What Is Silence Made Of?
Practicing Presence
Dear Friend,
This morning I noticed just how loud the city is. Writing to you every day like this has made of me an early riser. Before the birds.
Even in the early hours, the city lies awake, half an eye open, it never truly sleeps. Christmas Day in London you might feel a stillness emerge, or in the early days of the COVID pandemic. Empty streets. How quickly we forget.
During the first period of lockdown, I started creating a card game. I call it Presence. The idea came from wherever it is ideas come from. Out of the silence behind all of things.
Like this.
Our daily letters.
It’s a nice feeling, to create for the sake of creation. I find it makes me happy. In the moment.
The card game is made of questions. Now that I think of it, the questions emerged out of the silence behind the noise of the world. Slipped through the gaps in the stream of thoughts, images and stories, the blather of the false self.
You pull a card and contemplate the question. If playing with others, you listen to yourself turn the question over, like you would a shell you found on the shore. Marvelling maybe at the strangeness of the life of the creature that made this thing, The work of art you hold between finger and thumb. Glistening with salt water. Grains of sand, the stuff of pearls. Questions.
“What is silence made of?”
“I don’t know, I don’t really think about silence.”
If there were no silence there would be no music. The notes need something in which to appear, merge and disappear, so silence is necessary, a foundation for life. We can only experience relative silences. If we were to close ourselves into a completely sound proof space, we would still hear and feel the beating of hearts. The hum of our blood.
The background to life.
Looking up at the stars last night, I wondered what it would be like to listen to them. What are they telling us? Then I found this recording from NASA which is the sound carried within the plasma of a black hole.
Aum.
The Hindu’s teach that the universe vibrates and the sound is Aum. The sound of creation. The sound of your breath.
No breath, no world.
Coming into Presence means to connect to what is alive in you in the present moment. Spontaneous. Emerging. All living beings, we live now. Here. Silence reminds me there is something transcendental. Something transcends the mundane. That the mundane has it’s mystery and magic. That everything is alive, made of energy.
How much more do I love to live in a living world, than to wander through the valley of the dead. Inert matter devoid of spirit. A modern idea. Short lived.
I’m being barked at by a furry house guest. She is adamant it’s time for her morning walk. Her bark is pitched to perfection. It’s like an ice cream headache.
She’s right.
It’s time.
Now we go.
Now we return.
Now we do our work.
Now we rest.
Now we are happy.
Now we are afraid.
Silence reminds me.
Now
Always
Peace is here now.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey