2nd December, 2022
Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 8.
Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 8.
Image: Jonatan Pie, Iceland, unsplash.com/@r3dmax
The short image-backed quote, above, is an extract from a longer quotation, below, taken from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 7-8. You can read more about this book by clicking here.
'We go away from Silence into the world of noise as if into a vast buzzing of insects, pushed to exist within the permanent irritation of dissonance. Our choosing to live in the noise of our thoughts and emotions—within the incessant clamour around us—happens almost without our recognition. But we are uncomfortable with the Silence. Moments of quiet remind us that we have neglected the core of our being, and we cannot face the implications of this neglect. Anxiety enters. It’s better to keep running away from it.
What are we running from? We have a strong tendency to image Silence as the absence of sound. This imagination deprives Silence of being anything in itself and makes it an emptiness, a void in what should be the norm. But Silence was here before anything else, and it envelops everything else. It is the most primary phenomenon of existence, both palpably something and seemingly nothing. Silence is prior to sound and not the cessation of sound. It is already present. If we drop into quietness for just a moment, we feel the presence of Silence as an invitation. … Here we discover the power of re-creation. Here everything comes alive again as if for the first time. This secret and this mystery are so revolutionary that all who aspire to commercialize the world conspire to bury this secret in the noise of the world. And the intimation of the strength of this mystery causes us to run to that noise, though we are not conscious that we are doing so.'
'We go away from Silence into the world of noise as if into a vast buzzing of insects, pushed to exist within the permanent irritation of dissonance. Our choosing to live in the noise of our thoughts and emotions—within the incessant clamour around us—happens almost without our recognition. But we are uncomfortable with the Silence. Moments of quiet remind us that we have neglected the core of our being, and we cannot face the implications of this neglect. Anxiety enters. It’s better to keep running away from it.
What are we running from? We have a strong tendency to image Silence as the absence of sound. This imagination deprives Silence of being anything in itself and makes it an emptiness, a void in what should be the norm. But Silence was here before anything else, and it envelops everything else. It is the most primary phenomenon of existence, both palpably something and seemingly nothing. Silence is prior to sound and not the cessation of sound. It is already present. If we drop into quietness for just a moment, we feel the presence of Silence as an invitation. … Here we discover the power of re-creation. Here everything comes alive again as if for the first time. This secret and this mystery are so revolutionary that all who aspire to commercialize the world conspire to bury this secret in the noise of the world. And the intimation of the strength of this mystery causes us to run to that noise, though we are not conscious that we are doing so.'