Silence: a presence
Originally written 04.29.2024
It’s funny how silence makes you listen. When you’re not expecting to hear much, you find yourself hearing everything.
It’s been about a week since we left the Vision Quest encampment. It was conches every two hours starting at 10 p.m. until 6 a.m., preceded by drumming, singing, and ceremonies. It was conversations with so many incredible people. It was already more sounds than I was accustomed to in my day-to-day life at the ranch, but it was incredible.
Coming back, I hold a deeper appreciation for the sounds of Nature and our Relations. The cicadas are emerging, and I feel their sounds unblocking and relaxing me into warmer nights alongside the crickets and grasshoppers. By the pond in the south, the toads and frogs add to the symphony that’s bouncing between the east and west of the pond. Somewhere in the southeast, there’s a pair of cardinals flirting back and forth in the trees. There’s the grunting of a pig in the east that immediately puts me on alert and sends adrenaline throughout my body.
Would I hear these Relations if they sounded in the city? Would I hear my companions bringing a bit of life to the darkness? Would I notice the breeze-tickled leaves as they chase the passing wind?
Or, would my body shut down from the overstimulation of city sounds and never know they’re there? Just turn them into white noise...
Ever since getting back from the vision quest, I’ve developed an aversion to manmade sounds. I find myself driving in silence, reading instead of streaming, or simply sitting with Nature and myself - shadows and all.
The weight of silence has never felt so light and expansive. As if music and voices were actually folding me in on myself. Now, I feel broadened in more than one respect.
I find myself doing what I did on my vision quest; chirping back to the birds, meditating, breathing more mindfully, praying, noticing.
And what I noticed is the depth and complexity of Nature’s sound baths. To touch one’s feet to Grandmother Earth and feel yourself healing with each natural stimulus.
There are times I’ll catch a whiff of the neighbor’s brisket or campfire, hear the humming of wheels on the highway, or the rumble of a plane overhead. Still, they’re white noise. Second to Nature and her symphonic sound baths.
It leaves me curious about those who fill every silence with a sound. This compulsion to block out everything with background noise is deteriorating to me and likely many others - in my unprofessional opinion… It’s a head-tilter to me when people play music while they’re camping or turn the TV on while doing literally anything - especially vacuuming. We have a culture of overstimulation and wonder why the majority has anxieties and a lack of inner peace.
The lesson of silence has subconsciously taught me how to listen more deeply. To truly hear and listen to my inner voice and body. To sit with what’s empowering or confronting my consciousness and subconscious so it can be understood and transmuted. To hear the intricacies of each bird’s song. The way some birds produce a unique sound when they fly.
The way squirrels seem to laugh when they’re playing hide-and-seek. Or how they chatter back and forth as they share a meal below a bird feeder. The deep chest breathing of a doe passing through the yard. The way everyone goes silent and observes from their posts when a predator is near. Do they sense it before they see it? Does the Wind also share with them messages and warnings of what is incoming?
I don’t know. I find myself wondering if birds and insects smell… but not curious enough to go down an internet rabbit hole. What I do know is that silence - or at least the absence of manmade sounds - roots me deeper into Nature and broadens my ear’s perception and intuitive acuity.
I go from hearing the sounds to feeling them in different parts of the body, to seeing them ripple through the air and my inner vision. The ultimate gift is the 6th sense of intuiting when an animal is about to move through my circle before it arrives to my tangible senses of sight, smell, or sound. Still, though, I’m gifted with surprise when one enters without a forewarning. What fun would it be if they didn’t?
If I could, I’d like to challenge anyone to shut off the screens and speakers and sit with themselves and Nature for at least 30 minutes a day. Maybe even 10 minutes will suffice if the process feels too confronting at first.
Perhaps you, too, will know that silence is not an absence but a presence. One that nourishes and replenishes parts of our soul that, in turn, nurtures our mind and body. Silence, in company with stillness, births inspiration, insight, wisdom, and healing.
