On a warm drizzle filled day, as the sun broke through the clouds, I rested by a fast flowing brown churning river. It’s autumn, so I walked on a carpet of soft leaves, the surrounding trees releasing them to the ebb and flow of the October breeze. Above me, birds beyond count sang forest music. My desire was for silence, solitude and stillness.
I was at Glasshampton Monastery, not in retreat but advancing into the silence as I separated myself from the busyness of daily life. Yet, in those woods nearby was much movement and sound. It was, I found, the kind of sound that draws us into a depth of soul, not of thought.
My companion on the morning stroll was The Eloquence Of Silence by Thomas Moore. His encouragement is to embrace emptiness through which we find something far more filling than we might at first think. Those woods were empty of people, cars, and buildings – in a way empty of humanity, except for me! What did I find in that emptiness?
I found a doorway to a rich and rewarding silence. I think when we say silence, it can mean a word to describe a different kind of sound. It’s a sound so filled with transcendence that we hear the consciousness of universes beyond the greatest minds.
As the rhyme goes, “If you go down to the woods today, be sure of a … special kind of silence!”
Why not, while the leaves are falling, walk amongst them and hear the call of a greater consciousness?
Rob Wykes 