Once a visiting musician said to me in an empty auditorium, "Play, and listen to the silence between the notes. The silence between the notes is as important as the music itself." Enhanced by the emptiness, the sound of my flute soared over the space and sang back from the far wall. But the sílences where I paused to breathe were even more lovely and articulate, creating a wholeness I had not perceived before. The silence shaped itself to the voice of the flute. The loveliness of the music depended upon my saying "yes" to the silence between my notes.
In order to follow inner wisdom, we have to first know it. In order to know it, we have to hear it; to hear it, we have to be still. . . . I still have on my desk the conch shell I picked up at the beach on my second day of silence. Listen, it continues to remind me. Listen to what you can hear when you are being still.
~ from LISTENING BELOW THE NOISE by Anne D. LeClaire
The discipline of silence was leading me not only to a keener attention to language but to an improved capacity for hearing. On silent Mondays, I began to listen differently—to myself, to others, and to the world around me. It was a listening I would call both active and without an agenda...I began to observe that when there was no expectation for me to respond, acknowledge, analyze...I listened differently. My ego relaxed... In silence I was hearing others more keenly and witnessing my own thoughts, too, and seeing how they served to separate or to connect me. I was learning not to turn away from the parts of myself that were difficult.
~ from LISTENING BELOW THE NOISE by Anne D. LeClaire
Now, standing by the shore, I am as filled with awe and thankfulness as on that January afternoon. In this moment, I am sustained by a sense of wonder and peace, humbled by life, and respectful of it, connected to the planet and her people, and to something much greater than myself, an invisible essence for which I have no language. I live in its mystery, content to let it be revealed. I do not have to name it. It is enough to know its truth.
This is where silence has brought me.
~ from LISTENING BELOW THE NOISE by Anne D. LeClaire
Lindbergh wrote more than fifty years ago, "Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions. Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives -- which tend to throw us off balance."
But our spirit has an instinct for silence. Every soul innately yearns for stillness, for a space, a garden where we can till, sow, reap, and rest, and by doing so come to a deeper sense of self and our place in the universe. Silence is not an absence but a presence. Not an emptiness but repletion. A filling up.
~ from LISTENING BELOW THE NOISE by Anne D. LeClaire
For nine years, the first and third Mondays of the month, I am in silence; I do not speak to anyone for twenty four hours. It's life-changing. It has taught me to listen. When we listen with no responsibility to respond, we can listen fully, which allows us to hear so many things we would not hear if we were talking. This did not start as spiritual exercise, but it has become a very spiritual practice. You hear the truth from deep inside yourself.
~ from "The Boston Globe" 8/5/2001 by Anne D. LeClaire, with thanks to Sandra Cosetti
