The Sound of Silence

 The cosmic truths are often revealed to us in the most unusual manner. Long time ago, a friend said to me- " There is a deep silence within you - let it speak". For many of us, who are mired in the mundanity of existence, clamouring to make a living - it is easy for the silence to be drowned by the noise of the external world, our own conditioning and the chattering mind which the peacock feathered Lord compares to a monkey jumping from one branch to another, faltering, falling, yet jumping again all the time. One often tries to control this monkey with the power of one's reasoning or will. The monkey remains still under duress for a while, and then starts jumping up and down with renewed energy.  How can one then hear the voice of the silence? How does it speak?

In the Shakta tradition, the silence within represents Shiva or the Universal soul present within the person and then, the speech of the Silence is Shakti or Goddess - the movement, the flow, the inward and outward movement of breath often described as "So - Hum" or the primordial sound that reverberates in tune with the silent cosmos as the Pranava mantra " Om".

People often talk of channelizing the inner Goddess without a clue about what it actually entails. It is identifying with the deep silence that speaks; being cognizant of the pulsation of kundalini energy as it traverses various chakras in its upward movement and harnessing the serpentine power inherent in the trident. It is the gentle sound of the breeze touching the filament of Spider Woman's web as it curves inward honoring the power of wind that is inherent in the breeze, the throbbing sound of one's own heart as it becomes aware of the blissful vibrant stillness... 

Traditions of Goddess worship across the world emphasize the importance of moving from the outer circle to the inner or the centre, in ritualistic enactment of a journey or quest until the vision, quest, and circle disappear, and the inner and the outer merge - margins become the centre and vice versa in a wonderful plurality that is not really plural. 

Silence and noise are just aberrations within one's perception... they exist as polar opposites because one chooses to perceive these that way.  Our intellect is used to categorization and binary thinking, and this prevents us from hearing the speech/sound of the silence and the silence within the "noise".

When the silence speaks, all one needs to do is listen to it and fold one's hands in prayer to the Goddess seated within one's heart, for making the silence speak, and for giving us the ability to listen and merge with it, and witness the cosmic play manifest even in random moments in life...