Going Beyond the Noise

A mouse in the house

Malcolm sat in his very quiet room. There was no music playing, no TV, no electric gadgets other than the light bulb in the ceiling. The windows were shut tight allowing no sounds to come in from the outside. It was so profoundly quiet a pin could be heard were it to drop.

Despite the quiet stillness it was outrageously loud inside Malcolm’s noggin. Thoughts were spewing forth like a geyser. They flowed through his mind so quickly that he could not even focus on any of them. It seemed impossible to stop the thoughts even for just a few seconds. It was like Malcolm was addicted to thinking. He was powerless to stop the incessant thinking that was gushing through his mind every waking minute of his days.

He tried meditation and yoga and breathing techniques and sensory deprivation and walking out in nature but none of those things seemed to work to stop the noise. He wanted to experience what was on the other side of that noise.

He also tried drowning out the noise with louder noise. He would put on his headphones and listen to music at incredibly high volume levels. Obviously, that did not work either. That merely gave rhythm and intensity to the noise already in his head.

He tried drugs. He tried alcohol in hopes of drowning out the noise but it merely jumbled the noise and did not stop it.

Malcolm had read that there are two parts to being a human being. There was the ‘human’ part which involved his body and his mind — those endless thoughts. Then there was the ‘being’ part. Simply being; free of all those thoughts. In simply being one can touch the consciousness of one’s true self, becoming aware of that part of themselves. The ideal was to strike a balance between the ‘human’ part and the ‘being’ part, thereby becoming an actualized and balanced human being.

But because of all the noise in his noggin he simply could not experience simply being. Malcolm was profoundly out of balance.

Suddenly he heard something. Looking around the room, he saw the source of the noise atop his desk. Walking around on the desk was a little mouse!

The room was so quiet that he could hear the mouse’s teeny tiny claws as it moved around on the hard surface of the desk.

Normally, his first thoughts would be, “Oh my God, there’s a mouse in the house. Quick, I’ve got to kill it!”

But for some reason he had no thoughts about the mouse. Instead he merely observed it as it scurried about. He observed the mouse for around ten minutes without ever thinking about the mouse or anything else. He was merely observing it and in the process he could suddenly FEEL the beauty of the mouse.

The mouse jumped down from the desk to the short plant table in front of the window where it scurried about some more then it jumped down on the area rug. Now he could still observe it but could not hear its tiny feet. Then the mouse disappeared under the couch. Now he could no longer observe it but he could now hear its teeny tiny claws on the oak floor. He was still giving his full attention to the mouse.

Then everything fell silent. Normally Malcolm would be freaking out that there was a mouse in the house but instead he was sitting in profound peace and joy.

And then the thoughts started. He suddenly realized that for ten minutes there were no thoughts raging in his noggin. For ten minutes he was simply being and simply observing and not thinking. For ten minutes he pierced through the noise and touched the stillness of his true self. For ten minutes he was a balanced human being.

And it felt really good!

Softly breaking the silence of the room, Malcolm whispered, “Thank you, mouse.”

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction.

Speaking of noise in the noggin…