Silence, can you hear it anymore? Our culture has evolved into a gigantic noise machine – 24/7 noise! We are bombarded with useless, inane and trivial noise. Noise designed to silence the voices of dissent and alternative views – noise that hardens the tympanic membrane of our physical, emotional and spiritual ears. Noise intended to disrupt, fragment, and subdue our voice of consciousness.
The consequences of this “Shock and Awe” noise assault are many; one of which is that we have become addicted to external noise to inform us, form our perception of self and to form our worldview. In this process, we have dismissed and shut ourselves off from our voice of consciousness – our inner scared voice that is our connection to our deepest human values and actions.
Consciousness is still a mystery. The common and most accepted definition is that consciousness is having an awareness of one’s environment and one’s own existence, sensations, and thoughts. Others describe consciousness as being awake and aware—responsive to the environment, in contrast to being asleep or in a coma.
Disease, traumatic injury and toxins are the typical causes of comas. The shock waves from our cultural noise machine are the blunt instruments and toxins that drive our voice of consciousness into a state of coma. And because we are addicted to noise, whenever we enter silence we experience the symptoms of noise withdrawal:
Anxiety
Restlessness
Confusion
A sense of not belonging
Fear
Increased heart rate
Dry mouth
Rapid breathing
Comatose Stroll
As I was leaving my neighborhood the other day there was a young woman walking in exercise clothing, almost in the middle of our narrow street. As my car approached her, she maintained her middle of the road position. I noticed that she had earphones on and she couldn’t hear me approaching. I cautiously pulled along side of her. She glanced over with a surprised look on her face. I rolled the passengers window down and apologized for startling her and told her about a 15-year old girl whom a bus recently killed because she walked into an intersection. She had earphones on and was texting just before she was hit.
Instead of being interpreted as signs that we are losing our awareness and responsiveness to our environment and to our humanity we allow these symptoms to compel us to seek and crave more noise.
Each morning the masters of noise awake us with a barrage of external noise to send us off on our comatose journey we call the day and to provide us with our initial injection to keep the withdrawal symptoms at bay. The journey is well scripted and rehearsed with multiple venues and opportunities to be radiated with doses of noise. And each day the scared spaces of silence become increasingly extinct and more difficult to access. Without these sanctuaries and havens from “the noise” our addiction deepens and we further alienate ourselves from our voice of consciousness.
Silence and noise have always been essential to our survival and understanding of our world. We require silence to understand and appreciate the true meaning of noise. And although the dangers of today are significantly different than ones of thousands of years ago, we still need silence to navigate and understand our external and internal world. More importantly we need silence to experience our inner voice of consciousness through which our humanity speaks and keeps us grounded in our world.
I believe that both noise and silence are needed and both serve a critical purpose in helping us navigate our world. My supposition and fear is that the balance between silence and noise has been breeched. We have reached a tipping point in which noise is flooding our senses and drowning out our consciousness at time when “normal” consciousness is not adequate. The magnitude of the dilemmas confronting humanity requires the highest levels of human consciousness. We desperately need our voice of consciousness, both to bring balance into our lives and to serve as a guide to accessing higher and deeper levels of consciousness. This will allow us to create the solutions the world needs to thrive and sustain itself.
Can we restore the balance? Can we confront our noise addiction and have the courage and resilience to endure silence? Without our voice of consciousness we would not be present on earth. If we remain in our coma, the quality of our existence and potentially our survival is at risk. We must reinstate our voice of consciousness to its essential and natural position as “keeper of our being”. It begins with a commitment to finding a place of silence, designating this space as scared, and going there each day to listen to our voice of consciousness.
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This was a very good article. I resonate completely with what is being said. Please edit the three places in the article where the word “scared” should be replaced with “sacred”.