Silence is coming

Last August I spent a week in silence at an Adyashanti retreat in Surrey. In it's understated way I found it one of the most profound experiences of my life. I left with the realisation that I needed very little to be at ease. It prompted me to conduct an audit of my life and examine my relationship with everything (people, places, things), or more specifically the underlying motivation behind those relationships. 

One of the more surprising conclusions of that audit was that I didn't need to go on another retreat seeking answers to the big questions. The week in silence had shown me that nearly everything in my life was a distraction, an excuse to move away from that silence, what was held in that space, and ultimately myself. That included retreats!

Life has been subtly different since as I have attempted to choose my distractions with greater awareness. I am happily distracted by love. Anything else, not so much. I try to hold greater awareness around my choices, not in an attempt to change anything or even judge those choices but just to notice where and how I am being directed. Crudely put, was I driven by survival or growth, fear or love?  

So this week when, much to my surprise, I found myself adding my name to the waiting list for this August's retreat, I had to take a close look at what was motivating that decision. Was this another logical heart based choice on the uncharted path to self realisation or an expression of "stop the world I want to get off"? 

The conclusion rather annoyingly was a bit of both! On examination it appears to me that we are being presented with a very definite choice at the moment. And that choice is whether to join the argument or not.   

There is a lot of division at the moment, a lot of outrage, a lot of opinion and a lot of emotion. All sides are crying out for engagement. Light workers sound their angelic horns calling the enlightened to arms to lift the world from chaos with their armies of love. The repressed sniff the fear of the elite and sense a chance. The elite build higher walls around their reality. Everyone convinced their version of reality is the best for humanity, by which at the level of the argument they actually mean for themselves.

The argument is irrelevant. It's content ever morphing, slippery as an eel. The argument is simply an expression of the separation which torments us all. The argument is the level of consciousness which has shaped this reality for a long time. 

My choice is to withdraw from the argument. I choose to explore a different level of consciousness, a level where the argument is starved of the oxygen of separation. That choice not to engage is neither an abdication of responsibility nor a denial of the world. In fact it is the toughest choice as it involves a direct movement toward the core of the division, the seat of separation. That movement away from the false self.

Certainly escaping the argument is not easy at the moment. It would appear the argument is winning. People are fired up. People are fed up. People are divided. People are confused. People are emotional. And people want answers. However, it should be obvious by now that there are no answers within the argument, just more of the same. 

The answers, the fresh thinking, lie in the space of greatest discomfort for most, which is silence. Joining the argument is easy. Joining the argument is lazy. The argument cares not who is right or wrong, who wins or loses, it just needs energy to continue. The silence, at least residing in it, requires courage and an energy of its own.

There is a huge amount of energy coursing through the veins of humanity at the moment and it has incredible potential. We have a choice as to where we direct that energy. If, as is the habit, it is directed to the argument then we have plenty of history to tell us where that ends. However, if that energy is directed inward, toward internal resolution, then a different possibility may well present itself. 

For me facing the silence is, bizarrely, facing the music. Adding my (by now tired) opinion of how the world should be continues the separation. Withdrawing my opinion and contributing my love is the best I can come up with at the moment. Leaving the argument and moving into the silence is the greatest act of love I can imagine. It is not an idea, it is an action.

Although I have to admit it would be bloody lovely to escape the world for a few days!  

Silence is coming.

With LOVE

Bill