Meditation assists us to appreciate the value of silence, one of the gifts we receive when we make meditation a priority in our lives. Our periods of meditation teach us that silence encourages patience and mindfulness, allowing us to navigate challenges with a greater sense of composure.
The constant noise of contemporary life causes many of us to miss out on the benefits of silence. It’s through meditation that we can regain some of the composure that we lose along the way.
Learning to enjoy silence cultivates calmness and peacefulness. When we punctuate our day with moments of silence either formally in meditation or in other ways our levels of tolerance and patience increase markedly.
Our form of apophatic* meditation, practiced for centuries in religious traditions, teaches that it’s in the silence that one finds God or the true self or our interior life.
A quote from Benedictine monk John Main…….
“Silence is really absolutely necessary for the human spirit if it is to thrive and not only just to thrive but to be creative, to have a creative response to life, to our environment, to friends.
Because the silence gives our spirit room to breathe, room to be. In silence, you don’t have to be justifying yourself, apologizing for yourself, trying to impress anyone.
You just have to be, and it’s a most wonderful experience when you come to it.
And the wonder of it is in that experience, you are completely free. You are not trying to play any role; you are not trying to fulfill anyone’s expectation.”
(John Main ‘Word into Silence’
And now in meditation let’s embrace the power of silence and harness its transformative power in our lives….
Meditation
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- Gk: Apophatic……not knowing, incomprehensible.