Growing into Silence
The voluntary cessation, non-action of movement, can become possible if the brain, the cerebral organ, is not a restless, disorderly, chaotic brain.
Orderliness
One doesn’t have to begin to learn how to be silent, but one has to begin with learning to function in an orderly, clear, unconfused way. Every cerebral movement has to be clear, precise and accurate.
Accuracy, precision, is the breath of orderliness.
So I learn to be precise and accurate.
And in learning to be precise and accurate I learn to be totally present with everything that I do.
Eliminating Reactions
One will have to learn to reduce the area and the duration of reactions seeing the futility and seeing the harmfulness of this constant game of reacting, evaluating, comparing and judging.
You reduce your rapport and contact with the past: the memory, the knowing, the conditioning, the motivations, the defences.
If one would be with nature, even half the time that one is with human beings, machines and gadgets, there would be an opportunity to enter into a non-reactional observation, a non-reactional attention.
Then the brain would get some rest. When you are with nature: the birds, the lakes, the sunsets, the beautiful moonlight, when you are with the aloneness of the woods – then the comparative evaluating process has no scope.
The motivations and defence-mechanisms become absolutely irrelevant and meaningless when you are with nature.
The reactional pattern has no function, and yet there is observation. So the cerebral organ grows into a new faculty of non-reactional sensitivity.
Act On Your Understanding
Never argue with one’s own understanding.
The whisper of intelligence is always there, whatever you do.
If you create a time lag between the whisper of intelligence and understanding in you and your action, then you are preventing the cerebral organ from growing into a new dimension. When you argue with intelligence, when you postpone acting according to understanding then there is confusion, the brain gets confused.
The voice of understanding, the voice of intelligence has an insecurity about it. How do you know that it is the right thing?
So we tend to ignore it. Instead we accept authority. We conform.
But the brain cannot be orderly, competent, accurate and precise if you do not listen to it, if you have no respect. We are so busy with the outside world, and its compulsions, that the world that is inside us does not command that respect and reverence, that care and concern from us.
So one has to be a disciple of one’s own understanding, look upon that understanding as the master.
Sometimes one may commit a mistake, it might be the whim of the ego and we might mistake the whim, the wish of the ego for the voice of silence and intelligence, but that we have to discover. Unless you commit mistakes, how do you learn to discriminate between the false and the true? In learning there is bound to be a little insecurity, a possibility of committing mistakes. Why should one be terribly afraid of committing mistakes?
So instead of accepting the authority of habits and conditionings, while one is moving one watches, and when there is a suggestion, a whisper from within, from one’s own intelligence, one does not neglect, ignore, or insult that.
To eliminate the time lag between understanding and action is the way to grow into spontaneity.
Keeping the Body and Brain Sensitive, Alert and Sharp
It is necessary to keep the body sensitive, alert and sharp, to feed it and to clothe it correctly, properly; to give it a chance to go through exercises which will mobilize not only the muscles, but also the nerves and be careful that the body does not become sluggish; to feed it correctly – not over- nor under-feeding it; to allow it to have sleep, necessary for its health – not to over- nor under-sleep; not to expose it to too much brooding, worrying, anxiety, which are impotent ways of wasting energy; not entering into excesses of indulgence and not denying and suppressing in the name of austerity, religion or discipline; because the cerebral organ, the brain is woven into this biological structure.
It is very important, because in a sluggish body, in a lazy body, you can’t have a sharp, sensitive, alert brain, which would voluntarily go into non-action.
Self-education is vitally necessary in order to enable the cerebral organ to function in an orderly, quiet way. When there is order, there is a quietness; an orderly person hardly gets excited. It is disorder that leads to excitement, enthusiasm, depression which is the other side of excitement, passivity which is the obverse of enthusiasm.
When one has arrived at that orderliness in daily living, in whatever one does, then only one can talk about the brain voluntarily, relinquishing the outgoing and the ingoing movement, relinquishing voluntarily the hold upon the known and the unknown, the visible and the invisible, so that the infinite could be.
Summary: Four Approaches to Growing into Silence
- Be precise, accurate and totally present with everything that one does.
- Expose oneself as much as one can to nature, to the universe, all that is not man-made.
- Be a disciple of one’s own understanding.
- Keep the body and brain sensitive, alert and sharp.
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Thanks PremG !