Silence is a world unto itself, with its own language and culture; and yet silence exists as the heart of all people, of life—of existence itself.

Silence doesn’t want to know anything. Silence has no questions. Silence is never confused, nor certain. It is the very source of creative consciousness.

Stillness of being is ever-present. We live both within and as this stillness, and we speak with silence to communicate its meaning and significance.

We never feel as fully comfortable as a guest in another’s home as we do in our own home. Stillness of being is our home.

All understanding about life — its origin, meaning, purpose, and direction—is revealed in stillness of being, in the poetry of silence within one’s own self.

Within stillness of being, all thoughts and beliefs, fears and doubts, anger and hatred, greed and violence dissipate and dissolve naturally and effortlessly.

We don’t need any technique to realize what we are, because we are the technique. Silence breathes us into existence, sustains us, and receives us back.

We are all artists of authenticity.

If we freely express from stillness of being, each action will be an artistic one, a creative one, a beautiful one, a liberating one.

Truth is not dogmatic. It lives within our stillness of being and is expressed spontaneously through silence, as an impulse of life itself.

Stillness of being is an extreme form of social and political activism, because its silence neutralizes rationalizations and justifications for violence.

Stillness of being contains within its nature qualities we label empathy, compassion, kindness. They arise automatically, unifying and harmonizing apparent differences.

Within stillness of being, our mind falls silent, our heart opens, and life pours through us in millions of colors of pure creative energy, as if we were its prism.

Stillness, silence, openness: this is our unique and common soul. This is our oneness with all of Existence. This is beauty beyond understanding.

Stillness of being is not something we achieve; it is who we are. Silence does not have to be learned; it is the already-known language of our soul.

Stillness of being, silence of mind, openness of heart—these are living inside of us. They are strands of source consciousness woven deeply within our DNA.

Still, silent, open: everything is known without knowing, seen without seeing, felt without touching. This is not gossip, it can be experienced directly.

If you’ve lost contact with your soul, it’s because of unexamined words, defensive postures, and parroted beliefs. Be quiet, open, and honest; your soul will flourish in silence.

If you’re lucky, one day your faith in conceptual language will collapse like an old, unused cabin. What happens then cannot be expressed in words. That’s the whole idea.

What is in the way of your own peace? Compulsive thinking, compulsive speaking, compulsive acting. Compulsive thought, speech, and action are the killers of peace. Silence and stillness of being are the parents of peace.

How often in your life have you needed to be right or been afraid of being wrong? How long have you lived within these two polarities? Can you give up both, and live in the beauty of silence?

Silence is a gorgeous nothingness in which the next thing will arise, not to be understood, but to be lived out.

My recommendation for progressive social transformation: change-agents of all kinds should first go to the high mountains, alone, for three months, with only nature and solitude and silence.

Look carefully and you’ll see that every thought is automatically self-justifying. In other words, whatever you think and say is right! Except that most of it is fool’s gold. The real gold is silence.

If you put the seeming reality portrayed by language under the high-powered magnifying glass of silence, all your knowledge—in fact, your entire world—will collapse.

Silence is not a sedative to suppress one’s ferocity. Rather, it frees us to enjoy gigantic explosions of eroticism, creativity, kindness, connection, and wildness.

Living in friendship with silence, serving the well-being of others is natural, not spiritual. Kindness, empathy, generosity—these qualities are as water in a flowing river.

Silence is like sorbet for the mind, cleansing it of past clutter. Then we can truly see a thing’s essence and beauty. In seeing truly, seeing anything is seeing everything.

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Editor: Emma Ruffin

Photo: Alice Popkorn/Flickr