Alignment of Silence – Chelsea Caroline

Definitions of Silence

We’ve touched on this subject in class, these moments of in between and how special they are. Let us first define what silence is.

The Webster dictionary definition of silence is said to be the following:

Silence – 1. Forbearance from speech or noise : Muteness – often used interjectionally. 2. The complete absence of sound or noise.

Hmmm, “the complete absence of”? That just doesn’t feel quite right to me.

It is a known that sound can only exist if it has something to travel through. The entire form of our universe is a conduit space. As long as the world we live in, and we ourselves are broadcasts of source which is sound itself traveling through us, there is really never anything at all that can fit this definition of silence. Even in the quietest moments of our days and nights, the sound of our heartbeat is always there. Even in our most still moments, can we not hear sound on a quantum level? What about the sounds that occur in the silence of our dreams?

Since the universe holds form ,and life in its essence is sound itself, then what is this word called SILENCE in its current definition?

Some of the other current definitions of silence include the following: 3. absence of mention. 4. to compel or reduce to silence 5. suppress 6. to block the genetic expression of 7. to cause someone to stop speaking 8. to stop something from being expressed

Wow. To me, silence is actually the opposite of most of these things. Let’s dig a little deeper. If we take this word silence to its roots we find “Silent” first appeared in English in the 16th century meaning – “refraining from speech”. The source of the word “silent” is the Latin “silentem,” the participle of the verb “silere,”- to be silent. Some sources suggest the Germanic verb “anasilan,” which signified a wind dying down. “Silent” may also be related to the Latin verb “desinere,” meaning “to stop.”

At its roots, “silence”, or “to be silent” is not so much the absence of sound, but rather a state of being, which calls us into action to slow down, pause and even stop and become aware of silence.

I more like to think of this “be silent” definition of “silence” and the application that this meaning would have in our lives. It is more a state of listening and the closest we can ever get to anything and everything that is truly worth hearing. Silence is the source of all words. When we let our words rest with silence, it offers them time needed to develop and marinate in our hearts, becoming refined and edified in order to thoughtfully be expressions of the divine. SILENT and LISTEN are actually acronyms to each other. If you switch the letters of one around you get the other.

Finding Silence

We are born from silence and we return to silence. I was born into a world of chaos and then silence and then chaos again. It was 1975 and they had just made headway with the incubator. I was born and soon afterwards, I stopped breathing. One doctor, in his persistence, brought me back to life in the name of progress of this new technology. This relationship between life and silence defined my initial moments of being. I was brought from silence into a world of background noise the 1970s. Freedom, free love, artistry, experimentation, rock n roll, travel and adventure. Fun, but unstable and a bit chaotic indeed.

The cry of my intense beginnings grew quickly into a singing voice and from very early on I learned to soothe myself with my voice. I wrote words and filled pages. I played instruments and filled time with music and I kept loving and living and filling my space with more and more experiences and adventures with each passing day… living out of the definitions of self from others, giving and giving and often not having my giving returned. I ended up feeling lost and loss and the downside of so many arbitrary movements of unstable vibration without much pause for silence at all.

Then in 2009 I reached the phase of life that most humans do at some moment and I asked what’s the point of this circle of life? Why do I do all the things I do? What is all this for if only a song for myself? In letters received and edited by Alice Bailey this need for pause is referred to in the following way:

– “The aim of meditation is therefore to bring man to the realization of the Egoic aspect and to bring the lower nature under its control. This is the immediate goal for the average man.”

At this moment of my pause, I realized the garden of my life was a blanket of grass. Where did all this grass come from? Who planted it there? Where were all the flowers and fruits from all that I had planted? Yet what I had planted was superficial and lacking in roots.

When we arrive at this ground level and see all that needs to be un-done, it can be overwhelming for us to navigate a way back to our true selves. In this case, we must first find a way to silence.

I started to ask many questions. Through all this music of life, what is the sound of silence? Where is the authentic something of what I have become, from which I came… where is the nothingness? Is it here, around me? Within me? Am I separate from this space? What is it?Does it have a voice? Does it make a sound?

I decided that I would start a process of decluttering so as to possibly hear this voice if it did exist. I wanted to know life from its vantage, not from another book or someone else’s story. I didn’t want to know about something else that was filling the space. I wanted to hear from the space itself.

I wanted to KNOW. How do I find this silence? If I could hear it, what would it have to say?

Time with Silence

I started to explore this time with silence intensely. I stopped watching TV and listening to music. I stopped reading. I stopped listening to people. I stopped going to gatherings. I stopped writing. I was still performing some, but I took a whole year in 2011 and typed hundreds of writings I had into my first computer. I spent most of my time in nature and in order to truly test my inner awareness, I even distanced my self from time. I wanted to know that I had an inner rhythm that guided my life besides the daily grind ,so I decided not to look at a clock for a year. A few people got mad at me. Most people understood, but regardless I learned to just know and after that year I started naturally showing up on time for everything. (within 15 minutes. :))

This is a bit extreme and unfeasible for most, but there are many ways to utilize this time with silence and many methods to gain a relationship with source through the practice we know as meditation. The word meditation is derived from the Latin verb, meditari, meaning “to think, contemplate, devise or ponder.” “Some techniques are expansive permitting free flow of thoughts and their observation, whereas other types are concentrative with the purpose of bringing focus into one’s thoughts”. No matter what method is used, the benefits speak for themselves.

Types of Meditation: (to name a few):

Mantra – focus on sounds appealing to the mind

Taoist Meditation – focus on the generation, transformation and circulation of internal energy

Trataka Meditation – focus on one object. (I made up a spinning letters meditation years ago after learning about a meditation of the Hebrew alphabet letter A called Alef meditation. I adapted this to our English alphabet and went from there.)

Chakra Meditation – focus on each endocrine center in the body to awaken and balance the energies

Walking Meditation – focus on steps and breath – (My favorite plants a flower with each step)

Mindfulness Meditation – focus on the moment of now, bringing awareness into the present

Having an intention within our silence benefits our lives in so many ways, some of which I’ve listed below.

Benefits of Silence:

Lessens worry, anxiety, stress, fear, loneliness and depression

Enhances self esteem and self acceptance

Improves resilience against pain and adversity

Increases optimism, relaxation and awareness

Improves emotional intelligence

Increases mental strength, focus, memory retention and recall

Enhances creative thinking and problem solving

Balances hormonal function

Improved immune system and energy level

Improves breathing and heart rates and extends longevity

Reduces blood pressure and lessens heart and brain problems

Lessens inflammatory disorders and asthma

Helps prevent arthritis and fibromyalgia

It would also seem to me that a meditation practice and relationship with source through silence can be a very helpful preparation for our actual death or the death of a loved one and can address one of the roots of all suffering – our fear of death.

“In the U.S., 1.2 million children will lose a parent to death before the age of 15 (Dr. Elizabeth Weller, Dir. Ohio State University Hospitals, 1991).”

Research shows that a parent’s death usually makes a severe impact on a child. After losing a parent, 85% of children exhibit such symptoms as difficulty sleeping, angry outbursts, worry, depression, bed-wetting, and thumb-sucking. After a year, more regressive behaviors may fade, but other problems, such as lack of confidence and preoccupation with illness, are likely to continue.

The more we understand the peace silence brings, the less we need fear death. There are many cultures that prepare us for our return to silence, but here in the USA, ours has not been one of them. Integrating this practice of meditation into our schools would serve to address this issue from the start.

Circle of Silence

To be silent is to enter awareness of the womb out of which all life is born. It is the space of source inside the mother of all forms. The space inside a circle of no beginning and no end where all other forms originate.

Taking the art and practice of “being silent”, or “meditation” to an even deeper level, leads us to a path of “service to source” or discipleship. To quote the letters of a master, edited by Alice Bailey again – “The aim of the evolution of man in the three worlds—the physical, emotional and mental planes—is the alignment of his threefold Personality with the body egoic, till the one straight line is achieved and the man becomes the One.”

“Each life that the Personality leads is, at the close, represented by some geometrical figure, some utilization of the lines of the cube, and their demonstration in a form of some kind. Intricate and uncertain in outline and crude in design are the forms of the earlier lives; definite and clear in outline are the forms built by the average advanced man of this generation. But when he steps upon the Path of Discipleship, the purpose consists in merging all these many lines into one line, and gradually this consummation is achieved. The Master is He Who has blended all the lines of fivefold development first into the three, and then into the one. The six-pointed star becomes the five-pointed star, the cube becomes the triangle, and the triangle becomes the one; whilst the one (at the end of the greater cycle) becomes the point in the circle of manifestation.”

This discipline of contemplation allows us to get to the roots of our being. Here we may become aware of our true intended form which makes way for alignment of authentic self, bringing us into harmony with our soul and our relationship to the divine… Into our circle of silence.

If you look at the word align…. A LINE. The goal here is to bring all into A LINE… ONE LINE, returning to the One Line that is in “A LINE MEANT” for our true selves.

In reverse engineering all the something-ness into nothing-ness we become that which we were originally created to be. One of beauty, wholeness, harmony and radiance. A creation within creation…and on and on and so it goes…

True meditation is a life long process. Our experience of these moments of stillness and inner awareness slowly bring all our many lines into one line and we are embraced with the everything of possibility and a perfect circle of the divine.

Silence has taught me more in its nothing-ness than all the composition of life in all its something-ness and with this evidence alone, Silence is far from being nothing, or an absence of or a being without, but instead is truly something indeed.

Written by ~ Chelsea Caroline April 2021, Globe Institute for Sound and Consciousness

Resources:

William Schaffstall – Billosophy (I gleaned from my late grandfather’s unpublished work in the very last line of this writing. He was something indeed. 🙂

Silence Definitions:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/silence

https://www.etymonline.com/word/silence

http://word-detective.com/2013/03/silent-listen/

Meditation Reference:

https://www.project-meditation.org/pm/ancient-meditation-techniques/

https://www.project-meditation.org/meditation-techniques-the-ultimate-guide/

https://liveanddare.com/benefits-of-meditation/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation

Other:

http://griefspeaks.com/id113.html

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