FOUR UNIVERSAL HEALING SUPPLIES. PART 3. SILENCE

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Silence, you are the best

From everything I've heard

B. Pasternak

Silence, as a healing practice, has existed since time immemorial in the religions of India, in Buddhism, and Christianity. In its extreme form, it was the fate of monks - it was both vows of silence and withdrawal from the society of people. However, silence is not only beneficial for monks and hermits. Since ancient times, the practice of silence has been considered the best remedy for ordinary mortals from mental disorder, an effective way to restore mental health.

Perhaps it may seem strange to someone, at a time when the whole world around us requires communication, to consider silence as a healing potion. Today, people are interested in how to communicate more effectively, rather than how to stay silent more effectively.

While worshiping the cult of the word, we often forget that it often heals, for example, not the word, but the presence of another person nearby and the quality of this presence. Each of us can remember the tacit presence of a loved one or friend, when the intimacy between us is the deeper, the more we are immersed in tacit understanding of each other. Silence can hurt, kill, offend, but it can also bring closer, deepen contact, interrupt meaningless puns and express yourself in a language that goes from heart to heart.

But often a person cannot be silent. Words, words, words … Lifebuoys keeping us afloat. “Let him say at least something”, “I need to say something” - most of us find it so difficult to endure silence. But the word is silver, and silence is gold, not only because while speaking we can shake up too much, but also because the more words we say, the more chaos around and within ourselves we generate. Silence allows you to conserve energy, leads to inner peace and clarity of mind. Silence can help with neuropsychiatric disorders, headaches, vascular dystonia, and soothes the nervous system. It is not for nothing that during illness, people prefer silence to conversations.

It is in silence, and not in the process of verbalization, that healing metamorphoses occur in the human psyche: mourning, repentance, forgiveness, etc.

I will say that in my psychotherapeutic practice, I came across a type of client for whom silence and the resulting pauses were difficult to bear. The pause that arose caused confusion and the immediately arising need to say at least something, just to fill it. Clients talked excitedly, looking for new and new topics, from which one thing was extremely clear - they did their best to hold on to verbal interchange with a real interlocutor, so as not to be left alone with themselves, with their inner world. Such clients experience a prolonged pause as a weakening of the connection with reality, while speaking - as a renewal of this connection. Chatting about anxiety, insecurity, and feelings of guilt is a well-known method that people choose to cope with these unpleasant feelings.

“The voice of being is always quiet, but so that there is no chance at all to hear it, Gerede (chatter) rings louder and louder” (M. Heidegger).

Silence frees the right, non-verbal hemisphere from the pressure of the left, verbal-logical and contributes to the harmonization of interhemispheric relations. The techniques traditionally used for this purpose are aimed at de-potentiating consciousness, silencing the talkative ego and the omnipresent Super Ego. The essence of the techniques is to forget the ability to speak for a while. Forgetting simple human speech, forgetting the language of words and returning to the language of bodily sensations and visual images, plunge into a "waking dream" or "a dream with open eyes." This is a state of inversion of perception, when the inner world, as it were, becomes external. The silenced one gains intuitive sight, inner silence magically reveals the truth of feelings and returns the soul forgotten and abandoned as unnecessary in the world of values of effective communication.

Healing silence is a state of "no thoughts", or rather, without verbally formed thoughts. Such a state is natural and primitive for man. The word is the most distant, gone from things as-they-are a human invention, and far from the only measure of human development.

You can try at first to just shut up and accompany the silence with rhythmic monotonous activity that completely absorbs and is performed at a leisurely pace. This can be any activity that is perceived as recreation (for example, embroidering or digging in the garden), and various forms of outdoor activities, especially in nature, away from the hustle and bustle (fishing, walking or jogging), and even a "silent" from childhood. Sometimes everything happens exactly the opposite, a person, starting to perform some monotonous activity to his liking, sinks deeper and deeper into silence.

Sometimes it is useful to get rid of communication, eliminate communication on the phone and not let any words from the outside (TV and radio) into your life. When there is already physically no one to talk to, it is important to take the next, much more difficult step - not to talk to yourself, to turn off the inner tyrannical commentator.

You can try the following method of stopping a verbal commentator. "Looking without words." Pick an item and start looking at it. Don't say “pretty,” “ugly,” “useful,” “unnecessary.” Be silent. Don't bring in words, just watch. But the mind will become embarrassed, he will definitely want to speak out, he will definitely want to say. But your task is to see, not to speak. Disable the commentator. Send him on vacation, send him far, far away. It won't be easy. You should start with things that you are not too involved in. Choose an object that does not involve you too much, something neutral (a tree, a window in a neighboring house, a bench at the entrance, etc.)

Autumn is a great time to practice silence. It is as if nature itself suggests that it is time to shut up. Walking through the autumn forest, people, often obeying an inner feeling, scatter in different directions and only occasionally break the silence. An autumn forest or a sparsely populated park can become places of sacred isolation from the worldly chaos and bustle of the big city.

Various art techniques will help to stop the flow of words and plunge into the healing silence, for example, drawing, modeling, floristry or working with the most unexpected means (cereals, herbs, newsprint, etc.).

You can try to draw a silent and talking person, or to depict words and silence metaphorically, to sculpt a "house of words" and "a house of silence." Using the proverb “the word is silver, silence is gold”, metaphorically depict the silver-gold relationship.

Silence is a "sacred grove" that helps to cleanse yourself of unnecessary fuss and obsession with words. In silence we find our true essence. However, the “Enough” moment should also be felt. Enough silence, it's time to say.