Top Ten Kinds of Silence

By William R. Mistele

Introduction

I wrote this little essay for myself to clarify the different kinds of silence

I work with. Each silence has its own sensations, feeling, field of energy,

awareness, and ways of perceiving.

Inevitably, several kinds of silence relate to the void. See my essay,

Top Ten Favorite Voids--

http://www.williamrmistele.com/uploads/toptenfavoritevoids.pd

10. Silence as in very quiet, no sound.

When I was young I was annoyed that there was no place in Lower

Michigan where I could sit and meditate without hearing trucks or trains

in the distance. Silence was like a food or elixir I needed in order to

survive. Silence was a kind of shield I was using to protect myself from

my hypersensitivity. I required silenced in my environment in order to

feel alive.

9. Silence as senses closed off from outer world. See yoga asana below.

Taoists also have a practice of sealing the five senses so that vitality is

reserved for one’s meditation rather than flowing outward through the

senses.

Another version of being closed off from the outer world is entering a

kind of metaphysical state of awareness that ignores the outer world as if

it does not exist. You are in an inner space of awareness that has no

reference to external reality.

8. Gnome Silence.

Gnomes, the elementals of the earth element, possess a quite ecstasy--

they always feel close to what they love. Time is defined by what they

are working on. They can define a unit of time as having finished what

they were working on.

From my book, Mermaids, Sylphs, Gnomes, and Salamanders:

The Gnome Muscar—

“I am a silence so deep and complete that when I gaze upon a rock or

geologic strata, in comparison to me, it is busy chattering with thoughts

and emotions. Its memories are still vivid and being replayed—

memories of its birth and of the past, present, and the future to be. You

see,

I am a listening silence!

I am consciousness without form or thought

Moving underground.

I both reveal the earth's secrets

And I am where treasures are hidden so well

Only the eyes of a seer

Can divine their location.

Time and age do not burden me.

I am constancy amid change.

I have made sketches of mountains

As they rose steep and new

But which are long since gone

Now but dirt beneath your shoes.

In my time frame

If you want to attune to me,

To match your moves to mine,

Whether to party, chat,

Discuss, linger, lurk, or socialize,

Then be still and open

Such that the stars are no longer distant and cold

But young again—

Children playing a game of ball,

Dancing, singing, full of laughter and delight,

So excited you notice them shifting

Their constellations

As they run through the night.

Then you will hear me whisper in your ear—

Your race has dreams

Like the dreams of the earth Herself

Like the songs that stream from the stars

Ah, but so few of you listen

To your dreams

Or bother to enter

The gates that lead into the silences of the heart.

But I feed on silence.

It is who I am.

It is my home and my dwelling.

And its transformations are my wisdom.

So when you are weary or in despair

Feeling lonely or discouraged,

A soul in need of repair

Come round and see me.

I can be most entertaining.

I love parties which celebrate the seasons!

I love the songs of ancient bards

Who train for seven years

In caves of dark isolation.

I love alchemists who spend a lifetime of refining

To hold in their hands the red lion!

Though once we meet

I probably won’t miss seeing you

For a century or two—

You see,

My first love shall always be

The earth beneath your feet.

7. Silence as a Magical Force Field—its dissolves sound. The earthzone

spirit Alosom specializes in magical silence like this. See

Alosom: http://williammistele.com/alosom.html

For Alosom, the universe is like a womb that shelters and protects,

nourishing the seeds of life until they are ready to be born as spirit.

Silence for him serves the same purpose. It shelters and protects. It

nourishes and fosters growth until the spirit, newborn and fragile, is

ready to assume the full powers and prerogatives of a creator. Silence is

the inner strength an individual needs to fashion the missing links

between beginnings and endings, between dreams and their

manifestations.

Alosom says, “For those who are unprepared or insincere, silence is a

country whose borders are guarded by nightmares, terror, and

whirlwinds of despair. But those who cross over and explore these

unknown lands find wealth beyond compare. Master silence and you

will have channels of communication that open to all realms. You will

be able to commune with any spiritual being. You will understand the

meaning when a spirit speaks.

“You will discover there is nothing within you that you need deny or

fear. All desires become clear. Silence is where dreams originate, visions

are born, and passions enter to be transformed.”

He goes on, “In war, silence is the element of surprise. It is the

unthinkable. It does what the opponent cannot imagine. Whatever the

odds, there is always a moment when success becomes inevitable.

Silence sees what is invisible to everyone else’s eyes.

“Silence is prophecy. Words fashioned in silence become reality.

Silence grants freedom because it knows how to wait. In the greatest

darkness and the loneliest prison, silence finds gates leading to

liberation.

“Who can stand against you, oppress or oppose you, when you have

measured and crossed the abysses of silence hidden within them? What

army, what empire, what wall, or weapon shall protect them? When you

are silence, you are the vibration, the matrix, and the substance from

which their thoughts arise. You are the eyes, the forge, and the hammer

that has shaped their will. Its design is imprinted on your mind.

“As fire to light, as emptiness to form, silence is to wisdom, will, and

love.”

6. Buddha Mind/Buddha Silence.

Buddha identified with the void. The void has no sight, sound, sensation,

substance, or form. And yet the void is not separate from all of these

things. You can contain the void in your awareness even as you eat,

sleep, and interact with others.

When I was young, I needed external silence as in quiet. No one that I

knew of in the city of Detroit at the time was acquainted with the void.

They were pretty much all extroverts.

With the Buddha mind, you can think, act, evaluate, perceive and

make decisions without using thoughts or images. You can feel but there

is no need to direct, shape, contain, or define those feelings. Feelings too

are another kind of energy that you are fully aware of from inception to

dissolution.

The Buddha’s mind is also called the enlightened mind. There are

simply no barriers or boundaries separating you from any other thing. To

attain to nothing at all is to be completely open and receptive to

everything.

If you meditate inside of Buddha’s mind, it is easier to comprehend

these thoughts. Here there is only an open space of awareness without

definition or reliance on any thought, idea, form or image to express

itself. It is a state of being. It is pure perception.

While within Buddha’s mind you will notice that thoughts do not arise.

This is because there is no ego or individual identity present who feels

any need to think or to validate his existence by affirming himself in

some way. The mental habits of such an individual or personality are

also not present. It is as if they never existed. We could say then with

some accuracy that Buddha’s mental vibration reveals the original nature

of mind.

For Buddha, an enlightened mind is identical to absolute freedom. You

perceive in each moment a path of action that is free of obstacles or

hindrances. If you meditate in the vibration of Buddha’s mind, you feel

completely relaxed and yet fully awake.

Imagine putting yourself inside of this mind of Buddha’s and then

trying to reverse engineer it so that you could explain its components. It

has the reflective quality like a mirror. And there is awareness of a vast

empty space. But anything that enters your sensory field of perception is

experienced both with a perfect detachment and also with complete

oneness—any person for example in front of you is perceived as being

within your space of awareness and so you are one with it as if it is part

of yourself.

What Buddha has done is make the void his identity. He just never

loses that sense of prefect, mirror like clarity and an awareness that

anything being experienced is itself of the void. Though each individual

may not be aware of it, from Buddha’s perspective, each person is

already free, without form, part of the void, at peace, and perfectly clear.

The difference between Buddha mind and ordinary mind is that people

look into the mirror of daily experience and think substance, matter,

space, time, and energy are real. And so they form emotional

attachments to some things and have an aversion to others things. Or,

put simply, most people’s consciousness is bound up with form rather

than experiencing the freedom and peace of formless awareness.

Put simply, Buddha silence is formless awareness as in an open mind

free of attachment to ego or to anything else. Why use the word silence?

Because Buddha mind sustains a high level of alertness while reducing

mental activities and vibrations to a minimum.

Addendum 1: Learn to think without using thoughts.

Addendum 2: Perceiving without thoughts intervening is the foundation

of all magical traditions.

5. Silence of the Planet Earth. Also listening silence.

Like gnome silence, there is a silence that accompanies the planet earth.

Oh of course the magnetosphere is constantly buzzing and the planet

earth itself is constantly humming. But the earth is over four billion

years of enduring substance. It is part of the universe.

To put it simply, put your feet on the ground and feel what the planet

feels. Assume its point of view. Its endurance is a nurturing presence. It

enables life and races such as ours to come into being, to gain

experience, to deliberate, and to choose what part we wish to play in the

unfolding of the universe.

I sometimes say, “Listen so well that Divine Providence considers you

part of itself.” To enter the silence of the planet earth is to enter more

than a gnome’s listening silence. It is to be so receptive you can feel the

dreams of the planet earth and hear what she has to say when she speaks.

She waits for her children to awake and to share the secrets of her heart.

4. Stillness.

In silence there is nothing going on though you may be active in

listening or in action. Stillness is action—like the motionless center of a

wheel of time upon which all things turn, the eye of a hurricane, or a

mirror with its pure reflection that is not affected by what it reflects.

The command, “Be still and know that I am God,” is so receptive,

open, and clear you reflect the divine presence. From my point of view,

this command to be still is not a religious act of devotion and has

nothing to do religions’ preoccupation with salvation and maintaining

the morals of a religious community.

It is a virtue and a quality of consciousness you create in yourself and

not through someone else’s gift to you. You have to show due diligence

and put forth the effort to get the results.

For me, entering the divine presence in a state of stillness enables that

presence--ineffable, beyond all comprehension, and nearly unbearable in

its beauty--to be reflected through you as a dazzling, brilliant, and

radiant light that has the power to transform the world. Therefore the

command to be still and know that I am God is a command to recreate

the world through the power of light within you.

Perhaps a story would help--

The Zen Koan

It was 1782 in Kyoto, Japan at the Zen Monastery called Tenryū-ji. And

the Zen Roshi had a private audience with Ryokan, one of his advanced

students. Ryokan was somewhat unusual for a Zen student, for he

possessed one of the most beautiful singing voices in Japan. And the

Roshi spoke to Ryokan in this way to challenge him to answer a Zen

koan,

“It is said that form is not separate from emptiness and emptiness is

not separate from form. Surely this applies to music—sound is not

separate from emptiness and emptiness is not separate from sound. Or,

to put it simply, surely all sound arises from and can only be heard

against a background of silence. So my question to you is—if sound

arises from silence, what does silence arise from?

And Ryokan was not as dumb as he appeared to be because of the

loose threads in his robe and the hair growing out of his ears. Ryokan

replied spontaneously for he loved with all of his heart music, singing,

and the performing arts, “It is the nature of the Perfection of Wisdom to

always be present and within every moment—yet to the eye it is unseen;

to the ear it is unheard; to touch it is empty; to taste there is nothing to

savor; to smell there is no scent, to the soul it has no feeling; to the mind

there is no concept or word that can grasp or express it; and to the will

there is no purpose or thing that can be accomplished that embodies or

manifests its essence.

“To put it simply, silence does not arise from something else. Silence

is the outer robe worn by the Perfection of Wisdom to cloak a light so

bright the universe is on the verge of exploding because of the joy it

contains.”

And the master smiled slightly because he could not help doing so as

he said to Ryokan, “Ah. Yes. Well done. Let us have some tea.”

Psalm 90 explores the void, that place where God dwells and where we

too dwell that is before the mountains were brought forth or the earth

and sky were created. To enter the divine presence inevitably you step

outside of space and time. The entire created universe is placed off to the

side.

There is nothing here to support you consciousness, no personal

identity or history is of use; no ego or name, no recognition or fame will

grant you audience. In effect, you have to become familiar with

consciousness free of all attachment and reliance on form identity—of

being without form or image—in order to function on this level.

Buddha’s detachment was the result of pursuing freedom from

suffering. He was not pursuing the means to recreate the world and

define a new destiny for the human race. Stillness has those purposes

built into it.

What silence and stillness have in common is that they are both aspects

of the void. But in the void itself silence and stillness are part of each

other. No one thing is separate from any other thing here.

3. Kabbalistic Silence, the Cosmic Letter U, or the Void Silence.

Kabbalah pursues the consonants, vowels, and Words through which the

universe is created and recreated. One of those vowels is the cosmic

letter U. For me all cosmic letters are derived from it.

A cosmic letter is created through sheer force of concentration. In this

case the cosmic letter U is created out of nothing by concentrating on a

note—the note of B in the treble clef, a shiny black light, and a sensation

of there being no space or time.

That sensation might be a little tricky. You can imagine being in a big

empty space with nothing in it. But this could still be Euclidean space—

something you measure with a measuring tape or if there is some kind of

motion you could measure time by its changes. We have at least a

subjective sensation of being in linear space and that time moves around

us.

In the letter U space and time are completely malleable. They can

stretch, shrink, or change in any number of ways. The letter U is non-

existence—the before the mountains were brought forth and the earth

and sky were formed--and yet all things arise from it and dissolve back

into it. It is simply a different physical sensation. The space around you

could with equal ease inside of the head of a pin or larger than a galaxy.

I have an entire book on this letter U with another book on stories

about its applications—see for example The Perfection of Wisdom at

williamrmistele.com or numerous stories in Collected Stories,

http://williammistele.com/collectedshortstories.pdf

The practical application of the cosmic letter U is that it can dissolve

any negativity. It can do this because anything negative requires

something to attach to, something to manipulate or control, or something

with form or substance that it uses to define its identity. The letter U on

the other hand has nothing within it. It is nothingness so void and empty

that space and time have no definition.

The practical result of the cosmic letter U is that it places others before

their path to perfection and dissolves all that hinders them from pursuing

that path. They can stand there and look at that path before them. They

can enter that path which is nothing else than making the best choices in

this present moment. Or they can try to return to the past, to the habitual

actions, routines, and associations through which they previously

existed. But those things no longer carry any weight and so an individual

gains no advantage in trying to go that way. In other words, an abusive

individual’s influence over others comes to an end.

2. Venus Silence

I know. I know. All this discussion about silence seems so cold and

detached. Try this:

Visualize someone in front of you. Nothing else exists in your

awareness but this person. You are silent. There is no awareness of

yourself present—no ego, no identity, no longings, hungers, cravings,

needs, or desires. You think silence has desires and needs? Okay we are

on the same page here.

Now focus on this person. You are the empty space of silence around

this person. You are in effect a three dimensional mirror that reflects

with perfect clarity the other person in all aspects—personal history,

self-image, life experience, and every fiber of the other person’s being.

And some people think silence is just having no sound around.

You will just have to try this for yourself. What happens when I

visualize another person so I do not refer back to myself but stay focused

on the other is that I begin to sense the other person’s feelings, thoughts,

and everything that person has experienced that defines who he or she is.

There are no barriers or boundaries here, no obstacles to overcome, and

no separation and so there is a sense of oneness and perfect love.

You could say in this moment I am “listening” to the other person’s

life. You could say I am practicing seeing this person as her guardian

angel sees her. Some spirit wandering by or a spirit guide might say,

“Ah. Here is an awareness in which only oneness exists. I don’t see

much of that going on.”

A spirit of Venus who teaches things like this might say, “The deepest

love within one is united to the deepest love within the other. When this

action gains sufficient wisdom and power an internal fusion results and

personal love is transmuted into cosmic love—witness here the

beginning in which the light in an individual’s heart shines as bright as

the sun.”

Silence. Silence of this kind is love.

1. Idida—a Mar’s Spirit of Silence

See http://williammistele.com/idida.html

For Idida, silence is an absolute weapon of war no army can defeat—

“Silence more than light or darkness defines sight, more than

thought and words defines understanding, more than movement or

volition defines action. Silence is an unknown terrain and an

invisible mountain range. No army can climb it. No commander or

general can penetrate it and no reconnaissance plane can fly over it.

You can neither lay siege to it nor assault it. Silence is the will of

the universe moving unobstructed toward its goal.

“Become this silence. Wear it like armor. Unite with it like a

lover. Shine with its secret fire. Accomplish those things which can

only be known by those who celebrate the beauty and wonder of

creation.”

For Idida, the power of silence is like something material. You can hurl

it at someone and knock him down. You can make it into a chasm which

no one can cross even though there is nothing visible which stands in the

way of the individual's movement. You can stop someone's thoughts or

cause their five senses to no longer perceive.

Like water, silence contracts and freezes. Like fire, it commands.

Like air, it is everywhere.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is General Martin Dempsey.

Before he became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff he was a

remarkable man. He had vision, a powerful sense of accomplishing the

mission, awareness of tactics and strategy, and of bringing all of your

available resources to focus on the job to be completed.

He embodied those qualities because he was remarkably available.

With some validity to the analogy, like the spirits of Mars he “stands

ready to serve.”

After becoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs he has developed in

himself something even more remarkable. He is now using a psychic

ability to sense directly those who are under his command in all the

armed services. The entire armed forces of the United States is reflected

in his aura. If you were to meditate deeply (they don’t teach this at West

Point) on the military capacity of the United States in all its branches,

men, physical resources, strategic capabilities, and intelligence

organizations, you could sense something of this exact vibration in

General Dempsey.

Now here is the difference. If you took a 9th

Dan Aikido master and

had him practice for forty years the cosmic letter U, in the end he could

focus with his mind on someone and cause that person to fall down. No

need for motion, defense, or attack. The other person would feel that

“dynamic sphere” of the Aikido master envelop his aura, attune to it and

become one with it so that the one with the greater original awareness

determines the course action.

It is possible then to have generals who command no armies, who bear

no weapons, and who are given no authority and assigned no

commissions. And yet such generals would have power greater than any

army. Such a general could easily bind General Dempsey so he was

incapable of action or even making a decision. Such a general is as real

as any solider now deployed in any nation who bears weapons and who

must defend himself and accomplish real missions within specific time

frames.

In the future, when wars are eliminated and corruption in government

vanquished from the earth it is generals who have mastered the virtue

and power of silence that shall be “men at arms” who uphold law in the

world. Isaiah prophesized 2,700 years ago that wars would be no more.

It would appear his prophecy is a little sluggish getting off the ground. It

has neither taken hold of anyone’s heart nor captured anyone’s

imagination other than a very few who appeared briefly in history.

Times change. You want to preserve light and life on earth? Become a

master of silence who possess an absolute of weapon of war that is

nothing else than the power of silence. In this case, you do not fight as a

human being. You unfold a mission with the power of the universe

flowing through you.

And so this story:

The Story of the Buddha Meeting a Warrior

This story takes place in an alternate reality—some other time line,

another world than ours where different choices were made.

So this great warrior meets the Buddha one day walking down the

road. And this was not just any great warrior. This was a man of the

caliber of Alexander the Great. It would have been easy for this warrior

to conquer not only India, but also Japan, Korea, China, Mongolia, and

even spread his empire to encircle most of the Mediterranean Sea. As

great warriors go, he was quite good.

So the warrior, seeing the Buddha, walks right up to him and says

without the slightest hesitation or doubt, Great master, I have a desire

and a need. I have sought to master myself and I have accomplished

much through my efforts. And yet satisfaction eludes me.

Furthermore, I know that if I put forth my will I can conquer the known

world and more. I have a special ability. I can communicate to others

soul to soul and heart to heart some degree of my own power and will.

My generals are nearly as wise as myself and my warriors are absolutely

indomitable in battle. No army can defeat them.

And yet I feel as if any plan of action I envision will be in vain. What

good would it be to conquer the world through fighting and war if I

cannot defeat war itself? For after I am gone, no matter how great my

empire and the leaders I leave behind, fighting will break out. Wars will

again be fought. And all that I have accomplished will fade like grass

that withers and is then replaced by new sprouts.

I see in you kindness, generosity, and compassion--you are willing to

answer any honest and sincere inquiry put to you. Therefore, answer my

question. Demonstrate to me and to the world that shall be hereafter that

there is wisdom so vast, deep, and profound it can ends wars forever by

following your directions.

And the Buddha replies, Any opponent you face has a mind like your

own. All you need to do to accomplish all that you desire and to end

wars forever is to join your mind and the mind of your opponent

together so the two of you become as one living being with one mind

working together to fulfill each other’s dreams.

And the warrior asks, How can this be? Two men striving against each

other with all their might and power--each seeking to dominate and to

master the other? Join their minds and you have chaos--a nightmare like

a firestorm and a whirlwind meeting. The result is a conflagration.

And Buddha replies, To join your mind to another’s mind requires but

one thing—perfect, mirror like clarity, even as now in this moment I am

joining my mind to yours.

The warrior asks, How can this be taught?

Buddha replies, If you gaze upon a seed, you can sense the past,

present, and future of the seed and of the tree it is to become: the seed is

carried by wind alone or as part of a fruit. It falls to the ground. It sinks

into the soil and merges with the earth.

There it sleeps. It is sustained by silence and in darkness it waits. For a

little while, it is as patient as the earth enduring until in due season it is

awakened and called forth. The seed receives the elements into itself that

enable it to rise up and to transform. The tree is born. Through the four

seasons it grows, each year is marked by a separate ring at its core that

records its journey through time.

You can touch the bark, smell and taste the fruit, sense the roots

reaching down into the ground and the way the leaves reach up drinking

in the fiery ecstasy of the sunlight. You become the tree in your mind so

there is nothing else in your awareness than what you gaze upon.

In this moment, the vibration of your mind encompasses and

reproduces the vibration of the tree. If you were to speak to the tree it

would reply to you mind to mind in a language that nature employs—of

vitality, of life force, the sensations and perceptions of being alive, of

existing within a specific environment, of being cloaked by both light

and darkness, of expanding, of gaining strength, and of reproducing

itself heard in a song of separation and reunion through which what has

gone before appears now in a new form.

In this way, you have stepped outside of human time. You have taken

one step toward perceiving life in universal form.

Similarly, if you gaze upon a rock, you sense millions of years gone by.

You can enter its heart and understand silence enduring for ages, of

being a part of a mountain as it lifts and towers above the land and as the

mountain erodes and breaks down again.

Here is another form of wisdom—a clarity of perception that perceives

the world in a way that nature understands. All things, no matter how

long they may endure, are fragile. Everything that has form has a

beginning and an end—the events of history are like images in a

dream—they appear and then they are gone. In this practice the mind is

refined so that its vibration can encompass years, ages, and eons as if

they are but a moment of time.

If you gaze upon a river or a stream, your mind takes on that vibration.

Water adapts to each moment without clinging to whatever form it held

in the previous moment or to any form it had in the past.

And yet you can also comprehend the movement of the stream, its past

and its future, from where it has come and to where it flows. Mist,

clouds, and fog on a hillside forming as rising warm air cools flowing

over the hills at the end of a valley. Drops of rain falling on leaves,

running down to the tip, dropping through the air again, sinking into the

ground or in rivulets running down to form a stream or splashing in a

mountain pool before flowing on.

The stream turning and swirling around rocks and bends caught in the

spell of gravity calling out to it to follow its paths. Until finally a lake or

sea is found. There the flowing water yields itself freely into the

embrace even as water in a falls lets go into the embrace of air as it falls.

Gaze upon the stream and the vibration of your mind steps outside of

human time. It enters a moment of pure innocence—it gives all of itself

in every moment without holding anything back.

And as for will, what is like unto magma rising up from deep in the

earth to form a volcano thousands of feet high? Overflowing like an

artery of the earth pulsing to the earth’s heartbeat, it forms new land.

Mountains explode. Great calderas burn. Cinder cones flow lava to the

sea in streams of molten rock more viscous than water.

Fire is hot, burning, devouring, seething craving to expand and to be

free overcoming all boundaries. If you gaze upon the volcano and allow

your mind to join with its power, then the vibration of your mind steps

outside of human time. Then you understand not just the will of a human

being or even of a great warrior. You understand what it is to be joined

from the core of your being to the powers unfolding the universe.

How can a man ever understand or master himself unless the forces of

nature—earth, air, fire, and water—flow freely through his soul

unobstructed and with perfect clarity beyond all fear or desire to attach

to one form in this moment of time or identify with another form in that

moment of time?

To be free is to be in your consciousness like a mirror that can reflect

perfectly anything that exists within itself without blur or distortion. And

to reflect perfectly is to be able to reproduce in your mind the exact

energy and vibration of what you gaze upon.

This is the mind that is able to join with another’s mind so there is no

separation. And in the joining there is something wonderful that

happens—you know each other so well it is as if you have become

brothers and sisters.

And yet there is more. In reflecting what the other is in your heart, you

are able to speak to another with the voice at the core of his own being.

You have become his guardian and the perfect companion who will walk

beside him and assist him in fulfilling his deepest desires and dreams.

And then the Buddha pauses and gazes at the great warrior. And the

Buddha speaks and says, If you could see yourself through my eyes in

this moment as I see you now you would attain perfect enlightenment.

And the warrior replies, I see myself through your eyes. I see through

your mind of mirror like clarity and boundless light. I feel what your

soul feels--infinite peace. I respond as you respond with perfect empathy

and unrestrained receptivity in which two become one so all separation

is overcome.

And Buddha says, You have become a second Buddha comprehending

all that I am. Go now and accomplish what I have not done—defeat war

itself and eliminate forever its presence from the earth.

Top Ten Kinds of Silence. To quote the earthzone spirit Alosom:

May silence fill you with infinite light

May the heart of life dwell within your heart

May the peace that embraces the universe and all its stars

Abide with you and guide you wherever you are.