IS GOLDEN

How much silence do you like in your life?

I like a lot.

I've all but given up on radio, music or story in the car. Five odd hours to Plymouth. Many driving hours through work. Silent. No phone. Just my own thoughts.

Ditto daily space for it. The burble of my home life is a beautiful music. The conversation of friends is a treasure. But the appreciation of these things is heightened by a practice of silence, long and regular.
The more silent you are, the more you hear. Not just external sound, but the sensory experience of the ebb and flow of your own thoughts, and with acceptance, contentment with those. The hum of memory. The gentle music, if only you listen for it, of the perfection of selfhood. Not a moral perfection, but a physical, ontological, universal perfection in which one sees the distraction of duality, and one's own merger with the universal. Silence amplifies the sound of one's own edges. I choose sound as the descriptor here, as, aptly, sound seems harder to trace as a distinct temporal or spatial thing than objects. And so with the soul, if that is what you must call it. Hard to see its start or finish in time or space. The soul can be heard, in silence.

Silence breeds appreciation, when well used.
Silence contains contentment, when well practised.
Silence reveals one's own truth, when well absorbed.
Silence promotes peace, when willingly embraced.

The more silent you are, the less you realise you have to say.