Many of the secrets of a life of joy and peace are forgotten in the midst of the constant input and distractions of modern life, drowned out by all the noise.
The joy of making things is one of those secrets, perhaps the most forgotten of them all. Perhaps the biggest cause of the joy of making things is that the focus you give the act of creating something causes you to tune out most of the noise, and keeps you from creating your own.
That lack of noise, the quiet inside your head, is another forgotten secret. Oh, people talk about it from time to time, but when is the last time that you truly achieved inner quiet? When is the last time that you were silent, and truly listened?
It’s easy to let it slide… there are so many demands for our time and attention. Work demands it, family requires it, the sounds of traffic and television and a thousand other sources try to force themselves into our mind in a constant bombardment.
None of the things above are negative by nature, and some of them are actually positive, like time with your family. Even the positive ones can become negative, though, if you never have quiet inside, never get a break from all that is going on around you.
The constant overflowing of input and distractions drains you, emotionally, physically, and mentally. It interferes with your ability to get quality sleep, and your ability to get quality time with the ones you love. It can get so bad that the lack of quiet makes you do things to actively, though not necessarily consciously, to drive people away… your subconscious knows you need less input, even if your conscious mind doesn’t.
The Semi-Conscious Mind
Strangely, your semi-conscious mind (the place where your conscious mind and subconscious mind meet) gets so used to the constant input that when you finally do have a chance for quiet, it often will desperately search about for yet more input, causing you to become restless, bored, and often irritable. This will usually continue until your truly conscious mind essentially stands up and yells “Silence!”
It is amazing how much quiet can be around you, without it penetrating, too. This is perhaps where the semi-conscious mind becomes the most desperate, knowing that you are close to the inner quiet that you need. If you start achieving that quiet, though, issues that you have been avoiding are going to come up, and your semi-conscious mind knows that.
Those issues are things that you need to deal with, often by simply allowing the intense feelings associated with them to play themselves out, whether that is guilt, or grief, or some other form of emotional pain and uncertainty. Each thing you deal with lessens your inner burden, making it easier and easier to achieve peace… and quiet. Each thing that you don’t deal with, as time goes by, makes it harder, increasing the constant noise.
It can be amazing how fast your emotional burden can be lightened by inner quiet, and how much that lessened emotional burden can affect your physical and mental health and energy. Fifteen minutes of truly accepting internal silence can feel like you have shed a hundred pounds of junk built up over weeks, months, and years. An hour of quiet can leave you feeling like you have been renewed.
Inner quiet can be achieved anywhere, but it’s easiest when you’re alone. Other people have mostly also forgotten the secret, and so when they see you achieving it, their semi-conscious mind reacts, and tries to bring you back to where they are, in the midst of noise.
Try It Today
If you want to see how much difference it can make, try this… When you first get home today, before you launch into anything else, go take 15-30 minutes in a room by yourself, with no TV, no radio, no anything but you. If you live with others, let them know that you need the time, and that you will come see them afterwards.
In that 15-30 minutes, keep it in your conscious mind that you are seeking quiet. Things will come up, and your semi-conscious mind will fight you, but as long as you keep it in your mind that you are actively pursuing silence, those other things will start to drop away. So will stress, anxiety, emotional pain, and a lot of other non-physical burdens. Your physical body will start to relax, and likely start to heal, if there is anything that needs healing. That 30 minutes can be as refreshing as a few hours of sleep.
I, personally, used to do this most days, but it has been nearly three years since then. That’s a lot of noise that has built up. I plan on making it a cornerstone of my day again.
How about you? Can you spend 15-30 minutes a day to feel immensely better?
