I breath in this silent, formless, invisible breath . . . and as it flows out, my vocal cords come alive with vibration, chopping the breath into waves of sound, my head and chest buzzing with resonance, my mouth, tongue and lips sculpting the breath further giving rise to the sound of my voice, singing my song.
And what is this music made of? That same silent, formless, invisible breath, shapeshifting into colourful, intricately detailed tones—it is the sound of silence.
Our true essence is the silent, formless, invisible ‘breath’ that gives rise to the music of life itself—to an infinite variety of forms, colours, textures and sounds, from the splash of a raindrop to galaxies of stars; to a vast spectrum of feelings, flavours and smells, of thoughts and sensations; to the human story of wholeness splintering into separateness, of feeling like an isolated, fearful, insufficient ‘me’, of developing a self image and an imitation will to protect our sense of inadequacy from ever being exposed, of the fruitless search for lasting fulfilment and freedom from all our dis-ease. And then there is the great return, when we put all our beliefs, opinions and sophisticated knowledge temporarily aside, and explore the present moment freshly, like a child, as if for the very first time, and re-cognise the magical wonder of our true essence—the silence that is the music.
With that sublime dis-covery—that we have nothing to lose or gain even, that we are already whole, already complete—we can finally open to innocence, to tenderness, to vulnerability without closing down or turning away (and if we do we can open to that too). We can finally begin to face all of life, and meet all that we’d split off from and repressed in the name of survival, welcoming it back home, back into wholeness (welcoming even our inability to welcome).
And with our ever increasing capacity for care and compassion, we naturally begin to move from craving to curiosity, from longing to loving, from seeking to celebrating this remarkable multi-sensorial composition—the most glorious song of all.
