Practicing Silence to See Beyond the Illusion

Using the art of Silent Awareness to wake up to your Reality

I thought I had gotten things together and moved beyond old habits and the rollercoaster of emotional traumas of the past that had left me feeling shattered.

I suppose I had come a long way in taking control of my inner and outer experience, but the ebbs and flows of life have a habit of sweeping you away when you are complacent or when you do not want to see.

It wasn’t until my health and my stress levels started to overwhelm me and a constant niggling feeling of unease started to tarnish my experience that I began to realize that I was missing something.

The physical discomfort I was feeling in the form of unease and poor health was me trying to give myself the nudge to wake up and see what I was missing.

To see what I wasn’t seeing.

I started back up with my meditation practice that I had let slide when things in my life had seemed to be going well and subsequently forgot all about it when my internal world started to take a turn in the wrong direction.

And while the meditation and increased awareness, helped immensely with addressing the nonsense knocking around inside my head, there was still something not quite right and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Until one day I came across a Youtube Reel that sparked the idea of what I needed to do.

It managed to nudge awake an underlying unspoken message that just stood out in a way that I can’t describe.

My intuition was wrapping it in flashing neon lights and telling me this! This!

Silence. Be present, be aware and be silent in the company of those around you.

This is not to say to be ignorant, nor to be rude but rather to pay close attention to those around you and keep yourself to yourself.

See how the people in your life interact with you, hear what they are saying and become aware of what they are not saying.

Intentionally and unconditionally focussing your attention in this way will jolt you awake to the underlying nature of your relationships that you have previously been blind to.

It will open your eyes to both the spoken and unspoken messages that were hiding in plain sight all along.

We have a tendency to go through life on auto pilot not only to the stream of thoughts running through our minds but also to the world around us and the people in it.

We see it on a surface level but we don’t really SEE the depth or underlying truth of it.

Even when it is right there in front of us.

Instead we go through the motions, unconsciously acting out the expected behaviours of our roles in our relationships and interactions with one another.

These expectations are rarely truly voiced, they are instead shaped by the unique beliefs and expectations we have each developed about those roles.

Expectations and beliefs that we internalize from the cultural and societal experiences we have had, the relationships we have participated in or observed and the stories we have been told.

We fulfill these roles and act out the behaviours expected of them even when they conflict with our own underlying values, even when we don’t really like or agree with them.

In turn we hold others to the same expectation of filling the roles they are in based on our own internalized expectations and beliefs of how they should be in that role.

And in this modern jumbled up world, the conflict between those internal and external expectations we have for ourselves and for others is amplified enormously.

We never stop to REALLY and truly see and hear the people around us, to see the structure of our interactions and to witness the Truth that we hide beneath those surface expectations of the various roles we inhabit.

We wander through the course of our days in an illusion.

When we start to practice Silence we allow the world around us and the people in it to carry on as they do and simply listen.

REALLY LISTEN.

For the first time to be truly present and bear witness to the nature of the relationships and the people in your life.

Observe the roles you and others have taken on and the unconscious way in which each of us fulfills our part in these roles or expect others to fulfill in theirs.

You will become aware of the underlying needs those you love are trying to express with out knowing how.

The child quietly going through the expected motions but deeply needing something from you that they are unable to find the words to express.

You will begin to see the unvoiced frustrations and brewing resentment of others you hadn’t noticed.

The partner keeping things together on the surface while quietly trying to tamp down the brewing frustration and loneliness boiling up beneath.

You will finally see the admiration and appreciation you had not heard.

You will also become aware of the subtle manipulations that have slipped by just under your awareness.

The Gaslighting, constant criticisms, petty jealousy, unspoken resentments, false platitudes and the undeserved sense of entitlement.

It is surprising what can be hidden under the surface of well fulfilled role expectations.

Simply going through the expected motions of a role can leave others blind to our real intentions and values that lay hidden beneath.

The machinations, the exploitative expectations that were there all along but simply could not be seen.

While this might bring pain and disappointment, do not be tempted to wallow in it nor to engage in self recrimination for not having seen it before.

Instead appreciate that you can see who they really are.

You see it now, and in seeing it you are free.

You will now have the clarity to know better to whom to focus your love and energy.

In the end, this is a revelation to be appreciated.

In attentive silence and witnessing we SEE and HEAR for the first time the illusion and the delusions.

Most importantly we begin to see all that we had thought we were missing…but was actually there all along.