Contemplating Complete Silence

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.

Then I could allow complete silence to be, and let the trust take me to it. I’ve experienced a sensation of falling back into it, while simultaneously complete silence seems to emerge up and meet me. As I sit in complete silence, I feel how all sound, all creation rises out of complete silence. Complete silence surrounds all sound and creation. It is as if nothing would exist without complete silence. Complete silence is the embryonic fluid that all manifest expression lives within and emerges from.
 
Complete silence is very alive. It feels to me like energy that is vibrantly alive and for most of us, hidden in plain sight. Hidden until we turn our attention towards it. In Continuum practice there is a concept of potent space, the space around all. It can be the infinite size of space around atoms to the expansive size of space around the cosmos and beyond. I often call this concept relational space, as for me it is the space in which relationship amongst all things emerges, forms, takes place. Recently, my experience of this space feels like connective space, similar to the connective tissue of our body. Connective space is linking, that which fosters and allows connection. The space is fluid, alive, energetic and is always present within and outside of my body. It is the form of the space between me and the world.
 
Exploring this space, I am coming to experience that this is where my true freedom resides. There is always around me, between me and my experience of the world, this space of complete connection, complete silence and complete freedom. No matter how confining a current experience of the world might be with demands and responsibilities pressing in on me, the space is there. The fluid, enlivened, completely silent space in which all form lives. Not that I remember this all the time, but the knowing of it is becoming more common, and the less I effort, the more I am there.