The Practice of Silence
Overview Below please find a musing on the gift of silence, and a lesson learnt through conversation, and some tools and resources. Or perhaps, simply take this as an invitation to enjoy a moment of silence and enjoy that?
I (and other readers) would be interested in hearing your own experiences with silence, and anything - stories, tools, comments, you have to offer…
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^ For information on this image see below
"Only silence remains…because I have to listen to the silence…I have to experience it…" - 1 Giant Leap Album
"The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it". - Mark Twain’s Notebook
"The music is the space between the notes" Claude Debussy
How do you view/experience silence? When was the last time you had/took an opportunity to truly enjoy a moment of silence? Have you had a positive experience with silence- Silence where you felt comfortable and safe? Are you afraid of being silent? Do you take moments to let go of the rush around you and inside of you - to take pause?
Alice sent me an email on ’silence is golden’ and I wanted to post on silence. I got sidetracked yesterday and am now committing to putting it online ‘now’.
Why Now? I have to be honest. Today there was a consequence to not practicing silence regularly. As a consultant I work with regularly and I speak about, human behaviour change happens sometimes with awareness of knowledge only…other times, it requires a consequence to get to the level of ‘embodied knowledge’. Or put another way, if there is no consequence/sufficient reason (good or bad) to do it, there is no impetus to propel from one persons lesson into your own…
I recently had the opportunity to be invited and participate in a dialogue Edge of Emergence with an international group of change agents, CEO’s, consultants and many others, that was about world systems change. One of the biggest lessons for me was systems change occur through personal/individual level change. Which makes change much more achievable…and possible. And aligns with my new tag line "small change –> big impact".
Included in the dialogue were regular moments of silence: For instance between people speaking/comments that came from the group, the was silence - allowing us to listen, also to ourselves, and attend to our thoughts, and then respond rather than react - which I suspect really helped move us quickly into deeper conversation over the ping-pong conversations we are perhaps more used to/ more familiar with. I also appreciated the opportunity to experience a positive extended period of silence…it was quite glorious to be with a group of people and be silent. And to listen…
I came home, back to the rush rush rush city extraordinarily refreshed - and for a few weeks was able to integrate silence into my day-day…I also began to introduce it more consciously into my coaching practice - towards the end of the session, giving people an opportunity to ‘take a minute’ and write, then share back, what they had gained from the session and what actions they would take between the sessions…
And then, as happens with adopting new patterns sometimes, I seemed to have lost the awareness/impetus for me to be personally silence - perhaps in part because there was no consequence for me NOT to be silent every day, and in part because I hadn’t structured it fully into my day-day behaviours. I didn’t make it important enough.
The consequence? Today I reacted at work today. I made a mistake. Were I to have taken a pause, a moment of silence, I would have had a better outcome.
So as I sit at my computer tonight I realise, here was a perfect example of how if we pay attention to ‘tensions’ - small things that make us feel suddenly and disproportionally tense - we have the opportunity to learn some large lessons.
I post this now as a sharing with you and also as reminder of a time when I learned some great lessons from a small but powerful moment where I was human…and where I could have benefited from the practice, and self-acceptence, of silence. Silence speaks volumes.
It also gave me an experience of something I teach - that though we perceive sometimes that there are rules to conversation, we are actually able at any time to stop and change our behaviour, take a moment —- and respond rather than react. Think of it as like learning you don’t have to pick up the phone immediately just because it rings.
In writing this I recognise that in the of course of making mistakes, developing practices such as regular moments of silence, enable us to better respond to the world that presents to us, in addition to the world we create, through our questions, outlook, intentions, words… put out there.
Of course silence, like many other things I learn and bring to organizations and love, is not new. Many people have been sharing this wisdom for years - from spiritual leaders to a literacy expert I overheard teaching a child literacy allowing the child to stop and reflect for a moment. Yet perhaps for one person out there, this post will make the concept accessible. It is worth a try. And I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to explore silence.
Some tools and resources on Silence via Alice, myself and the dialogue below:
MIT Video: The Ceaseless Society: What Happens to Our Mind, Body, and Spirit When we Just Never Stop? Speakers include Jon Kabat-Zinn, Founding Director, Stress Reduction Clinic, University of Massachusetts Medical Center
Author, Coming to Our Senses:Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness;Meditation for Optimum Health; and Full Catastrophe Living
Just-A-Minute Campaign - a campaign introducing the idea of regular one-minute pauses and breaks, when individuals can re-connect with their core self, their strengths and their values. The campaign includes multi-media tools such as one minute spoken meditations to download onto computers or podcast, light-hearted animations and events in over 100 countries. Please note these are spiritual in nature.
Allow yourself to pause during conversation: Next time you are in a difficult conversation, remember silence: though we perceive sometimes that there are rules to conversation, we are actually able at any time to stop and change our behaviour, at any point, even if we have started to response. Stop, take a moment —- and respond rather than react. Ask to have the conversation at a later/more appropriate time…Think of it as like learning that you don’t have to pick up the phone immediately just because it rings. Or even pick it up at all.
^ Image: 4′33” - Four and a half minutes of silence A composition of three movements, no notes, performed on piano, by John Cage Three movements, no notes.
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November 8th, 2006 at 1:41 am
Hi,
I read this (on PBS, from 2000), and it seemed kind of relevent - Phil Jackson on basketball…
“the real idea is that we call it conspiring together, breathing together, with breath, to conspire. And we sit in this attitude of, you know, being able to focus and hold our attention. So it’s very important that they have that kind of sense of reading each other, and their level of alertness and awareness and being able to read what’s going on on the court causes each of them to react in a certain way. And that’s the beauty of basketball, that’s the beauty of coaching.”
If “Love is never having to say you’re sorry”, does knowing mean not having to use (verbal) language to coordinate behaviour (telling), the fully normed team trusting each other? Nice blog :) - guess the smilies kind of a silent nod too ;)
November 8th, 2006 at 6:02 am
thanks for this Ken! I like your question a lot -I have been thinking a lot about visuals and how to take people away from language/words and use visuals, diagrams maps drawings…and in some interesting way stories too seem to do that - stories, thoigh word-ful are actually pictorially pich - so I see stories as a really healthy way to bridge/break through the verbal and into the shared knowing…
what I havent (yet) been successful in is explaining this in a way that everyone understnads ;)
November 9th, 2006 at 1:38 am
Natalie,
Pablo Neruda wrote about silence:
(note that in spanish instead of still he uses “you are in silence”)
I like for you to be still
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not
touch you.
It seems as though your eyes have flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.
As all things are filled with my soul,
you emerge from things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.
I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing
like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.
And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it’s not true.
November 9th, 2006 at 2:18 am
Hi Natalie,
Is it ok to ask more questions? Your new thinking sounds too intriguing not to ask :)
If you could put a picture of the visual maps you’ve been thinking about up on the wall (or even make a short film, moving pictures :) and then describe that to us how would you describe the picture - what would the language you want to move away from and the attraction of shared knowing you seek look like?
Would there be similarities in imagery, colours, metaphors, tonalities, characters, i.e. between picture itself and it’s description? Any links between them, bridges to cross the gap, or even parts with no connecting bridge, bits where there words were not enough to cross the space-between them, leaving a tension seeking some creation attention? If you described it in NY would it sound different than if done in Sydney?
Perhaps you already described this picture, and folks didn’t see/hear/feel where you were coming from (or going to)? Could you paint that picture, a painting of a painting :) Hope that’s not too recursively fractal. Watched your video, too - nice - the disjointed start gives me a little flavour, perhaps, of what you might be thinking about, versus the moment of connection at the end, when all the pieces come together into a smooth, seamless, flowing whole). I better be silent now - bye!
…ken
November 10th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
thank you to you both - Andres, that poem is beautiful!!
Ken - No, I don’t mind you asking! I am not clear on my answer although I really appreciate the idea and it adds further impetus to my need to put my things into alternate forms eg white paper digital works etc
til soon to you both, natalie
November 26th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
“Let’s be very, very quiet.†You can try this. It’s a little trick from the sorcerer’s trade here. You intensify the silence between you. You can hold that. Its intensification will require certain muscle. If you can do that, you will notice an impact on the room. The room will quiet down to the point where, if you really keep it up, the whole room will wind up looking at you. What’s that? That’s working with the energy of the room– the atmosphere – the feel.” — Bill Isaacs
One of my favourite pieces of music is Arvo Parts spiegel-im-spiegel, it’s so quiet it seems to cut through the noise, like the Tibetan thumb bells, small but deep, beneath what words can say?