Why The Mind Fears Silence

Do you recall sometime when you alone at home or you just came back from work and everything is silent and you just experience that eerie feeling and you immediately switch on the TV or some music or grab your cell phone and immerse yourself in it. Why do we want to avoid that silence? Why does silence give such a strange and depressive feeling? Why do we try to mask the silence with some sound. Recall, sometime when you are conversing with someone, when you both exhaust all the topics of discussion and then there is nothing to speak and both people fall silent, it feels so uncomfortable. Why is it so. Why does silence seem strange? Why do we want to flee from silence. Whenever our life goes quiet, we rush to fill it up. We start scrolling, switch on the radio, start a speaking with someone, begin some activity. It seems boring when there is silence or nothing to do.Silence is not entertaining.
This is because the of culture that we are brought up. If you walk into a room and people are silent, it feels uneasy. We prefer if there is chatter, air is filled with peoples stories and opinions. It gives a boost of pleasure. In our public spaces, there is always noise, talking, music playing, announcements or hum of machines, noise of traffic. If A man is seen sitting quietly doing nothing, he is thought to either be wasting time or is not mentally sound. In childhood, silence was sometimes given as a punishment. Dont speak! Dont talk! That is why silence seems so ackward. We are so much accustomed to the noise. We want to fill every space with doing, talking, planning. The sounds and noise indicate life and silence is akin to death. So the mind fears silence.
This fear of silence is because in silence there is no distraction, no entertainment, no appreciation. There is only YOU and most people do not know how to be with themselves. They fear their own company. Without the external chatter, your inner chatter becomes obvious, and the mind doesnt like it. So it tries to drown it with noise, music, activity. Silence feels like restlessness and we avoid it, But this avoidance is exactly why life feels restless!! In silence, the mind has to face its own noise of worries, desires, regrets and loneliness. It is very uncomfortable. 
Silence weakens the illusion of control. In silence, the mind has nothing to hold on to. The ego says I am the doer but I have nothing to do, where is my importance! What do I hold on to! I cannot let go of my doership. The ego sees the doing nothing as dissolution. So It resists that and quickly wants to switch doing something, some activity, switching on the TV, calling someone, or if nothing else, then fidgeting. How often have you noticed this..purposeless fidgeting with fingers or fiddling with objects. This is the restless mind expressing itself through the body. Silence seems very boring because the mind does not know how to rest. This is why the mind fears silence. Because silence is closer to Truth.

**What happens when you allow silence**
If you allow the mind to go through the discomfort of silence, something curious will happen. Experiment on this, when your days work is done and there is some silence, Notice this silence. You will notice ordinary things like the clock ticking, your breath, sound of wind. Gradually you will notice your restless mind appears with thoughts rushing like a storm. The thoughts will ask for your urgent attention, variety of thoughts of unfinished tasks, worries, regrets, plans. Things you had pushed aside begin to surface. Silence did not create these thoughts, it just revealed them. It will be very uncomfortable and You will want to escape. But that discomfort is precisely the point. If you let the silence stay for a bit more time, then this storm will begin to settle. Thoughts will lose their urgency and underneath the thoughts you will find something interesting. Something that is steady, that does not move. It is the awareness that had been watching in the background. It does not appear all of a sudden, it is discovered. If you sit long enough with the silence, you will discover an extraordinary thing. Silence is not empty at all. For the mind , silence seems like a void. But silence is full, it is alive. It is not meaningless. It tries to tell you something. If you listen, it will whisper. Listening to that can change everything. It will reveal the Truth. Truth is very unsettling, So everything conspires to keep the silence away. Silence speaks but not in the way we expect it to. It speaks through stillness. Silence reveals that we are impermanent and it is frightening to discover this. So we run away from silence. We keep ourselves busy not because we love our work but we are terrified. If the noise is stopped we will disappear. 
We try to escape the silence or cover it up but in doing so we miss the greatest gift of silence, which is the Wisdom. So try not to be fearful of the silence. Be in the silence and you will realise you can be yourself, you do not need to prove, pretend, or produce. You are already enough. You are enough not because you achieved something but because you exist. This realisation is the highest freedom. It is peace. You will never find this peace in the noise. For this you have to allow the silence. This allowance requires courage. You have to bring that courage to stop, to sit and simply be, without jumping to the next distraction.

**Silence brings healing**
Silence reveals what we do not want to face. It reveals our insecurities, frustration, loneliness. Thats why we avoid it, but in avoidance, we miss what it brings. It brings the gift of healing. Silence shows what is hidden, brings it up and then it can be healed. Whenever the deep buried fears arise, it will hurt, but it will also bring the transformation. If you hide your wound and not allow it to be cleaned with antiseptic for the fear of pain, it can never heal. The silence will show you, look here, this is the place where you were hurt, this is the place where you ignored.

**Silence is the connection to higher wisdom**
Once you face this discomfort of your own mind , then the character of silence will begin to change. It will no longer feel heavy and frightening. It becomes light and alive. It will speak to you, not in words but as sudden insights. These are intuitions, which are the words of the silence. It is that sense that you know without knowing how you know. In silence, the mind is not pushing, not straining or calculating. It is relaxed and receptive. And in this receptivity, ideas arrive. We all have experienced that our best thoughts hardly come when we are forcing. They come when we are relaxed, gazing, walking, sitting quietly. This is the secret. Creativity is not produced by effort alone. It is born in silence. Silence is a place where thoughts rearrange themselves into clarity. Creative people have always known this. Poets, writers move in solitude and in that stillness, words flow as if coming from another world. Scientists also find that the solution never appears in struggling with the problem, but in a quiet moment, sometime afterwards, in a bath, or sitting idle. Once a man sat quietly beneath a tree and gravity revealed itself. A painter stares at the blank canvas in silence and suddenly a vision appears. A composer listens to the silence and the melody begins to flow. This is the magic of silence. Silence is a space where the conscious mind loses its grip and a deeper intelligence begins to work. It brings ideas to you. Inspiration, intuition and imagination are not created by you. They come through you. For them to arrive, there has to be a space, a mindspace free of clutter. Silence is that space. Silence does not give you all these things directly. Silence allows what was already there waiting to be demanded by you. That is why when it comes, it feels like a revelation and not like an invention. This does not mean that you do nothing at all. The painter still has to lift his brush, the composer still has to rehearse and the scientist has to continue his experiments. The only difference is that without silence, their effort was restless and mechanical and with the silence, it flows effortlessly. This is the paradox here. The more you force, lesser the life flows. Silence is the background on which everything rests. Without that silent pause, music will not be melodious and words will become noise. Try removing the silent pause in an audio track by speeding it and the audio becomes unbearable noise. The beauty of the music is gone and the words become a meaningless jumble. It is the silence that gives beauty and meaning to it. Without silence there will be no music, no thoughts and no rhythm of life.

**How to Experience this Silence**
You can try to experience this silence in daily life. Begin with short pauses. 1-2 minutes break in the day, switch off your devices, close your eyes and simply rest. Dont shoo away the thoughts, just notice them. Gradually extend this to longer durations. You can make use of the inherent silence in nature. Sit under a tree, by the water or just watching the sun rise and set. Let the mind absorb the natural silence. When restlessness comes, observe who is disturbed by the restlessness, who is aware of the restlessness. 
Slowly you will realise that silence is not absence of sound but the background awareness that is always present. Gradually you can turn the silence that the mind resists to the silence that the heart longs. You will make this silence your friend. It cannot be forced, it happens slowly.

*A great Teacher once said If you thought words are powerful, then think about the silence from which words emerge*

टेलीग्राम ब्राउज़र चेतावनी

ज्ञानाक्षर

Why The Mind Fears Silence

Neelam Nimare