The Creative
Balance Between Sound and Silence
Carlos Cardoso
Aveline
How far can we
actually listen to reality and
observe facts?
The average citizen is threatened by the intense flow
of his own personal opinions. He risks becoming psychologically deaf. One must
have a degree of detachment, in order to be able to pay attention to life and
learn something from it.
It is inevitable at any given time to have a point of
view from which to see things.
However, one’s perspective must be regularly
reexamined so as to improve its accuracy. If we look at reality from a noble
standpoint, this may displease and irritate quite a few individuals and power
structures. Listening to facts and learning from them is often politically
incorrect.
Discernment is needed for one to avoid mere routine
and blind skepticism. By refusing to concentrate on the negative aspects of life,
we preserve our liberty and stay away from the fragmented levels of
consciousness.
It is not necessary to always have an opinion about
every issue. It is important to admit we do not know the things we ignore, so
that we can search for the truth about them. Narrowness and ignorance inspire
those who pretend to know it all, about anything. Wise people carefully examine
reality once and again, before forming an opinion. And what gives us a right to
exert criticism is the noble intention that we may have, of healing the
diseases of human soul and correcting our mistakes, individually and collectively.
That demands self-sacrifice, for one’s intention will be misunderstood by many.
The practice of silence is valuable: noise prevents us
from listening. One saves psychic energy by resisting the pressure exerted by
premature opinions. We must avoid the energetic loss that takes place whenever
we talk to someone who is not interested.
If I say nothing for some time, I may be able, later
on, to transmit the whole idea in a few words, and in a better documented way.
“The unexamined life is not worth living”, said
Socrates. And we might add:
“The unexamined
sentence is not worth saying”. [1]
When I
speak, I must talk about things that are valuable to me and examine to what
extent I’m actually being heard. It is often more effective to speak through
actions than words. True sages teach by example. Facts and actions should come
before words, whenever possible.
The Unworded Reality of Bliss
Part of the search for wisdom consists therefore in
living the Void, listening to the silence and contemplating the Nothing.
For these are but names of the door to Plenitude, to
the music of the Spheres and the Universal Law.
When the lessons we learn are truly divine, most worded
thoughts may look like tiresome, boring, and precarious.
There are times when the pilgrim searches for the
Silence as his own and highest temple, and the practice is correct. At other
times, Silence comes to him with the strength and authority of his own
conscience, and suspends much of his worded levels of awareness. Then the best
thing to do is to accept looking at the outer world as if it were behind an
invisible Karmic glass, while we experience the unworded reality of inner peace.
NOTE:
[1] In courses of Journalism, it has been said that
“editing texts consists in eliminating words” and “any word that can be deleted
should be so”.
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The above article
corresponds to two texts published in the May 2016 edition of “The Aquarian Theosophist”, pp. 1-2. They
had no indication as to the name of the author.
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