Today,
I'd like to invite you on a journey,
A journey within,
To the purest essence of who you are.
This journey of discovery is through a very simple practice you can do anywhere,
Anytime,
No matter where you are in the world and no matter what your circumstances might be.
It is the simple practice of silence.
Before we embark on more in-depth spiritual practices,
We must first begin by cultivating the soil out of which we will plant and grow our other practices which will come.
First we must till the inner soil which is within the sacred space of silence.
It is from the silence and stillness that we came into this world and it is where we will return after this brief blink of an eye we call a lifetime.
In the Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu wrote,
Before the beginning of all things there was only silence,
Complete stillness.
Both Buddhist and Taoist traditions hold the awareness that our waking day-to-day lives we perceive as reality are in actuality the dream or state in which we are most asleep.
This is the great illusion.
Each night when we go to sleep we return to the silence and stillness and awaken to the true reality.
Therefore silence is where we will begin.
Silence is our foundation upon which we embark on this journey we will be taking together.
If there were any one single practice I might invite you to that offers the space,
The soil,
To completely transform your life it would be to discover and practice the ritual of silence.
And so my gentle invitation to you is that over the course of our journey together the practice of silence will become the foundational practice for your life and all other practices.
For it is out of stillness that everything as we know it originated and it is in its nature to eventually return.
Therefore we must learn to reacquaint ourselves with silence as it is our very nature.
Silence and stillness are not something that can be taught for they are the deepest and purest essence of our core being.
At your center silence and stillness are who you are.
So I invite you to begin to practice embracing and discovering the silence within yourself.
Silence can be found at the heart of all the life practices which we will be exploring together but at the outset of our journey we will quietly explore the practice of silence and solitude as our foundation,
The soil if you will for creating a new and more mindful way of life.
So how do we do this you might be asking?
Quite simply we do this by practicing silence together for a very brief few moments.
In this very first session we will begin with three minutes of uninterrupted silence.
This simple practice allows us to begin to overcome and experience the great contrast between the busy world we live in and the still simplicity of silence.
I invite you to make this practice a part of your day perhaps in the morning before you begin the day and then in the evening as a way to end the day with stillness and silence.
If this is your first time practicing the art of silence you may find your thoughts become very active and you may have a tremendous urge to do something.
This is perfectly normal as we have all been deeply conditioned in our modern world to constantly be thinking about something else or what we should be doing.
In this beginning practice we are not doing anything.
We are not trying to control our thoughts.
We are simply sitting in silence.
Over time as we make this a daily practice you will begin to discover that the mind naturally begins to quiet itself,
Returning to its natural state.
So to begin I invite you to find a comfortable seated or lying down posture.
Take a moment to connect with your breath.
You may allow your eyes to gently come to rest.
And at the sound of the bell we will begin our time of silence together.
Our time of silence will end with the sound of the second bell.
The sound of the bell.
The sound of the bell.
The sound of the bell.
The sound of the bell.
The sound of the bell.
The sound of the bell.
The sound of the bell.
The sound of the bell.
The sound of the bell.
