Of the many jewels of wisdom in the Tao Te Ching, and reiterated by wisemen throughout history, we are told that we should keep our mouths closed. If we have nothing important to say, we should refrain from talking. Eckhart Tolle tells us that our greatest hindrance to peace is our thinking mind, that has run amok in our species. Not only do we think too much – we talk too much. Some people who talk incessantly, have been described as having diarrhea of the mouth. These people love the sound of their own voice. They are poor listeners. They are uncomfortable with silence. In order to hear the important messages that our souls wish us to hear, we must be willing to listen to the quiet.
In my own quiet times of meditation, I have found the blaring silence to be deafening. I have never quite figured out why. What is it that I am hearing? When there is no nearby source of noise such as the refrigerator running, and the furnace and the fans have stopped blowing, I can still hear an indistinguishable noise pressing against my eardrums. I have always had excellent hearing. Am I hearing the inner workings of my own body, as blood flows through my veins and my organs carry on with their activities? Or, am I hearing a cacophony of the many sounds for miles around that are too far away to be recognizable? Since sound is a vibration of energy, am I merely hearing a giant mixture of sound vibrations from a distance – all of the TVs, radios, conversations, and machinery that are producing sounds everywhere?
While I may never know the answer to these questions, I will always crave the deep silence. Even if silence is not actually silent (and if it were, would there be no such thing as life at all?) it is the closest that I can come to quietude. It is the only place where I can receive the messages that guide me on my journey through this life. I often wonder what it must be like to hear as a dog hears. They can hear 2 times as well as I can hear and 4 times further away. My cat can hear 3 times as well. Those with even greater hearing – moths, bats, owls, and elephants – must suffer greatly from human noise pollution. I am certain that like me, they crave the blaring silence.
