Recently I watched a recording of Adyashanti in which he suggested to “contemplate complete silence” as a portal into deeper awakening, into deeper relationship with what he refers to as the “ground of being”. I’ve been exploring this over the last few days. First, I discovered it is helpful to remind myself that no amount of efforting on my part will open me to complete silence. The suggestion to “contemplate” initially lead me to effort through my analytical, rational brain to find complete silence. While I enjoy engaging in deep, analytical process, that, for me, is not the way to complete silence. Rather than settling, engaging the analytical had me chasing after what I thought the experience of complete silence would be, and also feeling my environment needed to be completely silent in order to contemplate it. Even though I live alone in a rural setting, complete silence is rarely, readily available.

I thought, then, to trust that complete silence already and always is.

This evening the alpenglow of sunset had a feeling to it. As if I was immersed in a viscous rose gold fluid. It parted around me in currents. The currents eddied and traversed across the surface of me. Slow and smooth. Awakening cells and nerves within my body; singing, calling, caressing. Telling me there is less to do than I’ve been doing. The deep blue of the rising night emerged from the east. Dissolved the alpenglow. Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn joined me in the flow of the blue hour.  

Today I learned to drive the red tractor. The big one. The new one with an enclosed cab with heat and AC. I began to mow the meadow. We had let the grass grow all summer long to allow the field birds like the bobolink, a favorite summer bird, to have a safe breading ground. Then Dad got pneumonia at the end of August before we started to mow. We waited, hoping he  would recover enough strength to get into the tractor again, but now it is November, and I find myself in the tractor in his stead.

After a trip around the loop to get used to the feel of the tractor, I headed down to the field to start mowing along the south woods.  I mowed for about 90 minutes, squeezing some time in after a work from home day and before darkness. I thought I would get more done in that time than I did, but I could only go so fast.