By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
We live in a cluttered world! Cities are cluttered, towns are cluttered, markets are cluttered… So is our mind. “Too much to do, very little time…” has almost become like a universal phenomenon, creating stress in almost everyone’s life. Even when one is on leave from work, the mind gets no rest. From the moment it wakes up till the time it goes to sleep, the mind is always engaged in something – either in something utterly useless or something very important.
As it’s almost impossible to reduce the workload and increase the time, the only option left is to increase the energy level within us. When we have enough energy and enthusiasm, we are able to handle any challenge.
The Silent Energy
But the question is how to increase the energy? Spiritual practices like meditation, yoga and pranayama do just that. They all lead one to a space of silence, which is charged with energy. That space of silence is the mother of all rest, mother of all creativity.
Inner Silence is the mother of all creativity, the source of intuition. It is in the zone of silence that great scientific discoveries were made, path-breaking inventions created, wonderful poems and melodies emerged.
Not About Just a Shut Mouth
Silence is not about just keeping the mouth shut. It’s more about withdrawing the senses from outward activities and turning it inward. The mind not getting involved in any of the five senses brings a certain amount of quietness inside. This leads to a state of total contentment.
A Cure-All Tool
The virtues of silence are countless. From being a source of enlightenment to a balm that heals an estranged relationship, it can be deployed as a panacea for many a worldly problems we face in everyday life.
Silence is the goal of all answers. If an answer does not silence the mind, it is no answer. Silence makes thoughts more coherent, makes one more intelligent. A person who does not practice silence cannot be intelligent at all. What he talks makes little sense. If you want to make sense, it has to come from silence.
Beyond Words
All of us have experienced at one time or the other, an amazing phenomenon. Whether in one-to-one communication, or in addressing a huge audience, something intangible moves people more than the words. We try to rationalize by attributing this to charm, charisma, presence, body language, etc. Yes, these all do play a role, but the essence of all that is the inner silence.
Real communication is beyond words. If you are firmly established in the zone of silence, if your mind is calm, you will find yourself suddenly being able to influence individuals, groups, and masses. What a single glance can convey, a thousand conversations cannot.
The Sound Of Intelligence
When we go deep into silence, we experience a form of communication without thoughts. This is when all the questions in one’s mind disappear. The highest intelligence within starts speaking. If one could only be totally in silence and eliminate all the noises of the mind, that intelligence will never fail to reveal the best solution even to the most critical problems.
Get On the Mat
For short periods of time every day, meditate and stay in silence. When you reach that space of silence through meditation, you will always be guided as to what needs to be done. Silence enhances one’s inner strength and sharpens intellect; keeps one in a happy frame of mind and invokes joy.
It’s now known that the amount of energy that one gets in meditation is much more than in sleep. Twenty minutes of meditation can equal to eight hours of good sleep. This formula could easily solve one of the most common problems working people face - working all the time and not getting enough sleep.
The Himalaya Within
People often think that one cannot be successful without being stressful. They are made to believe that there is no nirvana without quitting the world. But Indian spirituality offers plenty of ways of rejuvenating oneself without quitting the world! The body dropping you is death; and you dropping the body is meditation.
It’s time we all learn the art of dropping the world for a few minutes every day before it drops us. Its rejuvenating effect can make us better players in the world!
Source: LinkedIn