Silence Is Golden

“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”

— Buddha

Even if you’ve never meditated, you’ve probably heard that one of the benefits of many kinds of meditation practice is supposed to be a quieter mind.  Since most cultures today place great value on the use of the mind, the benefits of a quiet mind can seem mysterious.  Use it or lose it, right?  Aren’t we supposed to be exercising our minds in order to stretch their capacities and keep them nimble?  Well, just as our bodies need both weight-bearing exercise, cardio, stretching, AND rest in order to function at peak capacity, our minds need various kinds of use and rest in order to provide us with the capacities we want from them. 

Modern life is so hectic, demanding, and distracting that we don’t generally get much time for silence and reflection.  This leaves is with a mind that is mostly running at high speed all the time.  With a mind so busily engaged, it’s harder to notice the patterns that are running on autopilot, keeping us stuck in ruts that we never seem to be able to break out of for reasons that elude us.  When we put ourselves into a situation where nothing is required of us, and practice meditation with the aim of quieting the mind, we allow the mind to rest a bit; by the way, this in turn allows the body’s stress response to calm down, which is great for physical health—a bonus side effect!  While it definitely takes practice to make progress in disengaging from normal patterns of thought, so that benefits may not be immediately felt, over time, it’s possible to build familiarity with new mind states.  This familiarity makes it easier to take them with you, or recreate them when you’re experiencing something difficult, so that you can function more smoothly throughout your life.  A hyper mind isn’t necessarily a resourceful mind, just as a chronically tense muscle isn’t always useful—it needs to be able to relax and stretch in order to do everything it’s meant to do. 

When you’re meditating for the ability to quiet the mind, there are numerous benefits that I know I immediately experience, and you may as well, such as:

·      As I head toward greater quiet, my mind will usually chime in a few times to reveal things I need to do or remember, which is legitimately helpful.  I can make note of these and continue the process.  Without giving myself a few minutes of quiet, I would not have remembered these, and opportunities would have been lost.

·      As my mind slows down, I become more aware of my body, and anything about it that I need to address. 

·      I start to notice more about what is really going on with me, how I really feel about things that have been going on recently in my life.  I begin to feel more like myself and less like someone just running around at the behest of every distracting thing I encounter every day.

·      I begin to feel that there’s more time available to me than I would otherwise. 

·      I begin to feel calmer, more at peace, and more powerfully able to define what’s important and where I will choose to put my energy and focus.

·      I feel more in touch with my intuition.

·      My body feels more pleasantly calm and peaceful.

·      I feel like my to do list falls away and I’m able to recognize the goodness of just being alive, which at this point is much more a feeling than a thought.

Once you’ve practiced an expanded state of mental quiet, there are many other meditation techniques to pursue depending on what you want, but being able to create that quiet space is a foundational skill without which only certain kinds of progress can be made.  This state also becomes something you can remind yourself to revert to when you find yourself getting hyper for any reason.  It can immediately help you to regain helpful perspective on the ways in which you may have been contributing to your own stress.  Bringing a greater sense of calm to challenge allows you to stay more creative, less reactive, and more reasonable.  You’re then more likely to be able to solve problems and work well with others, which makes you less likely to spend your time feeling stuck and confused.

In a seemingly unlikely way, spending time creating mental quiet leads to greater focus and energy, which can make it seem like you have more time rather than having lost it in the pursuit.  Even if you don’t think you can spend more than a few minutes practicing, you can still benefit from the attempt to create a few minutes of internal quiet throughout your day here and there.  I highly recommend making this a little game that you play with yourself.  You may have other mental games you already play, like doing crossword puzzles.  This is just another category of game that builds capacity your brain needs to function with excellence.