In the MBSR Course this week we are looking at relationships and stress. We considered the idea that we sometimes see the other person through the filter of the stories which are going on in our own lives. We see them not as they are, but as we are. To really relate we need to really listen. This can mean dropping our own narrative for a moment to have space for the other. So mindfulness leads us to reflect on the meaning of silence and space.
Do we have the confidence to stop, to be just with ourselves, and to be content when there?
Or do we need to distract and reassure ourselves with our plans, our projects, our reminders that we are needed?
Yesterday we did together the Retreat Day. We kept an exterior silence in order to look at our interior chatter. Silence has always been part of the world religions and wisdom traditions, as in the life of the Desert Fathers who simplified distractions in order to see what was really important.
A man may seem to be silent,
but if in his heart he is criticizing others,
he is babbling ceaselessly.
But there may be another who talks from morning till night
and yet he is truly silent,
because he says nothing that is not profitable.
The Desert Fathers, Abba Pimen
I am not speaking of the silence of the tongue,
for if someone merely keeps his tongue silent,
without knowing how to be content in mind and spirit,
then he is simply unoccupied and becomes filled with damaging thoughts.
There is a silence of the tongue,
there is a silence of the whole body,
there is a silence of the soul,
there is the silence of the mind,
and there is the silence of the spirit.
The Desert Fathers, John the Solitary
