Silence

A few years ago I attended a women's retreat. I shared a little of that experience with you not too long ago. One of the "rules" (really more of a recommendation) was to spend a certain amount of time each day in silence. Attaining that goal meant more than not talking. That was the easy part. It required being alone and away from a million little things. Phone, TV, music, the obvious stuff. Once I eliminated those things I realized that my surroundings were far from silent. The ceiling fan and fridge whirred and, without other noises to conceal it, they seemed loud. I left my room expecting to find a quieter space outside, perhaps on one of the gentle trails or on a bench beneath the sprawling branches of an old tree. I had to share the trail with other people and, although they were quiet in the normal sense of the word, they still made noise that filled my ears. Even when I was alone on the trail, the gravel beneath my feet crunched with every single step I took. Silence, true silence, was eluding me. Eventually, I returned to my room and decided it was quiet enough. I was able to exist with my thoughts, my journal, and my pen.

Several years before that, I went on a spiritual journey of sorts. This was long before I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and I was desperately grasping for something, anything, that would give me some peace. Upon arriving at the spiritual retreat center the first evening, I was instructed to be silent until a specified time the following morning. No talking and no turning anything on to listen to. Being alone with myself like that was unnerving. I didn't much like myself at the time and I definitely did not respect myself. I was trapped in an illness I did not know I had and the silence outside my body made the noise inside by body seem that much louder. My thoughts jumped from one traumatic experience to another while my inner critic picked apart every little decision I had made, proving to me how bad my choices were and how terrible a person I was. My skin crawled with tension and my stomach hurt. I did the only thing I could think to do. I wrote. I had no watch or clock so I have no idea how long I scribbled in my journal. I continued until all the jumbled mess in my head was transferred to paper and until I had described all my emotions and body sensations as well as I could. Finally satisfied, I carefully closed my journal. I felt lighter. I still needed to deal with the awful things I had written but, for the night at least, they lived in the journal and not in me.