The Fragrance of the Silence

Listening within the Silence is like
standing in a quiet room that has
a simple bottle of perfume in it.

Lifting the glass stopper of the perfume flask and waiting,
eventually the entire room is
infused with the perfume's fragrance.



What if we were to listen to the inner silence of what we don't know, the inner wisdom of "not knowing", with nothing on our minds but a complete curiosity for what we haven't been hearing? It is as if we have been listening to the cacophony of our own thinking with such an enamored fascination that the flute music of inspiration has been essentially drowned out. Yet when we can turn our attention away from that educated inner monologue, what can emerge from the stillness is a distinct resonance of wisdom.

Implicit in this resonance is an answer to the question that has been raised, an emergence of a solution to the problem, a new realm of possibility that is equally-everywhere-present but which has been obscured by our own attachment to what we know.

This is the attentiveness of the creative mind. Practicing listening to the Silence begins to cultivate a familiarity with the beautiful and brilliant fragrance of our own wisdom.

© 2011 Laura Basha, Ph.D.

"Is stillness just the absence
of noise and content?
No, it is intelligence itself,
the underlying consciousness
out of which every form is born.
And could that be separate
from who you are?
It is the essence of all galaxies
and blades of grass;
of all flowers, trees, birds,
and all other forms."

~ Eckhart Tolle