silence.

Silence is not an absence, but a presence. - A. LeClaire

It took me a long time to really practice silence. I think maybe on those particular retreats I looked like I was - but honestly, in those early years, I had full albums, like rock concerts, going on inside my head. They would play and I would be able to hear all the nuances of the music, the lyrics grew with new meaning, and it felt really good...

Then, of course, I realised that it felt way too good. I was just distrcting the mind from what I didn't want to come up during that powerful practice of silence. Although I felt calm and relaxed and good, I wasn't transcending anything, I wasn't learning anything (except maybe the intimacy of that music in my mind). I knew I had to have some kind of discomfort to grow.

So next time when the music came, I just let it come but rather than run off with the fantasy of it all (much to my initial dismay, to be honest) I let it play out and just kept coming back to my breath. As much as I had identified with feeling relaxed, the mind had actually become rampant. And the longer I ignored the music and kept coming back to only my breath, the heavier my body started to feel.

One particular day I had felt so heavy I could barely move. But I knew that somatics were the only way through at this point.

The music had stopped and I was thick in the juice of my past. The sludge of it all. By the end of the retreat I had waded through so much "stuff" that when the music came back it was sweeter than ever. It literally shined right out of my eyes.

But the silence had always been there, waiting for me to notice. The juiciest thing about sound is that it's wrapped up in those precious moments of silence. Then come those even more precious moments when you are no longer merely the listener hearing the music, or noticing the silence, but are simply the non-dual awareness - You are indeed all of it and none of it.