From Busying to Quieting
Your Voice is Seeded in Silence
If we spoke today and I asked how you were going, what would you say?
After ‘fine’, ‘great’ or ‘feeling unwell' would your next response be ‘busy’? Have you been flat out, chasing your tail, rushing toward deadlines, driving from one thing to the next?
Being busy is something you may find yourself exclaiming about, but it may also be something you’re secretly proud about.
Because if you weren’t busy, who would you be?
Buried deeply in our cultural norm of hustling, striving and working is the unspoken assumption that busyness equates with worthiness.
It’s an exhausting assumption and one worth challenging.
Imagine for a moment letting go of all the things you felt you had to do and simply sitting in silence.
Who are you sitting there in the quiet, without your job, your title, your chores, your social commitments? What is your inner voice saying as you connect to yourself and begin to hear it speak?
Ma Jaya Sati Bhagharati said ‘quiet the mind and the soul will speak’, however we can be afraid to do this.
In her book HeartMinded, author Sarah Blondin says the threat that accompanies solitude is that it can challenge the very identity you have worked so hard to build.
Pulling away from your regular striving, doing and achieving can feel uncomfortable. Unplugging from your devices and engaging with the present moment and with yourself can bring forward a fear that you may become irrelevant.
However it’s in the space between the doing and the being that we find our true essence – our authentic voice. It’s there, in that quiet space that exists when you turn down the noise and the distractions, that you find the voice within – the one you haven’t heard because you've made yourself too busy to feel.
To access this space, you don’t need to meditate for an hour a day, sit under a tree or go on a 10 day retreat. You can find it as you put your feet up at the end of the day, raise your gaze, drop your shoulders and breath into yourself.
Enter the silence.
Not as another thing to add to your ‘to do list’ but as a pathway for connection to your inner guidance and wisdom - to your voice within.
A few questions for reflection:
Who am I without the security blanket of my achievements?
Am I spending my extra time lost in the distraction of my phone or computer?
Am I present with those I love when I am with them?
Am I busy trying to confirm my value and worth through others?
Am I carving out time to be in solitude and simplicity?