To know the difference between silence and absence.

The subject is silence. The ultimate absurdity would be for me to noisily go on now at great length about silence. This is a subject of much substance, but the nature of it is such that you must...must...discover the substance of it for yourself. I can give a few hints that may be helpful on your voyage of discovery, if you choose to make it.

Here is a sort of self test for your use, and some directions for your search. But the discovery of WHAT is present in the silences within and surrounding you, can only be made by you.

I won't forget the bit about inspiration.

Silence has three aspects - physical, mental, and spiritual. These are not three different things, but three ways of considering one thing. Silence is a unity which is so profound that in order to begin to understand it we must break it into more manageable parts.

SELF TEST
How do you feel when it is physically quiet around you? In your typical conversation, are you uncomfortable if either you or the other person allows the talking to lag more than a couple of seconds? Find out. Try it, and see what happens.

The inner talking that only we hear in our minds is also part of what I call a physical aspect of silence. It is an extension of physical talking. Are you comfortable with a silencing of this inner talk? Have you ever tried to be silent on this inner physical level? Try it now. Just stop "thinking" about anything, and see how long you can do it. The average for a beginning attempt is a second or two. Most of us aren't too comfortable with silence on the physical level.

END OF SELF TEST

PHYSICAL SILENCE

Silence is a powerful factor in verbal communication. I don't claim that it CAN be powerful if used; physical silence IS ALWAYS a powerful factor. If silence is purposefully present in conversation, it is powerful in one way. If it is accidentally present, it is powerful in another way. If it is absent, it is powerful in yet another way.

Silence is a favorite tool of skilled interrogators. Most people are so uncomfortable with silence in conversation that they will fill it up with talk. Talk is what the questioner wants to hear.

Carl Rogers founded a whole school of therapy upon silence, using it the same way as the interrogator, but for a therapeutic purpose.

Listening is perhaps the most important interpersonal skill a person can have. Few people can do it at all, let alone do it well. It is a rare skill because the first skill one has to learn to be a good listener is to be silent. Seems obvious, doesn't it? If we are to listen to another, we must first stop talking.

After one has done the almost impossible and learned to stop talking long enough to allow another to speak, the really difficult part of learning to listen begins.

The inner talk must stop as well. How can we hear what a person is saying if, while they are talking, we are simply inwardly planning what we will say next? To listen requires that we learn to be silent on the physical level, inwardly and outwardly.

The result of physical silence is emptiness.

If I need to carry gas to my lawn mower and my gas can is full of kerosine, I have a problem. In order to fill it with gas, I must EMPTY it. In order to receive new information I must provide enough emptiness to hear and hold it.

With much practice and dedication, such silence can be learned. But we are still not truly listening until we learn to be silent on the mental level.

MENTAL SILENCE

I suppose you are wondering what mental silence may be - how is it different from hearing words inwardly? What I call mental silence has to do with our concepts and principles, our mental systems. These systems are always at work for us, and are very necessary.

In part one, when we were considering reality and how we perceive it, I said that we create filters or buffers which interpret reality, and that what we perceive is really those buffers rather than reality itself.

Now I want to refine that concept a bit. Remember the house of our being which we were using as an analogy in part 3? The windows of this house might be stuck open or closed, but ideally they will open and close freely at our bidding. They represent our beliefs.

The roof and walls of this house are our buffers and filters which we are thinking about right now. And if all our house has is windows and walls and roof, then indeed, we will never experience anything directly. We will always experience from a distance. But our house has one more necessary part. It has a door.

The door is silence, and if we learn to use it we can sometimes go beyond our usual boundaries and experience the universe and the people in it much more directly.

What happens when even a good listener on the physical level does not practice mental silence? Much information is being received, but it is being received into a system of some kind, rather than into mental silence. And the system of understanding will determine what is "heard."

Here are some examples.

A woman who has had strong and clear experiences of a departed sister consults her pastor, who hears her out very well, but finally responds that if she will ignore such things they will eventually stop happening, and so won't bother her any more.

A mother and father consult a therapist about their son who has been behaving strangely. The therapist helps the boy "remember" incidents of abuse from a child care provider; incidents which subsequently are proven to be false memories.

No matter how well we listen on the physical level, we will hear only that which we expect to hear, unless we learn to be mentally silent. The mental aspect of silence holds expectation in abeyance for a time, allowing us to take in new material.

We all have a body of experience and expertise which shapes how we perceive the world and people around us, and into which we sort all the information which we receive. Mental silence is the temporary suspension of this body of experience to allow us to hear more exactly what a person is trying to communicate.

So, it is reasonable to say that when it comes to listening, silence is important. Here is a recap of where we are to this point.

The first step is to learn to stop talking so another can talk. The second step, which can't even be approached until the first is dealt with, is to stop thinking so you can HEAR what the other person is saying. I call the cessation of talking and thinking both examples of physical silence. When I was beginning to learn silence, to stop thinking seemed to me to be mental silence. Not now.

The third step, which will not be possible until the first two have been struggled with, does deal with mental silence. To learn mental silence is to learn to not sort and categorize information into your usual systems and frameworks as you listen.

The result of mental silence is openness.

In order to not be forever imprisoned in my own frameworks and concepts, I must learn to temporarily suspend them so that new and more useful ones may have a chance to suggest themselves.

SPIRITUAL SILENCE

I cannot tell you how to learn spiritual silence. Perhaps it is because I am still working at it. I am still working at physical and mental silence, too, but their nature is such that at a certain point I could look back at them and see enough of what had happened in my work to present a teaching system, a retrospective.

I begin to suspect that such a retrospective may not be possible with spiritual silence. Spiritual silence seems to happen as a result of our work to further deepen our ability to experience the other levels of silence. Struggling with the different levels of physical silence leads to a sensitivity to the issue of mental silence. Struggling with mental silence then leads to something Other. I cannot describe this Other. I can try to describe around it.

Silence, at all levels, is something you must feel.

There is a distinct feeling to outward physical silence. It is so distinct as to be discomforting to many when they first experience it. To some, it's an acquired taste.

Inner physical silence has a feeling as well, more powerful than the feeling which comes with outward silence. We tend to respond positively to it because we have acquired the taste for outward silence already. It seems to be a necessary requirement.

The same is true for mental silence. The feeling which comes with openness is unbearable to any who haven't learned to be comfortable with the different levels of physical silence.

You know where this is heading, don't you?

There is a feeling which I have come to call spiritual silence. It includes emptiness and openness. I would call it receptivity, except that it defines receptivity rather than being defined by it. If I have to, at this point, choose one word to describe the feeling I have in response to spiritual silence, I would have to use the word trust. So, for me...

The result of spiritual silence is Trust.

Well, that's it. I hope this little exercise of seven discernments has been worth while for you. Thank you for taking the time to consider it. These discernments have been of great value to me, and it has been a joy to try to communicate them.

Gordon

Introduction, Ch. 1. What is Reality?, Ch. 2. Knowledge and belief., Ch. 3. What is being open- minded?, Ch. 4. Prudence and prejudice., Ch. 5. Simple and simplistic., Ch. 6. Creative and coercive., Ch. 7. Silence and absence

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