08 Jun The power of Silence: Excerpt chapter 2

The kind of silence that Yolande radiates

We associate the term “silence” with an absence of noise as well as with inner peace and mental silence. But the kind of silence that Yolande radiates does not belong in the world of words defining concepts. The silence that she expresses goes beyond the mind and its senses – beyond the pair of opposites “noise versus quietude.”

No words can express the experience of awakening because it leaves no trace behind. I just happened to be touched by the grace of this ineffable power which awoke me from the dream I was living in. I call this power Silence because, in the blinking of an eye, it got rid of all my ideas and concepts about the world, and healed me from the belief of being a person. That moment of Silence was powerful enough to change my whole point of view and for me to discover my own true nature.

For centuries, as well as currently, both men and women have come to experience this awakening that Yolande speaks of, without them or anyone else knowing why it happened. This experience has been termed enlightenment, realization, awakening… and the people that went through it have been addressed as prophets, messiahs, buddhas or simply Self-awakened, Self-realized or enlightened beings. Thousands of books have been written about this experience and it is the primary source of most of mystical and religious schools known to us. Those who have happened to awake spontaneously and have spoken – or still speak – about it, tend to use poetic or metaphorical images in order to talk about their personal experience or to explain their view of the cosmos. Yolande’s way to speak to us about the Ineffable, however, is through Silence.

My experience is that Silence is the power that makes us and everything else move. It is pure Energy that cannot be comprehended, felt or looked at. It is that marvelous intensity of love that makes us love. It is perfection. It is the light that gives life to darkness. It is the shapeless void, the nothingness that contains it all. It is the Stillness that contemplates movement; the Witness that contemplates the world. That is Silence for me. That is what I am and what we all are. It is the only existing Reality.

From the outside Yolande has not changed. She is still the same woman; the daughter that lost her mother; the mother that lost her only son; the sister; the friend; the partner. But for Yolande the world as such disappeared the day a ray of Silence beamed across her living room.

That person called Yolande does not exist. One single ray of Silence was enough to discover the absolute proof of what I am – Presence, Witnessing. Ever since, I can see the world where I appear, but I don’t identify myself with it.

Yolande spent forty years as one of those millions of people who believe themselves to be a person, as a prisoner of her own mind, as a living being lost in a world of dreams which those of us convinced that we are people call reality. It never occurred to her that she could escape the wheel of fate.

Spontaneous awakening takes place so fast that it cannot be explained. When I was engulfed by Silence in a split second, the individual dream merged into the dream of life, but I stayed outside, watching it. It was a new outlook that began to teach me to see what really is – a new outlook that took over Yolande’s outlook.

It is from that outlook that Yolande delivers her teachings, as nothing but the eyes of Silence are able to enlighten Knowledge.

I see the play between nothingness and existence; stillness and movement; silence and names; absolute energy and forms; eternity and time. It is obvious for me that Silence, that absolute Stillness, expresses itself through a spontaneous movement – Being – that spins and pulsates simultaneously; that it endlessly contracts and expands. As I open my eyes in the morning, that movement of Being is the first thing I see manifesting and, simultaneously, there appear this global Awareness and “I am”. For me, global Awareness is the world of forms prior to acquiring any names. They are the infinite expressions of Being’s moving energy. The appearance of “I am” is what attaches names to those forms. It is that “I am” that has the ability to create this illusion of the world and the individual. Talking about Being, global Awareness and “I am” is but a way to shed light onto the various subtleties of that moving energy expressing itself. In truth, there is nothing but stillness and movement.

From No Time, where the awakened beings like Yolande live, we receive over and over again the message that the world is an illusion. More than two thousand years ago Buddha Sakyamuni described the different forms of matter as whirlpools in a stream. Others before and after him did the same by using different words and symbols. It is irrelevant whether that illusory world is referred to as Maya or Movement, or if the Absolute is described as Silence or the Void. What matters is that the revelation of the Truth itself is ever alive.

My vision is so simple that neither can the mind embrace it nor put it into words. What I see is that Being is the very first expression of this dynamic energy of Silence – that primal matter which gives life to life. Global Awareness designs the forms, the vibrations, their frequencies and the “I am” gives them names. It is through the appearance of word, of the “I am”, that the innumerable life expressions well up: the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom… The “I am” is the ocean of all forms of existence. It is the abode of time and space. It is the birthplace of duality – pleasure and pain, good and evil. It is in the “I am” that thinking, memory, identification, imagination, awareness, and the concept of world and individual reside.

What has changed in Yolande is not what she sees. Yolande still sees the contents of the world just like any other individual holding on to their belief of being a person. What has changed in Yolande is her point of view. Her look is no longer focused through her physical eyes or through the limited sense perception based on fear of pain and search for pleasure. Yolande looks out from eternity, free from time and space, from birth and death.

As the Presence – the Witness – that I am, I see that the world, and all that it contains, spinning around to the beat of day and night, night and day, and I see how Yolande’s body appears in it. I watch Yolande eating, working, and resting. I see her getting happy or sad. I see her thinking or feeling moved. I see her rising in the morning, sleeping and dreaming, but I don’t move – I am just that witness watching. My experience is that the wake, sleep and dream states are just part of a great dream – the dream of life.

Just as the different levels of sound are nothing but expressions of Silence, the multiple, more or less subtle manifestations of global Awareness spring from and subside in Nothingness.

I am pure Energy. I am both Silence and the dot of light that illumines movement. I don’t perceive through my sense organs – I am perception itself. I don’t look out through my eyes – I am that looking. I am the Witness, the light that brings life into all names and forms, but I am beyond seeing and witnessing.

Each one of us believes themselves to be an individual isolated in their physical body and limited by their mind. But the truth is that we are all part of one single act of looking. We are the audience in life’s movie theater, watching the film of our lives. However, simultaneously, we are also that light that makes it possible for the movie to be seen on the screen.

From that one View, from that Light that we all are, what I see is this supreme balance between dynamic energy and Silence happening in a natural way. When the situation calls for action, action itself takes place. It’s no use trying to control or direct our lives – life lives itself.

Photo: splitshare.com