Something is happening. If you’re still, you can almost feel it. If you’re quiet, you can almost hear it. The power of silence (or the power IN silence) is making itself known – and this is the course of Nature. This power is impossible to under-estimate. All you need do is, for some period of time each day, be entirely still.

In this day and age, we might call this stillness “meditation” – a practice gleaned in recent generations from various ancient Eastern traditions and in which you are attentive to the inner world; and then exploring that inner quiet. The key is to become so still that the “thinking” reality takes a back seat - so that instead of indulging in thoughts and reflections on the day’s experiences (which we can do while driving, or showering), we actually are able to “watch” our thoughts go by without being distracted into them. There are surprising things that, by law of nature, manifest in one’s life through silent meditation. And this is no longer an obscure practice strictly for the mystically inclined. If you are like most in our society, you were probably never effectively taught about this stillness.

Whenever I feel stressed or unhappy, it’s usually coincides with my neglecting various self-affirming or "grounding" sorts of endeavors, like yoga or meditation. Because we are rarely taught that silence, true inner silence is powerful. Instead, we are taught to live loud, act, absorb, learn, achieve, go, go, go. And if you rest, it’s to basically escape the ‘perceiving’ of reality: sleep – or the accountability for reality: addiction. Men, particularly, have long been talkers, doers, hunters, gatherers, protectors, conquerors - and addicts. Friends, it is now time to conquer that last frontier: the earthbound ego, and to embrace the ultimate Nurture – the creative power of existence. First and foremost, to establish new relationships with ourselves - relationships that evolution itself vicariously informs us of whenever our parents and teachers didn’t. After all, few can deny that life will ultimately have each one of us stop and listen to Spirit – whether by way of willful investigation of truth, or by personal catastrophe and the, again, natural deconstructing of ‘worlds’ we become too attached to.

To resist the silence, or ‘Spirit’, is to actually choose ambivilence, if not purposelessness and pessimism, and to dwell on banal or destructive thought, and to bring that psychic burden to one’s self and to the world every day. It is to exhibit no care or concern for any future human lives; in the end, it is to choose un-consciousness. For if we refuse to “think” the world a beautiful place, we do nothing but pass on our distorted thinking – that which perceives reality as something unfair, vindictive, chaotic and hopeless. Such is the world today, unless we can participate in a phenomenal and fundamental change to the very heart of civilization. A positive change. And a change that comes from the silence, rather than manipulation, neuroticism and violence.

A renaissance of creativity is unfolding – and that is because the process of evolution is continually propelling us collectively towards our essence, and re-connection to it. This is the theme of every organized religion. This is the theme behind every truly scientific hypothesis and questioning. In the swirling and churning of our day–to-day lives in the ‘civilized’ world, there is an obvious state of acceleration. Human capacities seem to be ever-broadening; records of strength and endurance are ever exceeded; younger and younger minds are encouraged more and more to integrate greater and greater volumes of information. Everything is speeding up and our heads are spinning!

And so is the process of enlightenment similarly accelerated: As we experience greater complexities of physical and sensory realities, there is a natural and growing inclination towards the polar-opposite condition – essentially a survival-based instinct like any other, but in this case, the cellular recognition of the needs of not just the body – but the soul as well. To counter-balance the intensity of the physical experience (mind, body, environment), the soul will come to thrive on practices which work to de-activate the ego-awareness, or the separate self, and to enhance the creative, empowered, connected and whole self. In effect, it is the “generic human”, or “generic being” experience which, as a part of human evolution, is becoming discernable, nameable and ultimately fascinating - not as a "new" concept, but as something definable only in the contrast to the intesified "individualism" of recent Western civilization. We are learning to crave not just "blissful abandon", but the blissful experience of Oneness – because the soul intrinsically knows and exists primarily for that “near access” to God, or its Source. In a way, God is nothing we ever really thought “He” was – at least not within the confines of much of our historical thinking, which depicts the very two-dimensional, engendered, jealous and temperamental God of most of our upbringings. And again, these are not new insights into new definitions of God, or "rebellious" social attitudes stemming from increased moral dis-intigration, but rather the gleanings and distillations of innumerable human histories, and their slow and inevitable integration with one another.

As entire societies turn more and more towards fundamentally life-enhancing practices - ways of tolerance, cooperation, sustainability, health and well-being and collective spirituality, life will, again, by law of nature, be augmented by heightened creativity; and not just so-called art and further manipulation of the elements, but creativity with an accelerated evolution of awareness of that creativity.

So, come on – embrace the “Silence-Revolution”; it is the music of everything around you. As the Hopi Indians said, “We are the Ones we’ve been waiting for”!

(orginally published March 2000)

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As entire societies
turn more
and more towards fundamentally life-enhancing practices...
life will be augmented
by heightened creativity -
and not just so-called "art" and further manipulation of the elements,
but creativity with an accelerated evolution of awareness
of that creativity.