A Simple Silence

My father recently went on a "Vipassana", which translates to "insight into the nature of reality". He has been known to do this from time to time, but I've only recently began to understand why. While this meditation can be practiced through a variety of techniques, I find one specifically astounding. Along with nearly 17 hours of meditation, those who choose to go on this journey are asked to observe a "noble" silence. This is the silence of the body, the speech, and the mind. I used to go crazy trying to consider what 10 days would be like without speaking or being spoken too. Now, I think going on a Vipassana would be a real treat.

Can you remember the last time you went 24 hours without your cell phone? I definitely can't. The days that I tell myself to shy away from over communicating, someone will call as my own personal oath of technological silence is destined to be broken. Email, facebooks, cell phones, iphones, twitters and texts have turned our society into an over-communicating frenzy (as she typed on her Google hosted blog).

You don't have to meditate and you don't have to be far from your phone, but if only for an hour...treat yourself to a "simple" silence. You'd be surprised at how little you will have missed.

                              “See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls.”

-Mother Teresa