Do You Fear Silence?

In this session we contemplate silence; why some of us fear it and what it may have to teach us. We delve into the distracted nature of modern life, how we may be living on auto pilot, and discuss ways in which we could (gently) begin to allow silence into our lives.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the session.

I invite you to take a seat or lay down and get yourself comfortable.

You can close down the eyes if you wish,

Just take a deep slow breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.

In a moment I'm going to share with you a question to contemplate and then we'll sit in silence for a minute and just let it percolate,

Then we'll talk about the question and just see where the discussion leads us.

This question and indeed all of the questions in this course are designed to be a catalyst for change,

A prompt that will help you to reframe your thinking,

Help you to consider new possibilities and approaches,

And to usher you in a state of being that is more attuned with your highest calling.

I invite you to approach the question with an attitude of extreme openness,

One where for the duration of the session you welcome in and accept any and all responses that arise.

There are no right or wrong answers,

No good or bad thoughts,

And nothing for you to run from or move towards.

Just be open to whatever arises as it is for what it is in this moment,

Without judgment or filter.

By doing so you'll be opening yourself up to the deepest and truest expression of wisdom and intuition available to you.

So let's take a moment to sit with today's question.

Can you sit in silence?

Can you sit in silence?

So this question,

This idea of sitting in silence,

For some people can be quite anxiety-inducing.

In my role as a teacher and a coach,

I like to ask the question to people,

You know,

How much silence do you get in the day?

How much time do you spend alone with your thoughts,

With yourself?

Because it's all too easy to go through life on autopilot,

Constantly with stimulation coming in,

And just never,

You know,

Never letting it settle,

Never letting it sit.

The analogy that comes to mind is a wet concrete,

You know,

You pour wet concrete onto the ground and you've got to let it sit to harden,

To firm up,

To become,

You know,

The walkway,

For example.

But if you're constantly just adding more and more and more stimulus,

There's a risk that you're just pouring concrete on top of wet concrete,

On top of wet concrete,

And you're creating a place that isn't functional,

Isn't settled,

And just isn't right.

And I don't mean isn't right sort of negatively or shamingly,

But more like evolutionarily.

We didn't evolve to have constant input,

We evolved in comparative silence.

Now I'm not talking dead silence,

No noise,

No nothing,

But silence relative or in comparison to the world that we find ourselves in now for certain.

How much time did someone 10,

000 years ago spend in contact with another person?

You know,

Probably a lot.

How much of that time was spent talking and listening to music and watching highly engaging and stimulating visual audio content?

How much time was spent speaking to people across the globe?

How much time was spent not,

You know,

In the moment,

Really focused on what you're doing,

Hunting,

Gathering,

Creating,

You know,

The tasks and things necessary for survival?

I would argue extremely small amounts.

You know,

There will be those feast days and those festivities,

But in general,

I would have imagined that the majority of the time would be spent in relative calm,

Far less stimulation than what we're getting now.

So what happens when you expose the human animal to perpetual and continual audiovisual noise?

Unlimited accessibility to entertainment,

The ability to look up anything and everything at a moment's notice.

What does that do to the brain?

Well,

It probably leads to anxiety,

Probably leads to a fear of silence,

Probably leads to a lot of unprocessed thoughts and feelings.

Disregulation.

We can approach it from a different perspective.

Consider how much time you spend on social media,

On television,

On,

You know,

Insert distraction here.

Find out the amount of hours that you spend in a day doing that activity on average.

So pick social media,

Podcasts,

Videos,

Whatever you like,

Maybe all of it together,

And add it up.

What do you do on average?

Whenever I ask this to people,

Oftentimes the answer comes back anywhere from two to maybe eight to ten hours.

But let's pick,

Let's pick three.

Let's say you do this for three hours a day.

Do some basic maths here.

Three hours divided by 24 hours in the day equals the percentage of the day that you've spent on that task.

That's 1.

25.

Then you times that by the average life expectancy.

Now I'm just going to pick 80.

In some countries it's more,

It's less,

Whatever.

But if you times that by 80,

You end up with the answer of 10.

10.

That means 10 years will be spent on average on that task.

So three,

Three hours of the day doing the activity divided by 24 times by the average life expectancy,

In this case 80,

Leads to 10.

That's 10 years straight.

That's not including sleeping,

Eating,

Drinking,

Toileting,

Anything else.

Just scrolling social media,

Just watching TV.

That's a lot of time.

That's a extreme amount of time to be spent on that activity.

And I invite you to do the maths on that yourself and just sort of really discover where you're spending your time.

Now yes,

This is a little bit of a tangential sort of move away from can you sit in silence,

But if you find yourself spending all of that if you find yourself spending all of that time,

Some of that time will be spent on that activity,

Some of that 10 years would be spent on that activity,

Running from yourself,

Running from silence,

Running from whatever's going on in your mind that you're not processing.

Potentially.

Maybe there's an addiction aspect,

Maybe there's a work aspect,

But it's just something to consider and really think about the impact.

Can you sit in silence?

Can you just be with your thoughts?

It can be quite scary and confronting and overwhelming to sort of just sit because stuff comes up,

Stuff comes up and we by default want to run from it.

It's not feeling that great,

We move away from things that don't feel good.

But what happens if we never allow ourselves to sit in that silence?

There's something to be said about that.

In another course I talked about the idea of making the mundane meditation,

This idea of washing the dishes,

Doing the laundry,

Vacuuming,

Mowing,

Whatever it is that you do,

Traveling,

Making that a meditation.

And I invite you to potentially use that space to do so,

To get some silence in.

And I call this like life silence.

If you're washing the dishes there is still noise,

But you can wash the dishes without also having a video on,

Without also being scrolling on social media,

Without also distracting yourself from that task.

What if instead the next time you wash the dishes you just took that breath and just felt the water over your hands and listened to the sound of,

You know,

The cutlery clinking against the glasses,

That sort of thing.

What if you appreciated and did a bit of a gratitude practice of the fact that you have access to running water and cutlery and or a dishwasher sort of thing.

Like there's a lot of gratitude to be found in that moment and a lot of peace to be found in the silence that can be come from that moment were we to engage with it.

Can you sit in silence?

If you haven't already I would strongly suggest that you start a daily meditation practice.

Once again I've got content out there and there's endless content on Insight Timer here talking about,

You know,

Different meditations that you can do both by yourself,

Guided etc etc.

But I strongly suggest in a daily meditation practice you spend some of that time just in silence,

Just listening,

Just being.

Because it's necessary,

It's a must,

It's a requirement of the human animal,

I think at least,

To be able to sit.

And if you find yourself pulling away at this idea,

You know,

Just five minutes a day,

Right,

If you find yourself going oof that's scary,

Then it's even more necessary for someone like you who is scared of that silence.

Ask yourself the question,

What am I afraid of discovering?

You know,

Am I afraid of myself?

Am I afraid of these thoughts?

Like what is happening there to make you pull away from the silence of yourself?

Is it boredom?

Is it fear?

Is it overwhelm?

Is it past issues?

What can you do to address these feelings?

The meditation that I'm doing daily now is,

Well I'm calling it in my mind,

I'm going to release some some guided stuff on this,

But basically hearing,

Feeling,

Being meditation.

And what I do is this,

I'll sit for 15 minutes and split that time into three five-minute blocks on a meditation timer.

I start the timer,

It beeps at five minutes,

It beeps at 10 minutes,

And then it ends at 15 minutes.

And in that first five minutes I just listen,

Listen to the sounds arising in nature,

What can I hear?

Maybe it's nature,

Maybe it's trees,

Maybe it's cars,

Maybe it's people,

Whatever,

I just listen.

And then I feel in the second part there,

Feel,

I just feel my body,

What is arising in my body.

I focus on my belly because that's where a lot of stuff happens inside me,

But you could focus on your heart or wherever feels most poignant and prominent.

And then in the final third,

Final five minutes,

I just be.

I don't try and do anything,

I don't try and listen,

I don't try and feel,

I don't try and think,

I just allow whatever happens to happen.

And that's the meditation.

Silent,

Listening,

Feeling,

And being.

Now I do that in a 15 minute block,

But you could do it in nine minutes,

Three and three and three,

Or you could do it in three minutes with one minute increments,

You know,

One minute of hearing,

One minute of feeling,

One minute of being.

But if you feel like you fear that silence,

That's a sign that you need to embrace it.

You need to find what's hiding there,

To discover the parts of your shadow that lurk in the silence and just reintegrate that space,

Because that will probably lead to some deep growth,

Something to consider.

So now let's just sit with that question once more for another minute in silence.

Can you sit in silence?

Can you sit in silence?

So well done.

This brings us to the end of the session.

At the bottom of your screen,

You'll see an option to view the classroom or to ask a question.

Before moving on,

I invite you to take a moment to click through and share your insights,

To read the answers from other students and to hear my replies.

Remember to start your responses by restating the question,

So we know which one you are referring to.

Or in this case,

Use the word silence.

This is an opportunity for deep learning,

Further introspection and insight,

So please don't miss out.

I look forward to seeing you in the next session.

Thank you.

This session was taken from the course,

Awaken to Your Highest Calling.

It's out now and available on Insight Timer via my profile.

Check it out.