Coming Home Tuesday Morning 9-10am EDT ~ Silence Is Stillness Is Silence
Join me tomorrow for a meditation where we explore the sound of silence
Dear Friends,
Tuesday morning we will gather from 9-10am for a deep meditative dive into stillness and silence. It’s such a relief in our chattering, overstimulating world to stop and sit in silence with other folks. There is medicine in deep listening, deep feeling, deep sensing and all of the other depths that arise when we stop the whirling dervish of life for a few precious minutes. In this practice we find peace, space, perspective and many of the other lost items we’ve been looking for in the couch cushions.
The meditation tomorrow is inspired by an experience I had over the weekend. My friend, Melissa, put on an event at her venue, Basilica Hudson. It was the 8th annual edition of 24-Hour DRONE. From 12pm on Saturday to 12pm on Sunday, the venue hosts musicians and sound installation artists in a continuous, non-stop performance of drone music. They do not stop between sets…each artist blends seamlessly with the previous act…this transition is quite beautiful to witness and the effect is hypnotic.
I regret that I didn’t make it until Sunday morning around 10am. Next year, I’d like to stay the night. Folks bring sleeping bags and set up a personal pod for the night. It’s not a dance party…it’s a listening party. The atmosphere when I finally arrived that morning was sacred…I said to Melissa that it felt like a ceremony, and it did.
I sat there for an hour and took in the Japanese performer, Fujiiiiiiiiiita, and also felt the space. It was full of love, wonder, and an ephemeral, magical quality that I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced before. Fujiiiiiiita, himself, was the embodiment of grace and his sounds were sublime. But, I’ll also attribute it to the cumulative effect of continuous mass listening. There was a subtle attention to sound in the space, a subtle reverence for it. I noticed that people spoke very little and when they did, they whispered quietly. I think that might have been what united the diverse crowd that had become a shared resonance body—a love for listening, a love for the possibilities in the manipulation of sound outside the boundaries of the purely functional. I left feeling lighter, quieter, and more orderly inside—like my auditory and aural channels had been cleansed.
Come tomorrow and let’s find our way into the subtle dimensions of sound and the felt sense of silence.
Suggested donation for Coming Home meditation is $10-20 for drop ins. Whatever you feel called to give is appreciated. Contributions can be made here: Paypal: schuyler@artofemergence.com or Venmo: ElizabethSchuyler-Brown. Paid subscribers, you are already covered. Thank you.