How do you use silence?

I'm not talking about meditation here specifically, but about silence in general.

Do you make silence a part of your practice? For what purpose particularly?

If you've never used silence in your practice specifically because it is silence, then there is a lesson I set for my apprentices which I am happy to share.

I don't know. I've never experienced silence. But I would love to!

Unless you mean being silent, in which case, it's my default. I've actually been diagnosed electively mute a few times, heh.

ReallyRiver wrote: I don't know. I've never experienced silence. But I would love to!

Unless you mean being silent, in which case, it's my default. I've actually been diagnosed electively mute a few times, heh.

I meant being silent on purpose.. It's difficult to be in a completely silent environment, but we ourselves can be silent and use that time.

Need Goken or one of my former apprentices to give their opinions based on the lesson I set hint hint

Quaker meetings are all in silence, and the time is used to allow thoughts to go where they go. I set this lesson for someone recently so I'll find it and post it if you're interested.

It's funny you posted this...normally I run and hide from silence--I put a recording of nature sounds on to sleep, I listen to music..but a few days ago I was feeling really down, and felt the need to just sit, with nothing else around, not even sounds.

I would be interested in seeing what you have to share.

Edan wrote: I set this lesson for someone recently so I'll find it and post it if you're interested.

I'm interested

Yes please share the lesson i find silence of great value but find it hard to look for it or to make time for it , i do have long walks without talk and such , but real silence is hard to come by

Lesson, please

You sit in silence for a period of time but regularly, every single day for at least a week.. however long you begin with is up to you, but you work up.. if you start off at five minutes then you slowly increase it. In these periods of time you let your thoughts go wherever they go, and then you write down at the end what you thought about. There is no direction, no topic and you don't censor your thoughts. The purpose is to acknowledge the thoughts we do have, not just the ones we think other people want us to have.

Don't force the time though.. there's no point spending half hour in silence if you spend the entire time thinking about how you just want to stop.

If anyone would like to see what I wrote when I did this myself, you can find it here (only apprentices and above will able to see this I'm afraid):

https://www.templeofthejediorder.org/forum/edan/107461-edan-s-journal?start=90#178695

I don't really go out of my way to incorporate silence because for me, silence is something that I gravitate towards without thinking about it. I need it, and plenty of it, for my sanity!

I rarely play music at home and if my radio-loving colleague is away from work I won't put the radio on. I love to just sit in silence and let my thoughts wander, sometimes for quite long periods of time. Silence gives me the chance to just Be, with myself, and I always find it interesting that so many people actively struggle with it.

Of course, it's difficult to actually encounter total silence. There are always birds chirping or distant traffic noises or something else. I love the silence that you find in the dead of night but even then there'll usually be the wind in the trees, or the faint buzz of an electronic device on standby, or occasional gurgling from the pipes in your walls.

So even with my love of 'silence', if I was to set myself a challenge of resting in absolute silence, that might be both quite difficult and quite unfamiliar!

V-Tog wrote: I don't really go out of my way to incorporate silence because for me, silence is something that I gravitate towards without thinking about it. I need it, and plenty of it, for my sanity!

I rarely play music at home and if my radio-loving colleague is away from work I won't put the radio on. I love to just sit in silence and let my thoughts wander, sometimes for quite long periods of time. Silence gives me the chance to just Be, with myself, and I always find it interesting that so many people actively struggle with it.

Yeah, this is what I was trying to say, lol. Thanks!