SILENCE
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
~ Rumi
My parents had friends visiting. An opportunity for a cup of tea and a chat in the garden. The sun was warm on my back and my children content with plastic cups and a bucket of water.
I learnt that John had started practicing yoga in his retirement. He had always been very active in his working life and feared stopping would cause deterioration in his body. So yoga was his choice. His family, although loving, teased him for starting this new practice. Thankfully, he ignored them and felt the benefits for himself. The teasing lessened.
As we compared notes of our practices he mentioned that he never enjoyed the Savasana relaxation at the end. Confused, as for me it’s the best bit. The reward for all the hard work and the excuse to fully stop. I asked him if he ever sat in silence. Did he ever sit in his back garden with a cup of tea and allow his gaze to sit softy on the view around him.
“No. I don’t like silence. I always listen to the radio or have the TV on in the background.”
I remembered Nannie Annie, my Dad’s mother (and if you’ve read previous emails you would have heard me talk about her daughter, Aunty Shirley. What a wise crew.) She would sometimes sit for long moments. Completely content. Without questioning. Without need or desire to do anything other than sit. Whether it be on the sofa or in the garden (Nannie Annie had a beautiful garden).
As children, me and my brother would play amongst ourselves and every now and then see if we could spook her back into our space. It never worked. I never really understood it then and just accepted that it was something that Nannie Annie did. But now I understand that she never left the room or space, that she was existing in this moment, at this time.
She was being.
The idea of silence is frightening. For me I think it is because in that moment of acceptance, in that moment of surrender, that moment of now, being, there is no where to run, no where to hide. Where masks are cast aside and outside of that space nothing really matters other than now, and now, and now.
There is only this moment.
Last night I made a pact with myself. In our noisy flat I would make more space for silence. To learn Nannie Annie’s practice of sitting. If only for a minute or two or five. Because in that silence I think I might find answers to some of the burning niggles I have been carrying for too long.
Will you sit with me? Yes?
Emma x
#ForTheCulturallyCurious