“There is a voice that does not use words. Listen. Be silent. Silence is not a shame. It is an honor.”
~ Rumi
This morning, I felt so much gratitude for waking up, being alive. Glad I got out of bed to capture another glorious sunrise …
Namaste. Fearfully peaking up at all the activity overhead. 🙂
My current set of villa guests have been joining me each morning, and apparently today, the two ten year old daughters also were awake with the dawn.
But with little patience to sit still ….
Chairs scooting. Up. Down. Up Down. Sounds of little feet pitter-pattering about. Scoot the chairs some more. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up Down. Pitter-Patter.
It brought to mind a conversation I had yesterday. And a really beautiful article I ran across confirming a remembrance …. .
Did you know that the average person thinks 50 to 70,000 thoughts per day? This number may be disputed, but irregardless, that’s a lot of thoughts!! It’s about 3000 per hour or 50 per minute, just under one per second.
Dr. Bruce Davis, a silence retreat leader at SilentStay in Napa Valley, wrote for the Huffington post:
“Is it any wonder with this amount of inner traffic we lose touch with our self? Is it any surprise that with over 100,000 thoughts between us and our partner each day, we have difficulty finding and making contact with each other? ”
“With all the thinking go on, what chance does our heart have to breathe, feel, and experience life, no less make contact with our significant others? The crowded mind makes for an overcrowded heart with little room for ourselves and less room for anyone else. When we live such a congested life, how open, available, and loving can we be?”
“Many people complain there is already too much silence in their relationship. They are waiting for the wall of silence to somehow go away. They are hoping for their partner to open up and share. The truth is that it is not too much silence, but all the thought and feeling behind the silence that is closing down the contact. On the other side of the wall is everything but stillness. There is the backlog of complaints, concerns, worries, difficult feelings, lots and lots of thought, everything but peace and quiet.”
“The answer is finding time for simply being, being in silence together.”
“This can be an evening stroll, a visit to the ocean, making a retreat. Healing begins in any activity that is without the expectation of talking, with no demands to finish the unfinished conversation. When there are no expectations, we can enjoy the peace and quiet. The heart is free to soften and open. A quiet mind makes for an available heart. When one is not so overwhelmed with one’s self, there is room for some one else.”
“When we are not so full of thought, other parts of us now surface. We find more laughter, generosity, and gratitude. When our awareness is not so crowded, instead of anger there is gentleness, instead of pain more understanding, instead of loneliness more oneness. When our awareness is not covered in the details of life, we feel more of the heart of life, including the heart of one another. Here we discover and open the many gifts of our relationship.”
As I sat there listening to the pitter-patter above, I prayed for those young girls ….
That life would teach them how to enter into the stillness …
By oneself, and with another.
Silence. What a gift.
❤❤
Resource: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-davis-phd/healthy-relationships_b_3307916.html
