beginning to move through me….wrong again. I just managed to knock over my water bottle when I set my book down and had water all over the wood floor, which now had to be cleaned up. Silence, for today, was over because everyone knows once you break the silent moment and let everyday life in, it's over for the day.
After cleaning up the water, I happened to glance at a new More magazine on the counter. I opened it to an ad for a new app for the magazine. The woman who invented the app was featured. She left her job in the corporate world to start her own company – a company to help companies. Sounded complicated, but I did get to the end of her article and she said, "I stepped out of the corporate world to pursue my own passion," she says of her own reinvention. "Whether you're trying a new job or a new technology, we're all good at learning things. You just have to have patience."
Think maybe this goes for silence, too? Can you really learn silence? Hmmm….Somehow I think that word patience is going to come into play here. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
And so, as another day goes by, I'm wrestling with the concept of "doing silence right", and…I have written.
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