Silence A Cosmic Romance

Adam Wes Namaste. Welcome, everybody. We'll probably have a few more people arrive, but let's get started, since the rest of us were on time.

Last week, we did gentleness. I'm hoping you guys had a beautiful, gentle week where you practiced gentleness. Daniel, you were telling me you practiced gentleness mindfully, and I hope that was really wonderful for you. In fact, if you'd like to share anything, maybe that's a nice way to start, just for a minute or two.

Daniel R Yes, it was quite nice because that week, and the week before that one, I had been judging myself a lot. I was very harsh with myself whenever I committed mistakes or whenever things didn't go as I had planned them.

But after the session, I started to be very mindful about this. I was more gentle with myself. It gave me more space to commit mistakes and not to judge myself so harshly. Eventually, it started flowing.

I was also gentle with people around me without even thinking about it. In traffic, for example, I usually get very frustrated. I just started leaving people be, and if they were rude or something, I tried to think, "Well, maybe they are having a hard day. Maybe they are going through some stuff. Even when they are being rude to me, I should be gentle with them."

Everything in the week after that just happened so smoothly and so nicely.

Adam Wes Beautiful, Daniel. Thanks for sharing, and thanks for taking the direction, the suggestion, so seriously. It is whatever we make it. If you take the whole week and you're like, "I'm going to be gentle to such a degree that it's going to be inefficient, but I'm just going to prioritize it completely," it can be very powerful and transformative.

I did that for years. I kind of went all in. I even had a homeless person once tell me, "Don't be so impeccable with your garbage." It was a pretty funny moment. It's like, "Why are you kissing your garbage?" I was just all in, you know?

Thank you, Daniel. Our inner state is our sovereign space, and we don't need to let anything or anyone determine our inner state. Maybe this is a nice segue into today's topic.

We might give up gentleness because of some attachment, right? We might give it up for whatever reasons. But if we really value our inner state, which is required for enlightenment, then we will see that as most important. When the person comes by, we'll just say, "Oh, go ahead. You can have it. You can go first." And genuinely, really, whatever. I don't need that.

Wonderful. Thank you, Daniel.

Today's topic, our sermon today, is "Silence: A Cosmic Romance." This is really how I feel about silence.

With silence, there's almost a cosmic, romantic feeling that arises. It's there all the time, but in the noise, we can't feel it. We don't notice it. But it happens when there's a cool summer breeze or a warm summer breeze, or you can almost hear the stars twinkling.

Or you find yourself completely at peace and free inwardly, to the point where you're not thinking and you're not even trying not to think. There's this beautiful tint of existence that, to me, is very romantic. It's almost like a beautiful song or beautiful scenery. Not romantic in terms of between a man and a woman, but romantic in terms of its opulence, its elegance, and its refinement. Even the nature of our mind in the moment is that.

Silence is, I think, a challenge for almost everybody in our society, unless you perhaps live in a monastery. Even then, perhaps it's a challenge, because we don't live in a world that promotes silence. We don't live in a world that holds space for it, that encourages it, and, most of all, that understands it.

Today, I think it's good to start with the understanding. Why be silent? It goes against everything we're conditioned to be. It seems unproductive. It seems painfully selfless, right? There are all these things we have to do. It's our life. Our life is important, right? So why give up the evolution that happens in activity, in noise, in thinking, in planning, and all those things?

Silence is, I think, a very challenging thing for people to do. But when you make contact with silence, you can see that it's the most valuable thing, and you have to take a leap of faith.

In silence, we make contact with life. When we're becoming, the moment never comes to us. It's always about the future moment, and we miss it. "In the future, in the future. I'm planning. I'm going to have this. I'm becoming this."

But in silence, we submerge in the moment, and we get to experience it as completely as it is available to experience. I guess the depth probably goes deeper and deeper. How silent can you be?

Silence can feel uncomfortable. "Why isn't he talking? Why is nobody talking at the dinner table?" Silence is something you have to practice when you're around others.

Silence is somewhat of a metaphor as well, because what does it mean to be silent? There are so many ways that we can approach this and so many dimensions to it. I'll try to go through a number of them.

The ultimate silence is to be without conception of self. You can be quiet, and that's a start, but can you even feel that there is nobody to experience? There is no self. There just is. Instead of, "I am having this experience," there is just the experience.

This is the deepest place, when you start to feel that there is only one Self, Brahman. Have you heard of Abraham from the Bible? Brahman almost certainly comes from that historical Sanskrit word, Abram and Abraham.

Vinh T Is this the guy inside the cave, and then the challenge was that he had to sacrifice his son or something like that?

Adam Wes I don't know the whole biblical story as much as I know the Sanskrit word, which is like the soul of the universe, the first beginning of consciousness. But if you look at the story, you might find that it's perhaps describing exactly that.

Let's see. I'm going to go through some of my notes. I actually wrote the whole sermon already, but I'm not going to read it to you because I don't like to do that. Although, I'll read the first paragraph of what I wrote.

"Life is a cosmic romance, and we can feel that in silence. To fall in love with existence, to listen to the reverberating expanse of the world, to rejoice in the moment and its majesty, all happen within the field of silence.

"Silence is listening. For as long as one is occupied in the activity of thought, they cannot hear what is beyond. The more quiet the world gets, the more quiet oneself gets, the more they can hear the subtle.

"Silence allows you to hear the subtle, not the gross, but the subtle. Silence opens the subtle dimensions, the tints of existence waiting to be beheld within each and every moment. In silence, the subtle faculties of consciousness awaken. One can literally feel what is here, too, that they may not have noticed.

"The subtle is not quiet. It is profound."

That's an interesting thing. It's quiet, it's like silence, but it's actually depth and profundity. It's not subtle and flimsy, but profound and powerful. Yet it can only be heard when the mind is silent. It's a cosmic romance available to the one who would listen, and it's profoundly beautiful.

In a way, today is an invitation to practice being silent. Silence means no thinking. Maybe the word is stillness. There are different ways you can say it. I like silence, but stillness, not thinking, being very still and observant of everything and the subtle.

Vinh T Is it like a sensational state?

Adam Wes I like your questions. You'll begin to notice that your body is storing a lot of resistance. It's a dimension of knowing that can awaken. You can't really put it into words. When you start to feel the silence, you could write poetry about it, but it's difficult to define it. It feels, perhaps, like freedom. Freedom in the mind and freedom in the body.

If you look at your body, you might notice that your nervous system or your aura is resisting silence. Silence is a cultivation. You begin by ending escapes. All escapes are escapes from that all-encompassing silence that will swallow you up.

Silence will swallow you up, and you have to become vulnerable. But when we escape through ideas, eating, watching TV, companionship, judgment, or self-talk, these are all escapes from silence.

What would it feel like to just sit? This is why I think it's hard for people to meditate, to sit and do nothing and just listen for 15 minutes a day. It would probably feel very uncomfortable. For most people, it's extremely uncomfortable. Turn off your phone, because there's a habitual tendency to escape, to occupy, as a resistance to silence.

I'm suggesting that there is a treasure beyond conceivable value available if one would have the courage to see what happens when they become silent.

Colleen Can you be silent with something else going on? I know a lot of people like to have headphones and be listening to music, but is that still considered silence? Are you still in your quiet place? Do you have to have total quietness, or could that still be considered silence?

Adam Wes This is a really nice question. Thank you. If one can just be, listen, and observe, there's the quality of silence. Passive entertainment, like a movie, obviously, is not silence. Music is starting to move into a place where it could be silence, like nice, beautiful music that brings in that romantic dimension, or whatever the music is.

But I think what you're getting at is that when we experience the world, we can do it from silence.

I remember one time I went to a very noisy club. I was in the initial stages of my meditation awakening, and there was all this very intense kundalini in me. I just sat in the noise. There were vibrating speakers, vibrating my shirt and body. If you've ever been to a club, you know what that's like. It was more like rock-sounding stuff. But in that noise, I almost became dissolved in it.

So yes, you can be silent in the noise. I think silence is more of an inner relationship of resistance versus acceptance. When we're allowing life to flower, bloom, and unfold without resistance, there's a quality of silence within.

We can even see our words moving and our body moving. Words come out of the mouth. You don't have to think about them. There's a quality of silence in that.

In fact, when it comes to writing, I'm thinking of you, Jenna. Artistry of any kind, mathematics, absolutely. Physics, Jacob. Computer programming, Sam. When we're in silence, we have this torrent of creativity come through. A torrent is like a river, by the way. I like that word.

What's interesting about this is that intelligence awakens through silence. One of the deeper dimensions of intelligence comes through somebody who is free. They're free inside.

Here's a way to test your freedom. Can you sit down for an hour and do nothing? Why? I love that. Thanks for the honesty, everybody. The reason is that there's a habitual tendency to have to continue escaping from silence.

You could do this. Would you be able to do it in this moment? Perhaps not. But with every repeated attempt at letting that escape wither in the fires of silence, you become more free.

Freedom is so important to the human being. To be free means I could just be here. I think about the people who go to outer space, like the first ones, and they sit in a little canister and go around the planet multiple times. Wow, that's freedom! They're just, "I'm here." They don't care.

Freedom is so important because it allows us to live our life fully. It allows us to bring our gifts completely. It allows us to channel the divine intelligence, truly.

Keep asking yourself, "Am I free enough to sit?" If you're not, I would recommend that this is a great opportunity, a low-hanging fruit. How does that lack of freedom touch the rest of our lives? How does that change the way I treat people if I'm not free? How does it change the way I can enjoy a sunset if I'm not free?

If I could sit silently and be completely free of all escapes, how much more beautiful will my wife or friend be when I look at them? Will I be able to hear their heart, their needs, and what matters to them? The things that matter in life come through in silence.

There are a lot of dimensions here. How free are you?

Colleen, hopefully that answered it. You can be in a mosh pit with loud music going and still experience silence, which is really a matter of acceptance. Not tolerance, but acceptance. I'm truly flowing without resistance.

Vinh T Adam, I was thinking, what if we're afraid of silence because, when you think of all the silent places, they don't sound good, right? The hospital, a funeral. Or it's like, before silence, something bad is going to happen, right? Before a bomb explodes, there's always a little tick, tick, and then kaboom!

Adam Wes Your examples are funny, because silence also happens at midnight in the park.

Colleen During a snowfall?

Adam Wes Snowfall, yes. Man, take a look at your association with silence, because it's not necessarily that. Or Kara just came from Yellowstone Park. How silent was it there? Stillness and freedom.

Kara M It was very remote, which was amazing. Even though there were a lot of people in the park, there was a lot of driving in between places. It was really cool.

Adam Wes It was nice to be close to the inner workings of the planet, too.

Kara M Yes.

Adam Wes Wonderful. It sounds amazing. I want to hear all about it. I want to go to Yellowstone. You know why I want to go to Yellowstone? Because I want to experience silence and freedom. I want the human aura to recede so I can feel the stars and the earth.

It becomes a longing. This is why it's a romance, guys. It becomes a longing because you're kind of like, "I like being with silence."

At first, it is quite a painful thing. There's a painful quality in silence because what you're doing is negating the self. The abnegation of the self happens in silence. You say, "Oh, I have to check my reels. I have to do something that I probably don't have to do."

That attachment is a lack of freedom. If you don't feed it, it can't sustain itself.

We usually go our entire lives. I've heard some wonderful teachers say that people usually realize they've missed their whole life at the moment of death. It's kind of an intense thing to say, but they're like, "Oh my God, I've been in my head this whole time." They'll realize that.

Get out of the head now so you can experience the beauty of life, become free, and realize that my life is not an intellectual process. An intellectual process is on top of it. There's a substance of being, the substance of aura, the substance of heart, that is in silence.

It's a rabbit hole that you can follow Alice down, the rabbit hole of silence, and find what's down there. I think it's a very important thing, and I do this a lot.

If I start to lose my silence, which can happen even in an afternoon, if I'm exchanging a lot of energy or losing my center a little bit, a lot of times it happens if you exchange energy too much with others who maybe aren't being silent. Then I go and meditate, and the first ten minutes of my meditation usually are quite painful.

This is an interesting thing for people to hear. Ten minutes of pain, because I'm like, "No, not that." It's almost this painful feeling of, "Just give me Instagram to scroll." Something will be an escape.

But if you sit with that pain, you may make contact with the divine. It takes ten minutes. It can take an hour. If you're really in a bad place, go and sit for an hour or two. Your second hour of meditation will be better. Your third hour of meditation will be profound, usually. It's very hard for that to continue, at least for me.

Normally, we want to keep our silence throughout the day, and this is where mindfulness comes into play. Mindfulness is an exercise in silence. It means everything I do, I do without the activity of thought. I'm doing it with stillness in my mind.

Vinh T Adam, you got me thinking. I was talking to my friend a couple of weeks ago, and I was asking him, because I guess in Christianity they believe in going to heaven, "What is heaven like?" He said, "You won't feel pain and stuff." In my head, I was like, "That feels like death."

Now you're talking about dissolving in silence, and I'm thinking, "That sounds like death, too." What's going on with all this spiritual stuff? Are we trying to experience death while we're still alive?

Adam Wes What we're trying to do is dissolve the sense of separativity. When you're a self, it creates itself, and you've got a wall, boundary, and circumference around you. Usually people think, "Oh, that's me. I'm alive." To not be anything is scary. It's death.

But to be dissolved in the unknown is an ecstatic blissfulness, and your body will become healthier. This is where the paradox is. Healthier body, healthier mind, more abundant life, better relationships. So is it death? No.

It's the death of the weeds of the pathological human condition, perhaps. But I would say it's the birth of your true self.

Heaven is in the now. Heaven is in the here. Heaven is in silence. I believe that if you really read Jesus' talk, what he says, and we could go into that at some point, he's saying that heaven and hell are states of mind. I hope I'm not offending anybody, but take it with a grain of salt.

Heaven and hell are states of mind that are available to each of us in the moment. We can be in the heaven of freedom and silence. "Enter the kingdom of God," as he says. "Be reborn again, not in the flesh, but in the spirit." I'm quoting a lot of Jesus quotes right there. All of these are related to silence.

Even when he says that a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven any more than a donkey can go through the eye of a needle, or something like that, what he's saying is that you have to let go of all those things that are not silence. All the baggage. "Respect me." That's a burden that prevents silence.

You see, silence comes from desire and aversion. I mean, backwards. The lack of silence comes from desire and aversion. Silence comes from freedom from desire and freedom from aversion.

Those things cause perturbations in the mind, movement in the mind. But when you're in a state of acceptance, faith, trust, and freedom, there's no need for those perturbations.

That's actually love. That's how you get to love. The capacity for love comes from being an abundance of silence, of being, an abundance of existence within. Then you give of your own wholeness, which you can never depreciate. You just give and give of it.

Thank you, everybody. I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions, you're welcome to send me a message.

Practice silence. Please, please practice silence. We need a silent world.

Think about a mucky ocean. Each of us is a drop in the ocean. How do we make the ocean cleaner? You don't go to the other drops and say, "Well, I'm going to make you cleaner." Every drop has to make its own self cleaner. When we do that, the ocean purifies.

How do we change the world? We have to ourselves become free. When there's no silence, that's what causes war. It's the illusion. It's the image.

If I look at Jacob through the image I have of him, that's not silence. But if I look at Jacob with love and listening, I can see him as he is now. That's silence.

In silence, we find the suchness, the truth, the is-ness of life, and there's no conflict there. Conflict comes from conflicting ideas and opinions, self against the other, nation against nation, expectations unfulfilled. These are the things that cause war.

War is a mass societal expression of the war between individuals, the war of selfishness, the war of not being gentle, kind, and considerate because one can't hear and listen.

I said one thing that I really want to share, and then we'll start.

"To know the truth is of the utmost importance. For knowing the truth, we know the way, know what is right, and know what steps to take. The truth is the means through which we direct our energies. It is the power to act correctly.

"That understanding, that perception which we call truth, instigates correct action, divine action, the action of love."

It's in silence that we can know the truth and that our actions can be beautiful. Sometimes people say, "How did you know? Why did you do that in that moment?" I was listening to you. I could feel.

Silence opens the faculties of the heart to know. For everybody who's here and interested in mathematics, it's essential because the mind can make quantum leaps of insight in silence. Silence helps us to see and understand.

Sometimes I sit for an hour trying to code something. My mind gets going too much. I create a little too much resistance in myself, which I'm aware of. I step away, and I see the answer. That whole hour, I could have done it in two seconds.

When you're really silent, and I've experienced times when I was in a deep, beautiful, spiritual place, perhaps I'm the best I've been, or perhaps I've been more so before and it's a grass-is-greener sort of thing, I can just see what I need to do for my code and how to do it. You just type it in. It's not that many lines of code, right? The question is, can you see it clearly?

That's why mathematics is a good practice in cultivating silence.

Colleen, would you like to make a comment? I'd love to hear if you have anything to say.

Colleen Do you mind if I pass?

Adam Wes Sure.

Colleen Thank you.

Adam Wes Cepi, I'm so happy you're here. Do you want to say something really quickly? Cepi is a really wonderful hypnotherapist who does past-life regression. Maybe she has something to share.

Sepideh K Hi, everyone. I'm so sorry because I'm not very familiar with Zoom, so I needed to check first.

I was thinking that everything from my personal life and experiences was with silence. Silence is everything. The whole answer in this world is there in silence.

Adam Wes And you use that in your hypnotherapy, right?

Sepideh K Oh, yes. I learned to be more silent. Even if I have a session, the whole day I'm in silence because I need to connect with my higher self and also connect with the higher self of my client. Silence is very important.

Adam Wes Everybody hear that? She literally has to do this to do her work. When somebody is silent, they can hear the part of themselves that they are unaware of, and that unlocks it. Even the past lives, they can hear the past lives sitting there. It's subtle, but it's profound.

Sepideh K Exactly, yes.

Adam Wes Wonderful. I'm so glad I asked you.

Let's actually practice some silence. We're going to practice silence today, and there are two ways I'd like to do it.

The third eye. If you haven't felt your third eye, you're about to discover a third part of your body that is so important. It's a very important faculty. It's like discovering your nose. "Oh, it smells good." You can discover your third eye and what it can do.

The third eye is between the eyebrows and a little above. If you bring your attention there, you can feel a magnetism. You can feel it physically, like your skin and your bone right there. But you can also feel a magnetism.

If you, in a way, will your life force energy to magnify as a vortex of energy in that spot, you can hold it, and it's a wonderful feeling. Think of it as a vortex of energy, an etheric vortex.

That's one thing. Then I'd also like to go into light for a little bit. In light, we will actually gaze at each other. It's an open-eye meditation. This is what I would do if we were in person. It's usually an open-eye gazing meditation, and you can see mystical light.

It's profoundly beautiful, and it washes through your mind and makes you silent. It washes away all the impressions that cause perturbations in the stillness.

Let's begin.

Can you hear the music? Can you hear my voice?

Feel your hand. Bring your attention to the third eye.

If you can, just feel that place. Think of yourself as almost balancing on a tightrope.

Focus your attention on the third eye, almost looking at it. There's no space for random thoughts. It's you and the tightrope.

Listen.

We'll focus on the third eye. You may begin to feel its energy strengthen and become more accumulated.

It's like taking a wild animal that's jumping out of control and trying to get it to calm down, holding it steady.

If your mind wanders off, get back. Continue to feel the third eye. Look at it.

Let the silence be as deep as it is. Maybe you're going very deep, or not. But what you're doing is taking a step toward the summit.

Continue to hold steady.

I'd like to try a mystical practice with everyone. Stay how you are if you prefer, but if you want to, gaze with me. I'm going to look at the computer, and you look at your computer. Gaze. This is very powerful.

Keep your eyes open and the mind very steady. It's also a way we can use your energy to listen.

Look at everything at once, very gently. Blur your vision ever so slightly. There's a deeper energetic shift.

We may begin to see brightness in your visual field and also behind your body. We're allowing the brightness to emerge in that steadiness.

That is a brilliance in your own mind that, if you stop resisting it, can overcome you. You can play with it. Get it to move and soften.

Keep your periphery very wide. Look at everything at once. You have to be very, very, very still.

Allow it to wash you away.

Now your body reverberates with this light. Permeate the light everywhere. Use your will and your intentionality to invite it.

Let the brightness expand of its own accord. As we do this, it washes the soul.

We're going to use a little will here. Stay with me on this. Notice how steady my eyes are. There's an empathic resonance when we're together.

All right. Let's spend the rest of the meditation with one more song. You can close your eyes if you like, or keep them open. It's hard to close them sometimes at this point.

Let's just be silent. I'm going to be silent. We'll play one more song.

Bring some attention to the heart. That's what we need to do right now. It's to be balanced. Bring your attention to your heart.

Let's do one more minute.

Gentleness. Gratitude. Benevolence. Freedom and love.

When you're ready, bring attention to the heart center. When you're ready, come out of the meditation.

Thank you, everybody. We'll do a very, very quick share today. Colleen, I'd love for you to share. Just a quick share.

Colleen I did see some colors. I know you like to hear about that. It was just less today.

Adam Wes Purple? Pink?

Colleen But it's something to do with the third eye, because whenever I attach to the third eye, my temples pull together with tension. I don't know if it opens or closes my mind, but there's some tightness, and it's hard for me to completely relax.

Adam Wes Do you feel better when you meditate on the heart center?

Colleen Yes.

Adam Wes The third eye usually helps you see the light better, but the heart can do it too. What was your main color?

Colleen Purply pink.

Adam Wes Wonderful. Nice. How about you, Sam? We'll stop in a minute or two, guys. You can get off.

Eslam O Don't get me started on silence. It's not as scary as it seems to be, because a lot of people associate the void or the abyss with fear. But the other side of silence is beauty. It's potential.

I think of it as computer RAM, like memory on your phone. You can load apps onto it. You can uninstall apps from it. It's what you put in there.

Terence McKenna once said, "Hurl yourself into the abyss, and you'll discover it's a feather bed." I am this feather bed. I am this relaxation and silence and stillness, and I love this.

Adam Wes I love it. Beautiful. So resonant, Sam. I love it. Namaste. And namaste, Mom. Thank you.

Does anybody else feel like they'd like to share? Let's pick one more person. I was thinking of you, Kara.

Kara M When I meditate, I usually find that I'm more comfortable with my hands pointing inward toward my body. This time, it actually felt more comfortable to have them open. I was feeling a lot of pulsating heat energy in my hands. That was a nice shift for me from my usual habits.

Adam Wes Nice. It's interesting. I don't know if you saw how I was doing this. When I do this, it literally feels like my heart is becoming the universe, and the hands help with that. If I do this, I'm kind of holding it back.

Did anybody see the light with their eyes open? Did you have an experience there? Wonderful. It's really special.

If you saw the light, if you touched the light, if you found the light in the infinite dimensions of self, that light is the most valuable thing. It opens the heart, it opens the mind, and it purifies everything.

We have to hear Daniel's share really quickly, and then we'll go.

Daniel R At the beginning, it was a little bit hard. It's been a while since I focused on my third eye. Eventually, I started seeing some colors.

Adam Wes Beautiful.

Daniel R Then, when I opened my eyes, we had done this kind of meditation before, but this time it was a little bit different. I just went to your screen. I was only looking at you, and I started looking at your aura, I think, because you started becoming illuminated.

Adam Wes You saw it. Good!

Daniel R Your face started changing a little bit.

Adam Wes Good. Did you see my past lives? That happens for people sometimes.

Daniel R I think so.

Adam Wes You didn't see me turn into a warrior or a woman or something? Anything interesting? People sometimes do that.

Daniel R You looked a little bit bigger. Your hair was darker.

Adam Wes Wonderful. Focus into that light. Find that light. When I say mysticism, I'm talking about somebody who can make contact with the light of consciousness.

If anybody wants to, I have a recorded guided meditation in the digital ashram. It's a 22-minute guided meditation for light, and I put it in the public space. If anybody wants to try that, I highly recommend it.

Vinh, are you feeling very strongly like you want to share right now? We're a little over time.

Vinh T Not really. I just have a side question, that's all.

Adam Wes Send me a message. Or just ask it really quickly. I feel my heart wants to let you do it. Let's hear it quickly, though.

Vinh T I was just curious about the past-life thingy. What do you mean by seeing your past life? Would you look like the same Adam? What are we talking about?

Adam Wes Hopefully, people see me pivot in my essence. When you go into your essence, your energy shifts, and you can seem different. They see different faces.

Vinh T Imagination, or what?

Adam Wes No, it's a perception of the energy from a deeper place. Wouldn't you say that, Daniel? You're seeing me, but it's my energy, deeper.

Daniel R It was still you, but physically, it was not you.

Adam Wes Yes, that's the description I hear. That's very good, Daniel. I usually don't actually have that experience with other people, but people have had it with me, I've heard, and with others.

Wonderful. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you, Vinh. I just want to say hi, Ariella. Namaste. Welcome.

Ariella was probably busy. It's the Jewish New Year today, so happy New Year, Shana Tova, and I'm wishing everybody a new, wonderful season. The equinox was yesterday, and it's a new season. It's a new year in a lot of ways. Definitely, in the Jewish tradition, it's a new year, but it's a new season as well.

Ariella Shana Tova to you, too.

Adam Wes Thank you, everybody, for being here. Namaste.

Colleen Namaste.

Adam Wes If you want to donate, feel free to do so on the website, on the meditations page. Or you can go to donate.tbmg.love, too, by the way. I made that one.

Thank you, everybody.

Silence is an inner freedom from resistance, desire, aversion, and escape. Through stillness and listening, one makes contact with life, truth, love, and the subtle dimensions of consciousness.

• The inner state is sovereign space and does not need to be determined by anyone or anything.
• Gentleness may be surrendered because of attachment, but the inner state is more important.
• Silence is stillness, listening, acceptance, and contact with life in the present moment.
• Silence can be present even in noise. It is an inner relationship of resistance versus acceptance.
• Silence allows the subtle faculties of consciousness and the faculties of the heart to awaken.
• Escapes through ideas, eating, entertainment, companionship, judgment, or self-talk are forms of resistance to silence.
• Freedom means being able to simply be here without needing to escape.
• Mindfulness is an exercise in silence, doing everything with stillness in the mind.
• The ultimate silence is without conception of self, with just the experience rather than a separate experiencer.
• Freedom from desire and aversion allows silence, acceptance, faith, and trust.
• Silence opens truth, insight, intelligence, creativity, correct action, and the capacity for love.
• The meditative practice brought attention to the third eye, wide and gentle perception, light, and the heart.

Practice silence by sitting, listening, and observing without escape. Allow discomfort and resistance to be present without feeding them, and return gently to stillness, acceptance, and the experience of simply being here.

• Noticing when gentleness or inner sovereignty is being surrendered to attachment.
• Making space to sit and do nothing but listen, even for fifteen minutes.
• Turning off the phone and noticing the habitual tendency to escape or occupy the mind.
• Observing resistance held in the body and nervous system.
• Returning to meditation when silence or the inner center begins to feel lost.
• Bringing stillness of mind into ordinary activity through mindfulness.
• Looking at others with love and listening rather than through a fixed image.
• Holding gentle attention at the third eye, widening the periphery, and bringing attention to the heart.
• Remembering gentleness, gratitude, benevolence, freedom, and love.

• What happens when there is nothing to escape into?
• Can silence be felt even when the surroundings are noisy?
• What becomes noticeable when the mind is still and listening?