The last twenty years or so, spiritual/new age authors have sent this message
to readers: "You have something broken about you and I can fix it."

Now a newer, truer message must be heard: "You are here to deliver a beautiful gift to
the world - and it's a gift that benefits everyone. Remember it, and get on with it."

OUR NORMAL UNDERSTANDING of the word silence implies absence of sound. Silence, when defined spiritually, however, refers to the emptiness of mind that allows pure sound to be heard. Pure sound is the vibration on which the visible universe rests. Silence is the frequency that allows that vibration to express itself. In other words, Silence is the nothingness out of which everything emerges, in which everything is rooted, and by which everything is nurtured.

Absolute silence cannot be achieved by most humans, therefore as a spiritual principle, Silence can only be discussed abstractly. It's a difficult principle, not only because it's impossible to "do," but more importantly because it is somewhat dangerous to even try. You see, it is in Silence that divine truth is revealed, and in our world of relativity, divine truth bears a mighty sword. In fact, it is said by the masters that if a human were to directly encounter the pure vibrations of divine truth, he or she would most likely be obliterated.

Why, then, is Silence (the pathway to divine truth) ever included in our garments? Who wants to be obliterated? Silence lives through some of us because of this: our world is a relative reality which is evolving toward perfection. In other words everything that appears to exist depends on and is relative to everything else that appears to exist. That relative reality constantly evolves toward divine truth. Every shimmer of perfection and every small experience or minute expression of divine truth experienced by any individual carries the entire species closer to its full actualization. Some of us have woven within our very beingness an irrepressible drive toward achieving that goal.

From The Invisible Garment:

With Silence in your garment, we know that you have those profound moments of self-realization when you are able to quiet your inner dialogue and simply listen to the music of the spheres. When you are in a place in time-space-matter that allows absolute peace, the bones of your skull will buzz with the very tone that runs the universe. And in those moments, you remember your part of the Great Universal Plan. These moments are very precious and fairly rare for you, because the busy-ness of the mundane world invades so much of your consciousness. But you have them just often enough to keep moving toward your own awakening.

Of course, even the concept of awakening cannot be fully described, because when one encounters the divine truth veiled within Silence, there is no "you" left to be awakened. Indeed, at certain junctures in your spiritual journey, all words are finished, all concepts gone. Silence is one of those junctures. It can't be described; it must be experienced.

Silence is anchored within the bones of your skull. Those bones seem to be more alive than the other bones in your body. They are pliable, and they vibrate. If you haven't done it before, get a cranial massage from someone who is well-trained in the art. As you allow the bones of your skull to be ever-so-slightly manipulated, you'll find yourself aligning with Silence. In those moments of blissful quiet, you have the potential of accomplishing what might require a decade of spiritual practice under ordinary circumstances. In those moments of Silence, your ego releases its control over your perceptions, and you realize the Oneness of all existence.

Throughout the history of our species, there have been but a few people who could totally access Silence. It is said that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., had moments of authentic Silence in their lives. Perhaps only at the moment of their deaths, both taken by assassins, did the frequency of Silence fully embody through them.

Why is it so hard to achieve Silence, even for the most devout student? Because, as I said earlier, Silence contains the ultimate truth of Oneness (that we are not separated beings), and only the rarest and most devout student can fully face that truth.

A student of the personality knows that the human ego is a construct created to allow the individual to experience himself or herself relative to everything else. In other words, the ego serves as a veil between divine truth and relative truth, protecting the individual from the annihilation of realizing Oneness. In fact, the ego's very existence demands that the individual not permanently establish Silence. That's why it's so hard to "do" Silence and remain alive. Of course, eventually humans will evolve their physical bodies and their emotional capacities so that Silence can be fully accessed. We're not there yet. If you have Silence in your garment, you're hopefully working on it!

There's a cute story in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (my favorite little book of zen stories) about four students of meditation who decided to take a seven-day silent retreat. They started at sunrise one morning, and did fine throughout the day. However, that night the oil lamps grew too dim to allow for their nighttime reading, so one of the students called for a servant to fix the lamps. The second student, shocked to hear the sound of his friend's voice exclaimed, "We are not supposed to say a word." The third student, annoyed with them both admonished the second, "That was stupid. Why did you talk?" And the fourth rested in inflated self-confidence, thinking but not saying aloud, "I am touching perfection, as I am the only one who hasn't talked."

Indeed, when all else fails, our egos will erupt with thoughts that prevent us from merging with Silence.

All right, you may ask, if it's impossible to achieve Silence, why bother with it at all? My answer is simple. If it is in your invisible garment, you can't help it. You will spend your life either trying to understand it, or you will spend your life fighting against it. Silence is so much a part of your contract with life that it calls to you constantly.

It is true that I've given many soul contract readings to people who have Silence as one of their threads, only to discover that those are the chattiest people I've ever met. For some people, the concept of learning from listening to the sacred Nothing is repugnant, and the idea of surrendering to a vibration rather than charting one's own course is terrifying. Those people chatter to avoid the pain of realizing that they don't exist (at least not in the way they thought they did).

But others long to quiet their minds. When the inner dialog stills, a paradox occurs. You find yourself in a place where all information resides, but you have no questions. You emerge from that place "knowing" nothing. Nothing is the key.

From time to time big spiritual trends sweep around the world. Mostly those trends are capitalistic campaigns - selling books, selling gurus, selling a practice or exercise - which run their course and then fizzle. I've watched spiritual trends with curiosity, the latest one being the rush to purchase a book called The Secret. According to this book which proclaims that it reveals ancient wisdom, one must simply learn to wish for things or circumstances properly in order to attract a perfect life. I would argue that the real "secret" to a perfect life is surrender to Silence. When one experiences and completely surrenders to the spiritual principle of Silence, things and circumstances no longer hold ones interest or attention. Silence calls one's mind to the deepest secret of all: breath. Your breath, God's breath.

I've just used about 1300 words to try to say what can't be said. Hafiz, the great sufi master and poet, sums it up in seventeen:

I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ's breath moves through -
Listen to this
Music

© Connie Kaplan, 2007

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