Last fall, I experienced what I consider to be a radical awakening in my process of healing from trauma. In that moment, which occurred over several days, I felt as if the trauma which had been trapped in me, was entrenched in me from continual activation, had finally stopped.
 
Even though the events of the trauma had ended years ago, it had continued within me, year after year, my body, my psyche, my emotions, unable to differentiate the repeated activation from the actual trauma.
 
The radical awakening was a stunning period of differentiation.

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.