Fear of the Silence - 22 Apr 2016

Yes. So this fear must be allowed to be released right now. Don't try to... even if you have to scream, it's okay. Don't worry about it.

Well, it's almost 11:30 p.m. here in California, so I'm out there screaming in my pillow so I don't scare my neighbors. That's not a bad idea sometimes, yes. Yeah, it's very scary. Suddenly there is just this energy in my heart chakra that's just, 'Ah!' This is very scary.

Yes. So let this fear get released in this way. It's very good actually. Don't resist anything at all. Don't try to push it away. Don't try to hide or run from it. Don't say it's good or bad, anything at all.

There's this shaking, like I'm shaking. Yeah, it's very scary. Something there is just this energy in my heart. Scary, scary, and I'm seeing it.

Yes, yes. You are aware of it.

I am aware of it. And there's something that wants to cry. It feels like a little girl is inside of me and she's jumping up and down screaming and crying like, 'I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared!'

Yes, yes. Let her be. Let her be. Let her jump about as much as she likes. She's the one saying, 'Help, help!' She's saying, 'Daddy, help, I'm scared.' We have time. There's no rush. Let all of this flow through you. Don't resist anything at all. The dropping of prior conditioning is not always pretty and sweet-flavored chocolate.

I know. I was thinking, 'Oh great, this is being recorded, shoot.' But it's scary. I'm just really scared. And I've hit this place before, kind of hit a wall before when I've been...

No wall. There's no wall. Fear is here. Fear is here and you are aware of the fear already. This awareness is untouched by this fear. So there is nowhere to go. There is nowhere to go. You're not hitting a wall. It is just allowing to happen and to see that I remain untouched even in this fear. This is a part of you which is untouched, but actually, that is the whole within which this small part of the appearance called fear is just jumping about. Even if it feels like there's a part of you which remains untouched, you see that this is where I am. This is the truth of who I am: this untouched witnessing of even this. And this one is not trying to control any appearance. It's not saying good or bad to any of them.

I don't even know why I'm crying, but there's this...

Good. There's nothing wrong with crying. Nothing is wrong with crying.

I know. I tell my clients that all the time. I told them that all day today. Now here I'm crying. It's kind of funny. There's such sadness. Yes, there's nowhere to go. I'm here. I am. There's nowhere to go. I can't run anymore. There's nowhere to go. The silence is scaring me to death and I feel the silence. It's very strong right around here, just silent.

Silence is not scaring you to death. It is scary for the one that never existed. It is scared of this dissolution of the false identity.

Yeah, was that dissolution that I started to feel a couple weeks ago in the restaurant at work? I was like, 'Well, I can't do that.' And here I am. Here it's this... this is the fear. I wish I could put my head in your lap.

I'm here. I'm here.

I don't even know why I'm crying.

No, don't... no thoughts. Don't have to know anything at all.

I don't know anything at all anymore. I don't even know what day it is. Oh God. I see people smiling and laughing but I don't know why. Oh boy, it's so terrible, the silence. I'm afraid I'm suppressing something because it's so silent.

Yeah, the silence can never harm you. If something wanted to attack you, it would not be the silence now.

It would probably be pretty noisy if it wanted to attack me.

Exactly. Yeah. It is the noisy one that is being attacked or dissolved.

Noisy one. Yeah, there is a real noisy one over here. She's been here a long time, a long time. Now what? What do I do? Help, help, help! I don't know what to do. Help, I don't know what to do here.

You see, this one wants to engage in some way. It wants to break the silence in some way. But as long as you keep coming to satsang, you will find the silence is inescapable.

You know what? The very first time I saw you, somebody had posted... it was after Rishikesh and somebody posted in Mooji's Sangha Facebook group about your silent retreat. I'd never heard of you and you know, I thought, 'Okay, what the heck,' you know, because I was still in the Rishikesh mood. I thought, 'Okay.' So I went to your first silent retreat. You know, the first night, well for me it was a night, I think it was your Saturday morning, it was my Friday night. And first of all, you're sitting in this chair just kind of relaxing, you know, like, 'Ah.' I'm like, 'Who is this guy?' First of all, like, he's just chilling out, you know? Like, he's like, 'Yeah.' And the chair... I'm used to Mooji being like... and he's like chilling out. And then the second thing was I couldn't understand a word you were saying. I was like, 'Oh my God, I have to study his Indian accent.' You know, to me, an Indian accent... I know I couldn't understand you. And I know a lot of Indian people, there are a lot of Indians around here, but I'm like, 'I can't understand this guy at all.' And then the third thing was the silence. Your silence scared the out of me. It was like, 'Oh my God, it's so silent.' I mean, I couldn't bear it. I couldn't stand it the first night. So I shut it down and I went to listen to some of your videos so I could start to understand how you spoke. I came back the next day and again it was like, 'I can't stand the silence.' It was like, 'Oh my God, more silence than anything I'd ever experienced,' even with Mooji, which is hard to believe. And then by the third night or so, I fell in love with you. So, and then it was okay. The silence was like, 'Okay, I can deal with this. I think I can deal with this.' And then I figured out how to... you know, I trained my ear to understand you. And now it's like, I don't know what my problem was before. So it's the silence. That's what I think drew me to you was the silence. First it scared me to death, then it... then it was like, 'Oh, okay, I'm hooked.' And I feel it. I can now, as soon as I stop talking in this minute, there's a silence. How do I be silent and talk at the same time? Is that possible?

Once you get used to the silence, then all talking can come from there. It doesn't break any silence. This talking, which is only the intuitive presence which is speaking, is not in opposition to any silence.

I was thinking today when I was with all... I had many clients today. They were really noisy, oh my God. And I was trying to be silent, you know? I was like trying to be quiet in my head and just be there. And I did a pretty good job. I kept thinking, 'How am I going to be silent with all these really noisy persons?' You know? Oh, how do you do it? I mean, how do you do it? I'm asking you how do you do this, Ananta Ji? Because you're apparently you're silent and there's a lot of us noisy ones around.

All of this comes on its own very naturally. The recognition of the Self and with the allowing of this simple presence to unfold in its own way. And there's no sense of control. There's no sense of even how silent or noisy it must be. When all of this is left to Grace, then there's no trouble in any of this actually. I read a quote today, a Rumi quote. Somebody asked Rumi, 'Rumi, you speak so often of silence and yet you're speaking all the time.' And he said something... I'm paraphrasing... he said, 'The Silent One has never spoken,' something like that.

Thank you for your presence. I love you very much. Thank you.

I love you too. I know very much firsthand how this can seem fearful, this silence. Some of you know this story where one day actually, or at least sometime before I met Guruji, it happened that one day I resolved not to leave the self-inquiry till I discover the Self because Bhagavan had said, 'You do the self-inquiry and you will find the Self, and don't leave it till you do.' Yeah, one day I said, 'I will do it, I don't care what happens.' And I sat down. 'Who am I?' and just did very beautiful self-inquiry. Who am I? Thoughts came. Everything that came: 'Who is the witness of these?' And after a while, everything became so silent, just quiet. And there was the sense that a long time had passed in this silence. And I could sense that some fear, like you say, started to come. And the message that it told me, this fear, was: 'Stop this now. I'll give you a good life. I'll give you a good life. I'll give you a good life.' Then the double combo punch was it said, 'Deal?' So the mind itself said, 'Stop, I'll give you a good life,' and itself it said, 'Deal.' And I got scared but stayed in the inquiry. And there was so much guilt, you see? 'Now you were discovering the Self, everything became so quiet, and yet you made the deal with the devil, sold your soul to the devil.' This kind of stuff, this nonsense started coming. But both the offer and the acceptance of the offer were both the mind. I was still only the witness of it. Uh-huh. Is it? So that is why the presence of a living Master is so beautiful in our life, because all this nonsense is not... you see, all this play can be discarded very easily. So then it became clear that all of the mind's tricks can be very tricky actually, and it uses all fear, every appearance possible to convince you to bring you back into your personal identity. It can even use Advaita, it can even use knowledge.

Question this sense... how does it do that? Just by giving you these deals?

No, it gives you these deals in the mind. 'Okay, now this is a good opportunity for me to ask this question,' or it just distracts you away from this sense of dissolution, gives you some new lollipop, you know?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for doing this.

So welcome, my dear. Always welcome. Yeah, really.

Thank you very much for your energy and your devotion. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.