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"Silence, listening to silence"



by Lee Denzler





I listen to the silence.
   Majesty of quietness
   Silence listening to silence
   Beingness...the last leaf has fallen.
Eternal SILENCE
Existence.  This is something that just is.  No explanation, reason is needed.  
Its foundations are sure in and of itself.  Self-contained.  
Independent of support, it's a self-supporting structure.  
Nothing gives permission for the being of existence.  
Of it's own it has chosen to be self-defining, self-creating, self-supporting, self-actuating.


Existence has no moral motive.

    Moral motive would be an introduction of something from without, which on the face of all that humans may understand, is something simply not necessary.
     Existence's very essence is it's manifestation of unity.


Tammy Ames
So I am.  
I am existence.  
I am silence listening to some faint echo...I AM SILENCE.
Nothingness is contained in silence, or at least this seems the case to me.
Is action part of silence? Non-action?  Activity of silence?   Is there even the softest of a whisper!
What is this thing that goes on with me that is not so silent?  It's all action?  Is action a part of stillness or does it too have it's own existence?
Out of nothingness arises something. Does nothingness even exist?  Is this a label that we give because we have no other explanation?
Rumi
Gods must arise out the activity of anxious minds. The mind to be still feels too lost.  It must delegate a portion of the psychic to some action surrounding making something of this nothingness. So is the being fractured?  Is there division, is there bicameralism?
Is it proper to be anxious?  Which part of our being is even capable of escaping the silence.  
This running away from silence; from where does this spring? Where is its escape? What is behind the flight?  Are we all lost gods? If I accept that gods arise from the human imagination, then my imagination contains the very essence of the gods arising from my human potentiality.


Now here is a deep silence that bespeaks of a greater cognition.  The irrefutable silence of the planet seems evident from a great enough distance.  Earth is full of activity up close, but from far, there is stillness.




The nothingness of space and non-time extend to the furthest reaches of the known universe.  Earth is not even a speck floating in the sea of timelessness!  Here is a silence greater than silence.  This silence might be the SILENCE that listens to silence.





A denizen of SILENCE.
    Non-identity might best describe him
    --calm. unperturbed, settled, content. silent.
Is the chaos of the cosmos a form of silence?  



Water as it rushes by is a force in motion, whether in a torrent, a trickle, a drip, a vapor
out of it's reach somehow it's motion is very stilling!
   







 Driving pounding acid rock . . . is this a form of silence seeking silence?

        

Screaming, slobbering, lunatic pounding a pulpit, revelations of fear--form of silence?
    --too anxious to gain the approval of a seething, opinionated,
frustrated, fractured electorate.  Is this a form of a motion of silence?
   Thunderous exploding bombs, disembodied carnage...majestic wasteland of stillness.
   Mouthed-wail of loneliness, grieving . . . starvation's silence...hopelessness...
SILENCE contains all.   


Supernova in far-off galaxy explodes in a fury great enough to silence all existence near
         ...yet here on planet earth, amid the turmoil, crisis, there is a hallowed SILENCE....
We exist and we exit in silence.
Stillness listening to SILENCE.





*these are not all original thoughts just a cursory search pulls up a wealth of thinking on this subject. I found that the title is from a poem that I read several years ago and reread recently: Its a line from Thomas Hood: "I saw old Autumn in the misty morn / Stand shadowless like Silence, listening/ To silence."

“It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet” - Franz Kafka
Sabbadini, Andrea. "Listening to silence." British Journal of Psychotherapy 7.4 (1991): 406-415.


Cartegni, Luca, Shern L Chew, and Adrian R Krainer. "Listening to silence and understanding nonsense: exonic mutations that affect splicing." Nature Reviews Genetics 3.4 (2002): 285-298.
Voisin, Julien et al. "Listening in silence activates auditory areas: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study." The Journal of neuroscience 26.1 (2006): 273-278.


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