Silence, stillness, peace and reflectiveness

Previous / Next

The Self
Part 23 - Silence, stillness, peace and reflectiveness

Blaise Pascal wrote that “all of humanity’s problems would be solved if we could sit alone in a quiet room.” Yet, as a rule, we can’t sit still or quietly for any great length of time – and so our problems remain.

Q: What happens to you in silence?

Q: What happens to your body?

Q: What happens to your mind?

Q: What happens to your emotions?

Q: How long can you be still and silent for?

We are all restless souls

This is a part of the human condition. We are forever in motion, vibrating, bristling with life, driven by needs, urges, wants and desires. We don't have an off button or a pause button, stuck as we are on a hamster wheel or a treadmill. We are always full-on – even when we sleep.

Socrates suggested that we are like a leaky bucket: no matter how much we try to satisfy ourselves, it doesn’t take long before we are unsatisfied again – like an itch that cannot be scratched, a listlessness, an emptiness, a constant thirst and hunger.

With this in mind, perhaps taking time out for silence, stillness, peace and quiet, is no bad thing to attempt to do. Certainly, as a self-detective, there are many, many benefits to having some stillness:

No distractions
Placing importance on your own well-being
A chance to calm yourself down
An opportunity to catch up with yourself
A chance to ‘be’, rather than having to ‘do’ anything
A chance to reflect on what has been
A chance to allow thoughts to come to you freely, rather than you actively trying to generating them or channel them
An opportunity to be real and true to yourself
A chance to discover more about yourself
A chance for your body, head and heart to come together

An exercise using silence, stillness, peace and reflection

Find a place where you can be alone for five minutes, away from your normal routine, and away from your phone and any other distractions.
Find a comfortable position to be in, whether it be seated or lying down, eyes open or eyes closed.
Let five minutes go past without trying to do anything. If you wish to focus on your breathing, that is fine. You will naturally be distracted by anything and everything. This is to be expected. Just carry on being silent and still.
When five minutes has come to an end, you can either return to your everyday life or you can make a few notes in a notebook about what it was like for you, and any observations you noticed about (i) your body (ii) your mind (iii) your emotions or (iv) any answers or solutions to problems that happened to pop up while you were silent and still.
Repeat as often as you can. Try to get into a routine of finding the same time to do this over and over again.
Once you get the hang of relaxing and letting thoughts and sensations pass through you, you may wish to use this skill to check in with yourself at any moment in time. Five to ten seconds can be enough time to be still in order to detect (for example) (i) whether or not you have any tension within parts of your body (ii) your energy levels (iii) your emotional state (iv) your mental state.
When it feels right to do so, increase the length of time you are able to be still from five, to ten, to 20, to thirty minutes – and beyond.

Continue reading

This interactive workbook and many more are avaliable free at My Self Detective: