Silent Changes

 

We’re always after transformation. So we work and we work. We buff up our bodies, we chisel our features, maybe we even read books and stuff our heads to bursting with theories and facts. Applying the mental model of labour to ourselves, we suppose that transformation, this prize, takes work.

But we are not transformed. No matter how hard we work, how clever or strong or pretty we become, underneath it all, we are still the same people, with the same fears and flaws, the same broken hearts and unmet dreams. What went wrong?

Transformation doesn’t take work. Transformation needs silence. The only work in transformation is getting to silence. Silence itself does the work, which is not work at all.

What do I mean by silence? There is the silence of the world, and the silence of the mind. I mean the silence of the mind. Not just a quiet street, no shouting co-workers, a phone on silent mode. Not no external noise, but no internal noise.

Feelings are products of thoughts. If you think “I am this”, then you will feel that. I am unloved — sad. I am unworthy — ashamed. And so on. Therefore, when the mind is silent, the heart too is silent.

How do we get to silence? We’re always seeking it — especially if and when we don’t think we are. We’re consumed by thoughts of sex, desire, accomplishment, and belonging. Why? All these are just paths that lead us to a brief glimmering moment of genuine silence. The mind stops speaking. The heart is still. There is nothing left in us but what is truly there.

What is the thing that is truly there? Genuine silence means there is no “I” anymore. Sex, desire, accomplishment, belonging. We have them, win them. Just for an evanescent second, in these moments, there is no “I” anymore, is there? There is something deeper and truer and wholer. Something to which the “I” is the drop, and it is the ocean.

And yet, even these moments, where we lose the “I”, don’t really transform us. They relieve us — for a time. But all the sex in the world does not make you a happier or better person, in lasting ways. Why not?

The eye cannot see itself. The “I” cannot see itself. When we are in the mode of “I”, when we are in the self, we cannot see the self. Only in pure silence can we see the self. We can see it as it truly is. Fragile, wounded, broken, noble, beautiful.

Seeing the self as it truly is the acts which heals it. Why? How can just seeing a thing heal it? Just think about it in your own life. Those moments where someone has really seen you, not the idea of you, are the instants in which you have genuinely felt loved.

This is pure love. Love without judgment, condition, time, place, need. Seeing the “I” is self love, in this case. Self love is not the “I” telling itself over and over again that is wonderful, beautiful, pretty, handsome, famous, rich. Self love is the ability to surrender the “I”, so it can really be seen. Only what is really seen is loved. What is unseen remains broken.

We can apply this love to others as well, once we have learned it. We can really see them, instead of just looking at them through the eye of the “I”: with desire, hate, anger, resentment, and so on. By seeing them, without judgment, only with grace and truth, they begin to be healed. They are loved. But who is doing the loving?

What is seeing the “I”, if it is not the “I”? The answer is very simple. You are used to thinking that all there is to you is the “I”. You are always conflicted, aren’t you? Thrilled by sex, maybe a little scared of it. Excited by climbing the mountain where the adrenaline will cause you to lose the I — but also afraid of it. Charged up to conquer the day, where for a moment here or there, you forget about the I — but also exhausted by the tedium of it. All these conflicts are the result of the “I” thinking it all is there is to the self. When the “I” thinks “I am all there is”, then the being is left conflicted: if the “I” is all there is, why does the self feel happiest, truest, when there is no “I”?

What is seeing the “I” is the true self. The true self is not the sum of experience, history, memory, thought. It is the part of you that is the whole. It is what feels connected in you, when you sit before the sunset, to all being, without you thinking a thought, or saying a word. How could that be? Because it is the part of you that is not a part at all. The true self is the whole universe in you. What else could it be? Universe, one whole.

You will say that is against science and reason. It is the logical outcome of science and reason. The human being is the conflicted one, the little one, the fallen one. But the being inside the human is none of those. That being is one. The true self in you is the true self in me. Go ahead and think about it. The patterns of our experiences differ, but only the patterns. The substance does not: we will all suffer, rise, fall, triumph, despair. And yet through that, there is always a part of us that is there observing, as still as snow, as pure as fire, radiating boundless love. That being in us is universal.

All transformation is a road towards being that, towards that being. Whatever we think we seek, behind it lies the quest to extinguish the “I”, and be seen by what it hides. That is all this little life is: the ache of love that binds us all together.

Transformation doesn’t take work. It takes silence. The silence of the mind, the stillness of the heart. In that silence, the universe reveals itself. Not to you. But as you.

Flourishing Empowered Women
http://flowrishingtheewomen.blogspot.com
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Twitter: @milkflows