His request for silence was quite enlightening. It seems like we need a great deal more silence in our lives. One reason that baseball was long held as the national pastime in our country is because it used to be a pretty quiet game. I say used to be, because it isn’t any more, with commercials, music and video games blaring through inning breaks. In general though, baseball isn’t like pro basketball, which now has introductions that resemble rock concerts, and noise levels of likely more than the 100 decibels recorded at small college games. The Golden State Warriors used to play in Oracle Arena, dubbed “Roaracle” Arena, because of the deafening din that can damage your hearing. Baseball isn’t like pro football either, where, in the playoffs, the signals of visiting quarterbacks often cannot be heard by teammates just a few feet away, because of decibel levels in the high 80s. Home team fans are often thought of as the twelfth man for their gridiron heroes, providing an energy that can intimidate many a visiting athlete.
Barraged Visually As Well
As if all this aural onslaught wasn’t bad enough, we’re also attacked visually. If you watch something as harmless as a sporting contest, you’ll have to see the crawl at the bottom of your TV set, keeping you informed up-to-the-minute of other scores of games being played throughout the league. Watch something on ESPN and you’ll get scores of games in just about every sport there is, to say nothing of news, both breaking and not that old yet. If you watch a football game, graphics are on display to tell you what down it is, how many yards are needed for a first down, as well as an imaginary line on your TV screen that indicates exactly where that first down happens to be located. It’s hardly surprising that with all these graphics and all this noise coming at you from all sides, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find someone who doesn’t multitask, who can focus on doing just one thing at a time.
The Sounds of Silence
So when do people actually experience silence and a lack of clutter in their lives? Some people seek it on a massage table, but there are some therapists who get bored just rubbing necks and shoulders and like to talk to their clients during their sessions. Yoga classes can be oases for silence, but all too often there’s new age music or kirtan (devotional music) playing in the background to get the benders and stretchers in the mood. Even meditation, that ancient pathway to the infinite silence, is often practiced while listening to a CD; the guided nature of it keeps the meditator focused on the CD’s sound, rather than on her own inner silence. Silence is becoming an all too difficult to find commodity in our postmodern world. And we suffer from its absence. As Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher and mathematician, wrote more than 350 years ago, “All of man’s troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Find your Silence
It’s ironic that the subhead above invites you to find your silence – because you don’t really have to go anywhere to find your silence, since silence exists in abundance within you at the deepest level of your mind at all times and in all spaces. Personally, I’ve taken a minute of silence every day since I was 17 years of age. More precisely, I take about 90 minutes of silence, with all the advanced meditation techniques that I practice and teach.
But when I teach Higher Self Healing Meditation, which I’ve done since 2010, after teaching many hundreds of people Transcendental Meditation for many years, 20 minutes twice a day is just what the meditation teacher ordered. In the deep silence of meditation you will find peace and a respite from all your to dos of the day; you’ll also get creative inspirations to enrich your job, your career, your personal life, and your art, if you practice one.
If I were to single out some of the happiest days that I’ve ever known, near the top of that list would be the three days of silence that I was able to enjoy on an advanced meditation course in the Swiss Alps.
One hundred people were gathered together and ate, meditated, walked, and even watched videos of their spiritual teacher – all in silence – for 72 hours. Until you take an extended period of silence like a day or two or three, you have no idea how peaceful it can be when you refrain from speaking. And then you’ll discover in amazement how much energy it takes just to speak. If you live alone, why not take a weekend day at home in silence? Curl up with an inspiring book, your cat, and a cup of tea. If you live with others, it’s harder to do, but with a little bit of talking beforehand, you might just be able to hang in your man cave or in your bedroom and enjoy the blessed peace that comes with silence.
