Open Your Sense Doors
Dear Friends and Family,
Over the past month, we have explored silence through phenomenological intimation.
We began with me at Salton Sea and there, an allegory of sorts for the collective fear of silence—replete with desolate desert, death, flies as agitated thought swarming the mind. In that letter, we also intimated the infinite creative force intrinsic to all that is even in existential desertedness.
We then moved closer, tracing the journey of the word, silence. In this letter, we saw that the word itself evokes the ineffable nature of silence as a presence experienced vis-à-vis sensorial absence: from [without] allow. And we reflected that to understand silence is to experience silence by way of open receptivity of the body. We said silence brings us to our senses.
Last week, we evoked the primordial sound of silence whispering a sacred presence of the eternal. We came to silence not as an absence but as a companionate presence. And we touched again the creative desire impulse of Being itself as the life force of you and me.
These phenomenological touch points with silence were but intimations of the manifold ways of silence. While I hope (and sense from comments) they evoked wonder toward silence, if not recollection of your own profound experiences, I must admit to some risk with this intimation approach.
One is that silence could be perceived as beyond reach, if not exotic—encountered only in places populated by few humans. It is true that retreating from ‘the world’ heightens awareness of silence. But please do not be misled. If you go to the noisiest place on Earth and you are practiced in the presence of silence, there the presence of silence will be.
The second risk is that silence could be perceived as that which we dance around in wordplay and then move on with our day, just another idea, another something to read about, then forget in the noise of information consumption. Again, I plead. Do not be misled. Silence is sacred.
Let these few weeks’ intimations be invocations. And to you wayfarers who wish to come closer now to silence, we’ll move to a more direct path of inquiry, even practice. I offer today’s reflection as an experience doorway that may open a path.
And I hope in the weeks ahead, we will hear echoes of what every wisdom tradition has shown—including the sacred mystical and shamanic traditions that precede philosophy and religion as we know them—that we begin in silence, abide with silence, listen through silence, and wait for silence.
We are the breath of silence, as is all life. The blessing and burden upon us as humans is to know it.
And so, Rumi was named the Silent One. . . .
With love,
Renée
Open Your Sense Doors
In forthcoming letters, we will explore the Sufi tradition and Sufi pathways to silence—a luminous, mystical tradition of open receptivity by way of the radiant heart.
We have said that to be present to silence, we begin by open receptivity of the body. Listening, then, is a natural doorway. The more subtle the sound, the more receptive the body, and in time, the heart.
Whereas the visual sense penetrates the perceptual field with direction and focus to see what’s over there or home in on the details right here, the sound sense is at the mercy of what comes.
Whereas the eyes have a ready door to open and close sensory impressions from the world, the ears are always open, receiving what is and is not there.
It is said that the visual sense became primary with the Mental mode of being roughly 3500 years ago. The sound sense was primary in the human long before. We still carry the primacy of earlier perceptual receptivity.1 But to recall this way of being, we must invite the body to wake up what is sleeping.
On the third day of a Buddhist silent retreat in the early 2000s, silence woke in me for the first time something sleeping, and its presence came through sound, and awareness of sound came through the invitation to open your sense doors.
Then came the touch on the singing bowl for us to begin.
It was June. Windows in the meditation hall were open. Occasionally, a gentle breeze made it to the middle of the room where I was.
Awareness turned toward the coming and going of the touch of breeze on my skin. It was hard not to hunger when it was no longer there.
Back to the breath. A pinch in the right knee. [anxious]
Now came awareness of the sound of someone in the room shifting position, then the deeper exhale when they resettled.
Now silence.
[lost in thought]
Now awareness of the body receiving the breath. Now a sound beyond the window left of me. Bird song. [a quickening]
Now sound not there. Silence.
[thought wandering]
Bird song again.
Silence. Bird song.
Silence.
A cough right of me. Settling now.
Silence.
These undulations of sound and silence went on, of course, but they remained separate. The instruction drew me toward the sound sense. Sound pulled. Silence had no hold. In moments of silence, I was more likely to drift in thought.
Then something turned. I cannot say what. Words are few but to say, instantly, silence was as present to perception as was sound, the way you look at a painting and the ground becomes the figure and for a moment, there’s no seeing it the other way. Sound emerged from silence, then returned to it, as if silence gave sound the way the ocean gives a wave.
And it transpired on a simple instruction: open your sense doors.
A very simple instruction.
Forthcoming
A few words about the next Gathering in Silence on July 7.
The format will change to allow for a deepening of our exploration of silence.
After silent meditation, anyone who wishes to leave is free to do so as we close our time in silence.
For anyone who may have questions or reflections, we will extend for 1/2 hour of conversation through the practice of speaking from silence.
All are welcome to this month’s gathering. Space is limited.
If you have wondered about exploring silence, feel a little out of your comfort zone beginning alone, and/or are simply looking for a quiet place to rest for an hour, please join us.
Register by email: reneeeliphd@substack.com OR reply to this email.
Week 4 of 6-Week Tithe Appeal
I humbly thank you who have contributed to Beyond the Comfort Zone in these weeks.
A dear friend asked recently about Substack and paid subscriptions. Permit me to share a little of that conversation, recognizing that 90% of you read this letter via email and may know little to nothing about the platform called Substack.
At present, 1400 of you from 80+ countries across 6 continents read Beyond the Comfort Zone. Roughly an additional 1000 “follow” what I post on the Substack platform called Notes. When I began this weekly letter, I invited 12 people.
That was 15 months ago.
I share these numbers for the sole reason to say, you and I are connected because Substack worked some kind of magic that I surely don’t have to bring us together. And Substack is a subscription-based platform.
A paid subscription is a contribution to the writer, not Substack. The writer then tithes—keeping with our theme here—Substack 10% per subscription, which, given all this, strikes me as quite fair.
Jean Gebser, Ever-Present Origin, trans. Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas (Ohio State University Press, 1985). Leonard Schlain supports Gebser’s thesis about organs of perceptivity with each unfolding structure of consciousness, providing neurological insights regarding the shift in rod and cone cells in the eye appurtenant to the shift from oral to written word. The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image (Penguin Compass, 1998)
The metaphor of the waves! Yes! This holds so much meaning to me and now I think I "get" this idea of Silence. There is always a wholeness, an ocean, a prism, from which experience lifts in waves before returning to its source. Thank you my beautiful friend! This is exquisite!
Thanks again Renée! I loved how you shared your Buddhist meditation. How the silence and sound started out as two separate things as their own entities and sensations. Until... they were not separate anymore. "Sound emerged from silence, then returned to it." Our brain and our culture tend to compartmentalize and partition. This has its place and is required at times. But there also needs to be the capacity to see the bigger picture, to understand how it is all connected. That silence and sound are two sides of the same coin, interdependent. It we can understand this, it opens the doors to greater perception. Like you are writing about here.
Looking forward to you explorations of Sufism and Rumi. I studied Sufism as part of my Masters/Theological degree. And I have been a huge fan of Rumi for decades! “Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.” Rumi.