Reaching Beyond the Apparent

There is a depth to silence that is frightening in a way.  I think rather than the fear of death, there is a fear of nothingness... of being nothing.  In nothingness, however, the greatest joy is felt.  When one is stunned to stillness, silence, something else breaks open... some unknown part beyond the mind.  It has been called many things, consciousness, awareness, knowingness, yada, yada, yada... but in actually, when one is there, there is no doubt... it is simply All.  It contains everything that is or can be. 

This silence has been growing in me.  Late spring, I finally had a realization about the stage of the journey I was leaving behind, but I didn't realize how behind I was leaving it.  I just saw the fallibility of thought for what it was.  Thought is always in the past, and in that way, it is always unreal.  Thought, and the mechanics of thought, can never be beyond one's own memory, experience, and perception.  Inspiration is something different.  It may manifest as a different thought, a thought that one has never thought before, yet... there is a silence which proceeds the thought.  There is a space before the thought forms around the inspiration.  The inspiration comes first.... then the thought or image that the mind can grasp. 

So what is the silence... the stillness of the "before"?  What happens before the thought?  It was this that finally showed me the fallibility of thought itself.  Thought can never take me some place that I haven't been before, for it operates out of the memory and experiences of the past only.  If I am to experience something new... something that takes me out of perception then thought must be discarded.  This is frightening, because what am I apart from thought?  If I did not think, would I still exist?  This is true death, but the death of what? 

What I have found is that the stillness grows within me, thought is becoming more and more difficult for me.  I seem to have all my capabilities to function in the world, but that functioning is becoming less and less dependent on thought.  I can "hear" the thought machines in other people.  I can hear my own thought machine when it starts up.  I know at those points that the words, phrases, feelings expressed, and plans emerging from that thought space are empty, meaningless, and devoid of any reality whatsoever.  They sound hollow.  Hollow words.  Empty talking sounds.  It bores me to tears, especially when I hear it coming from me.  I guess this is why I enjoy spiritual discussions more and more and business discussions less and less.  Spiritual discussions leave room for inspiration... the best ones are complete inspiration.  Business discussions invariably involve endless past things... endless eddies of old stuff.  It is very rare to hear anything new in a business meeting.

So how is silence built?  It is the same question as how do I discover what I am.  It is no different.  I am understanding this more as I walk into this different segment of the journey.  Inevitably, I try to wrap my mind around these questions, and thought fails me once more.  How can I not know who I am?  What is silence?  It is completely laughable that either of these questions could ever be asked.  How the hell could I not know who I am?  It doesn't even make sense.  When the mind goes silent, when it is faced with a dilemma that is this deep, that is when I know that both of these questions are connected.  The silence is me.  The quiet is my home.  Silence that is un-uttered potential... the silence before the Word was spoken... is who I am.  I am potential.  I am potency.  I am creation on the verge of springing forward into life.  There is a hush that comes with that statement... a pause of intense interest that can be felt.  The pause has an intense curiosity about what Potential will bring into existence this time.  In that space, in that pause, I feel Me.  The real one. 

The pause... the space is essentially nothing, yet it has all potential, all probability, all Being within it.  It is not the long silence of eternal dissipation or dissolution.  It is the pause of expectancy, the pause between contractions bringing new life into the world.  It is incredibly difficult to hold onto, because the mind itself is terrified of silence.  It feels as the silence grows that it does not exist, and it doesn't... in that instant before it is given thought.  In that space it seems that there is only consciousness itself, unexpressed.  I can only seem to "hold" it at this point through negating thought and instead holding onto attention itself.  Just attention.  Just the mere act of looking itself.  Thoughtless attention. 

While it really sounds boring... especially when I am writing it here... there is a great vibrancy there that can only be described as joy.  There is a vividness to the attention itself that feels intensely alive.  I think I also find it difficult, because the mind wants to use the potential to some end.  It wants to direct and create through the attention itself.  The Tao talks about this... stating, "Minds becoming awake, wish to create.  I quiet them through nameless simplicity."  Nameless simplicity.  I have been stating that one a lot recently to myself.