Real Gift Of Finding Silence Here? Elias Amidon Notes Open Path

silence: “… Returning to the source is Silence, which is the way of nature …” ~ Lao Tzu

Indeed, our “source” is silence … so one does not need to go to some special place … to be in silence or to experience silence. Silence is always here … it is “closer than our breath” … and is available at all times …

But … it seems like the “trials and tribulations” of daily living “takes us away from silence” … and it’s not that silence goes anywhere; it’s us whose attention “drifts” … and understandably so {partly} due to navigating the endless needs of everyday life …

‘Course, it is always easy to say that silence is always here, is available at all times … but … the key question always is: how do we “find” silence? … here? … in our everyday life … in the “midst of it all” …

Elias Amidon answers this question in one of his monthly reflections that he sends out to his Sufi community at the beginning of every month.

And, in his usual style, Elias makes this – seemingly paradoxical – “wisdom gem” very accessible … with simple and relatable words …

Elias’ reflections on Finding Silence are anchored with “… Let me be quiet in the middle of the noise …” … Words from Rumi that capture the essence of silence … while also offering a clue to “finding” silence … 🙂 … he also closes his thoughts with the most apropos words from Lao Tzu (the opening quote of this post).

Elias Amidon (a master in the Sufi tradition, who has also deeply explored Theravada Buddhism, Native American, Christianity, Zen, and contemporary Dzogchen as part of his life long pursuit of spirituality) is a Pir (Spiritual Director) of The Sufi Way and has been “an initiate of the Sufi Way for the past 44 years.”

So, here is Elias on his simple – and profoundly effective – “practice” of “finding” silence …

Finding Silence

For years I went into the desert alone to find revelation in its silence, far from the noises of the world and my everyday life. Sitting there quietly on a rock, or wandering slowly, the only sounds in the daytime came from small occasional breezes moving over the ground and through the junipers, or my footsteps, my breathing and sighs, the distant growl of a jet, or a crow talking in a language I didn’t understand. At night the quiet was even more intense — the immense darkness sprinkled with stars and the moon lifting silently over the mountains — the only noises then were the little rustles of desert mice finding their way through the brush, or the yelps of coyotes in the distance.

In that great silence I would sit and listen, yet what I heard was not silence, but my thoughts. They kept coming, some of them coherent, some just fragmented phrases without meaning. Were these thoughts really mine? Was I making them happen?

I would try to stop them but that didn’t work. I would repeat silent mantras, but the thoughts even found their way through those, and the mantras themselves were scarcely silent.

It was on one of those fasts in the desert that I discovered a humble practice that I have since written about and shared, and that I’d like to repeat here. I don’t know how it started, maybe I was trying to find where my thoughts were happening, or where I was, but I touched my fingertip to my forehead, and then touched a point opposite it at the back of my head, and looked into the space between those two points. What’s in there?

You might like to try it. See what you find when you look into the space between the front and back of your head. If you say it’s your brain, that’s a thought. What’s your immediate sense of what’s in there?

For me, the immediate sense is emptiness — I can’t find anything! What’s more, that space, that emptiness, is silent. Yes, thoughts seem to run through it with their little noises, but the emptiness doesn’t stop being silent.

What’s awesome for me about this “practice” is that it’s so quick and available, and it’s so close I can’t look at what I find. The silent emptiness I sense inside my head resists becoming an object in my awareness — it is that awareness. Whatever I am, wherever I am — in the middle of my head, in the middle of my heart, in the middle of the sensate noise of the world — is this mysterious, spacious silence.

Rumi’s little prayer — Let me be quiet in the middle of the noise — opens a window onto this same simple awe. He doesn’t say, “Noise, be banished so I can be quiet!” He knows that noise is always around — in the market, in our sensations, in our thoughts and emotions — it’s all noise. As long as we’re embodied like this, we’re in the middle of the noise.

I find that when I feel aggravated by that noise, when I feel it pressing on me with multiple demands, or self-judgments, or incessant thoughts, this simple practice of looking into the middle of my head, my heart, my being, and finding nothing but soundless emptiness there, that’s medicine. The silence at the heart of our being is healing.

Krishnamurti: “This quietness, this silence is the highest form of intelligence which is never personal, never yours or mine. Being anonymous, it is whole and immaculate.”

I remember the Buddhist nondual teacher, Peter Fenner, asking a question in class once that I have repeated often in my retreats: “What do you have to let go of so there’s no pressure on you?” In the context of what we’re contemplating here, the most essential “let-go” asked by this question is our fixation of being located as a substantial entity in here, in our head, in our heart, in our body.

When we look with fresh eyes in here and see there’s no substantial entity to be found, that the immediate evidence of our being is empty silence, then the pressures that come have nothing to press against. The “pressures” of multiple demands on us, self-judgments and judgments from others, incessant thoughts and anxieties — they have nothing to press against. They go right through. We are quiet in the middle of the noise.

~ Elias Amidon

In one of his earlier sessions on “Sharing Silence,” Elias described the dynamic of “finding silence” from a different perspective. Click here for a 9-minute recording of that introduction.

Elias’ writes a monthly Notes from the Open Path which are short contemplations on an approach to living wholeheartedly and in clear awareness (aspects of his Open Path teachings) … visit his website for more of his work: The Open Path – The Sufi Way.

The entire text of Finding Silence above is authored by Elias and is excerpted from his February 2024 monthly email Notes from the Open Path (also available on his website). He has graciously given us permission to freely share these notes with our readers.