Gunilla Norris - Inviting Silence: Universal Principles of Meditation

Our efforts to make things come out right
and to have our lives be meaningful
according to our private notions and demands
doesnt quite do it.
Even when we are outwardly successful
in ways that our society rewards
something still seems to be missing.
We are at an impasse.

This is good to know and essential to feel.
Here we can discover that more pushing and striving
go nowhere. We start to slow down
with no solution for that persistent, nagging inner sense
that can be kept at bay but does not go away.
We are beginning to come to silence
and it is often uncomfortable at the start.

Slowly we discover that we are trying to have what we do
verify who we are. It always fails.
The effort is exhausting and finally empty.
Who we are is given to us. We do not ever earn it.
It is a free and holy gift.

The paradox is that we must stop, feel,
and grow silent
in order to receive the gift of ourselves
even while we still hang on to the belief
that things are all up to us,
that we are in charge.

We begin to intuit that effort has to be made
in a different way.
That is why the first experiences of silence
are often so frustrating and opaque.
We feel restless.
Somewhere inside us a treadmill grinds on.
We are neither here nor there. The gears do not mesh.
Deep down we know there is more.
What to do?
What to do?

Effort how?
When we apply a little pressure of the will
to listen to our longing
it becomes our friend. We are in fact yearning
for our essence, our true self.
This longing can be trusted if we do not avoid it
or dissipate it with increased doing
or patterns of distraction and consumption.

Over time as the inner pressure builds
we can inexplicably discover
that restlessness has become something
approaching willingness.
It is bringing us to the threshold of change.
It is asking us to take a first step.

Learning to Pause

In almost all traditions of spiritual development
there is the understanding that our wills
need to be trained. Without willingness
we cannot enter into stability
on behalf of our inner lives.

Willingness is not willpower,
thepull up your boot strapskind.
Willingness is more like surrender
to ones deep longing.
It orients us according to the hearts desire
instead of the egos demands.

This requires recollection. A little space of time
to remember. Thoreau called it living
with a wide margin.
We can start by giving ourselves
just a tiny, small margin.

Without it being any more than simply stopping
we can pause all through the day to feel
ourselves in time and space.
This allows us to be located.

These little stops bring something of ourselves
back to the whole
the way a bee brings nectar to its hive.

When we learn to do this many times a day
before getting out of bed, before meals,
before leaving for work,
before turning on a light or shutting it
the pauses add up.

We are expressing a little pressure of the will.
Over time the habit of recollection leads us
back to the center,
to stillness and listening.
There we can begin to find
a new center from which to live.

The Found Treasure of Time

With more awareness we may discover
that small gaps in our daily round
can be places of silence. These are the found times
or rather the moments in which we ourselves are found.

Mostly they come when we are waiting:
in the doctors office, on the telephone,
in traffic jams and the checkout line.

In just those moments we have an opportunity
to turn our attention to our physical being,
to the rhythm of our breath,
to the texture and feel of things around us.

By noticing particulars we can also begin
to notice the space in which they are held ...
the vastness that holds everything
the great lap of silence.

These waiting moments in our daily round
can turn out to be treasures. We can allow them
to support us instead of distracting us
or blocking us.

Here in each day is a wealth of time
we can take advantage of. They are breath breaks.
If we learn to rest and renew in them
our lives will go from disconnection and haste
to breathtaking presence.

Disappointment

Expectation is the great enemy of early practice.
We have internal pictures of what we think
peace and spiritual attainment should be.
We want to be successful and feel good about ourselves.

If we do not have immediate and recognizable
progress we feel like quitting.
Here is where many of us give up.
We shut the door. We say,
Whats the use? I dont see anything different.
This is not adding up to anything.
I dont feel any better, and Im not able to do this.

We think we might as well forget it,
might as well go with the minds dominance,