Silence Can Change Your Life

Silence is the simplest and most natural way to quiet the mind and calm the emotions. This is a very simple truth, which has very profound consequences. It’s amazing how much we can accomplish if we basically learn to be silent, barely moving. Not as an act of containment or repression, but as a way to intelligently avoid all kinds of situations.

It is no exaggeration to say that anyone’s life can change if they only make silence take center stage. There are countless conflicts that can be avoided, the guilt that is conjured, the clarity that is achieved and the balance that is achieved. In fact, many connoisseurs define Zen precisely as the ability to be silent and stay still.

Nowadays, everything seems to go against tranquility , silence and simple ways of life. On the contrary, we surround ourselves with stimuli, experiences and noise, a lot of noise. The human being remains in an attitude of accumulation that leads to states of restlessness. We easily end up feeling dissatisfied, no matter how many experiences, loves, money or successes we have managed to accumulate. The reason is only one: we have forgotten what is essential.

Stimulus bombardment

Although all the advances in science and technology have taken place to solve problems and make life simpler, they have not ultimately succeeded. And it has not been like that because simplicity is a concept that is in the minds and hearts of people, not in a device or mechanism.

Many of the contemporary inventions exist primarily to save us time. Time is life and what has been intended is that we do not waste this valuable asset performing mechanical actions that contribute little or nothing to our growth. However, instead of taking advantage of that wonderful opportunity , we ended up making that free time a space for compulsion, banal actions and automatisms.

It is as if we are terrified to leave moments or blank spaces. We are obsessed with filling any void. That is the reason why silence has also become intolerable for many people. They believe that they should always react , say something, or be told.

You have to see how some are terrified when they do not have their mobile phone next to them…! This supposes a silence in that infinite virtual interaction that they sustain.

A simple life

We complicate our lives unnecessarily. We fill ourselves with completely inconsequential objects, desires and actions. And sometimes, when we feel the weight of all that, we end up trying to acquire another object or another experience to ward off that discomfort. We forget that the key is not to acquire something additional, but to get rid of what is left over.

A simple life is one in which you simply have and do what you need. Eat when we are hungry and stop when we are satisfied. Sleep when we are sleepy and go to bed, and be awake when necessary. Work, love, enjoy leisure moments, apply ourselves in work moments …

The simplicity is in returning to the essential. Part of the secret to achieving this is to give a place to silence again. This is the way for the mind and heart to acquire a more leisurely rhythm. Only in this way can we recognize what is inside us.

The silence and its wealth

Silence does have the ability to change our lives because through it we rediscover the essentials of ourselves. Zen master Jorge Bustamante points out that silence and stillness go hand in hand. How to stay still? Just by stopping moving. Afterward, the inner stillness will come by itself.

Our problem is not the things we do not have, or the loves that leave us, or the positions or experiences that we cannot achieve. The problem is in that frantic and mistaken desire to reach something external, so that our internal world is pacified. It is a bottomless sack in which there will always be a place for something else and the feeling that enough is enough will never appear.

Silence and stillness help to calm that chaotic and insatiable desire and favor that state of inner peace that we need so much. They help us to differentiate the essential from the unnecessary. This translates into greater inner clarity, greater clarity and, of course, better actions and decisions. Silence also speaks, it speaks to us. Why not listen to it?