When was the last time you heard silence? Are you aware of it even being there? And is there a silence inside of yourself, as well as outside?

Silence is a strange thing, for it’s existence depends solely on other things not existing. It is an absence rather than an objective thing.

Such absence is powerful in the way that the sky, or the sea, or a large forest is powerful - for it’s quite simply ‘bigger’ than you are.

It encompasses you, overcomes you, engulfs you in its presence…

One can try to be louder, busier, wilder than it, but its silent ‘quality’, its atmosphere, its enormous lack of ‘being’ anything other than it is will win.

Life is measured out in such ordinary things: the breaths between words, the rest between workouts, the mundane tasks required to sustain a healthy, balanced life, or simply to survive.

These are great teachers because they are inevitable. They are the ‘Gods’ that we will all meet eventually. Ideally every day, and in more difficult cases when a person reaches breaking point - is overworked, burned out, heartbroken, utterly confused or lost.

Silence is like ‘nature’ in this way: almost moving towards a greater sense of harmony.

It is without ideas, without morals, without ethics. It just ‘is what it is’, and does whatever is required to return to perfect balance.

One can either make friends with it or fight against it forever, without victory. And, rest assured, it can be a great friend - perhaps the greatest there is.

All that’s required is a bit of patience, a dose of discipline and some quiet self-reflection from time to time.

Then, and only then, might we finally begin to understand what the Tao has been telling us all along…

…to hear without hearing, to see without seeing and to know absolutely without knowing.

That is what the Tao, through the work of silence, wishes to teach you.

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