Pensées by Sid

It is hard for me to turn off the noise. Social media blasts so much information in one single day that it is quite overwhelming for the psyche to process all the facts, figures, opinions, and debates that one can easily find by simply scrolling down the page. Everywhere you turn, people are trying to sell you something. The constant barrage is a lot to handle. Yet, when I take the time to set myself apart from the cacophony of sounds, I start to realize that the noise inside my head can be just as noisy as the noise outside. There seems to be no rest from the noise.

I’ve been thinking a lot about silence. The power of silence. The way that silence can often force us to go deeper. It is truly a scary thing. Trying to practice stillness is downright scary sometimes. I think it’s why we find pauses in conversations to be incredibly awkward. There is a need to fill the space with noise, any noise, because the silence that lingers in the air is too much to take. It can sometimes be so oppressive in its heaviness.

But there is beauty in the stillness. It takes time to enjoy it but when you get there, it is incredibly beautiful. The silence becomes the space where you no longer have to prove your worth to anyone. The silence becomes the space where you can be accepted for who you truly are and not what you pretend you are. The silence becomes the liminal space between the real and the imagined; it is the place where the real and the imagined play and dance and hold hands. It becomes a place for the human to go beyond and enter the realm of transcendence. Silence is everywhere and nowhere; it is everything and nothing. It is the realm where meaning and understanding as we know it no longer exists. In its stead, there is a knowing that goes above and beyond that which our minds can process. It is a knowing that is not concerned about the acquisition of information. It is a knowing that is relational and cosmic in nature. Silence is where we see God. Silence is where we meet God. For it is only in the stillness that we can comprehend God in God’s fullness and splendour and majesty and power.

This is what we find in the sound of silence.