9-15-02 Sunday Journal
SIMPLE SILENCE
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Features
"Americans
become agitated and lose their self-confidence and up to 75% of their
intellectual functioning when faced with periods of silence lasting longer than
one minute," says Mike Feder.
I don't know about all Americans but I do know that statement fit me very well
until I started my days with a period of silence. And that silence got longer
and longer as my enjoyment of it grew. Some call it meditation but for the sake
of simplicity, let's just call it "silence."
A friend recently wrote me saying he wanted to learn to meditate. I made some
suggestions but I honestly believe the starting point for interior tuning in is
to simply get quiet. I did this daily until I learned to love it. Once I
starting loving it, I kept doing it because we only keep doing those things we
enjoy.
What is there to love about being still and silent? How about relaxation of
tired muscles and ligaments, cooling of the mind and emotions and often, a
centering of the mind into a clarity unknown before.
As the hippies used to say, "Lay back and be cool. Man." The world
doesn't need our noise to keep moving on and neither do we. Just maybe Someone
wants to speak to you.
DIFFERENT KIND OF PRESENCE
I just got word one of my picker buddies, Hymie Lawson, died on the way
home from Pigeon Forge. At the moment I found it out, I was reading in my
journal the eulogy I did in 1989 for another lifetime friend.
In the eulogy, I said I had learned we do not lose the sense of presence of our
loved ones who leave this physical realm. It's just a different kind of
presence. They are now among our balcony people pulling for us and – I think
– transmitting help to us through our intuition and spiritual sensory antenna.
Maybe that is another reason we should spend some time being still and quiet.
I am unable to mourn as one having no hope. In Him we live, move and have our
being, as Paul said, and whether we live in the flesh or not, we are still
living, moving and having our being in Him.
We are all lights. We assimilate each other's radiance like the Earth absorbs
the radiance of the sun. Long after the sun goes down, the Earth still radiates
it's warmth.
We are all like those solar lights that charge each day by soaking up the sun's
rays and then light up our yards at night.
Yes, we do lose people's bodies. But we don't lose them. They go on radiating
light and warmth into our lives. We have them forever.
Don't forget that. We have them forever. All we need is to remain open to
reminders of their continuing life in us and with us. We can only lose those
things that never made it into our hearts. Once they reach our hearts, they are
ours forever.
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