“Silence is the language of God. All else is a poor translation” - Rumi -

As I take my evening walk, the wet grass of the park beneath my house, I observe the skyscraper behind me and the various apartments lit up in different colors (the apartment bathed in red light intrigues me, I wonder who lives there, and why they chose this color, it reminds me, in terms of atmosphere, of the film "Body Double" by Brian de Palma). Maybe on the opposite building at the same level there is a guy watching through the blinds, and a woman, maybe a beautiful dark haired latina, undressing in front of the windows on the other side..

The noise of traffic on Biscayne Boulevard, an airplane passing over my head, two guys arguing just a few steps away, dogs barking. In short, a crazy amount of noise.

We never really pay much attention to how much noise pollution we have around us because we’re so used to it by now. It becomes part of our lives. So much so that when everything is silent (the very few times this happens, unless you live in the middle of a forest), it feels strange and makes us uncomfortable.

We just can’t sit still and do NOTHING.

Pay attention now.

If you’re in a public place, look around. How many people do you see on their phones? Or listening to something on their Bluetooth devices? At the gym, the supermarket, at home. Podcasts, Netflix, audiobooks, messages, social media. We always feel the need to fill the silence with something, to push it aside.

WHY?

What bothers us about silence?

What don’t we want to listen to?

I often do this exercise, this experiment.

I turn off the phone. I close the laptop. I take off the Apple Watch. I put the iPad aside. No TV. No Alexa. No books. I just sit, simply.

If you try it, you’ll see how uncomfortable it is, how much you feel the urge to do something, your mind sending you signals about things you need to do, a message you need to send, an email you forgot to reply to. You feel like moving, as if "being still" equals doing "nothing," and that you need to do something, move, be active, to feel useful and valuable. PRODUCTIVE.

Where I grew up, in my family, idleness was forbidden. Sitting on the couch "doing nothing" or simply watching TV was equivalent to being lazy, a slacker. Only by doing, by filling "the gaps," were you accepted, considered a "good child."

And growing up, automatically and unconsciously, I made this association that my value as a person was directly linked to what I did, to how many gaps I managed to fill.

It’s hard to break out of that loop.

To subtract instead of add.

To accept that you’re okay just as you are, with your strengths and weaknesses.

Some time ago, I listened to a podcast by Joel Osteen titled "NOTHING TO PROVE."

It stirred something inside me. He said:

You’re not supposed to live striving , pressured, hoping you can measure up. Hoping you can do good enough. You don’t have to earn it. God put his blessing on you. You are already qualified.

I believe that everything we need to know about ourselves can only be discovered by connecting with ourselves, by asking ourselves questions. Hard questions.

By staying silent, we can connect with the divine.

If you know me personally, you know that I have always been fascinated by Native American culture. I find that many of their principles align completely with mine, particularly in how I view life and the connection with natural elements.

And silence, an integral part of their spiritual practices.

By sitting in silence, we can tune in to the natural rhythms of the world and connect with our intuition. One of the key teachings of Native American spirituality is that everything in the natural world has a spirit and is connected. Through silence, we can access this interconnectedness and the deeper wisdom it holds.

By practicing silence, we can connect with the natural world, tune into our intuition, and access deeper levels of wisdom and spiritual knowledge.

So take a moment to sit in silence and see where it takes you on your own spiritual journey.

A hug. M