Reflections

Breath eases welcoming Silence within us

Il respiro facilita accogliere il silenzio in noi

Just sit & receive insights, answer and guidance

Wisdom Dialogue Silence Reflections
By Clare Hedin (June 2022)

My 6am conversation with Silence through the Wisdom Dialogue Day event,
Earth WISDOM DIALOGUE: Reorienting Humanity (June 24^th 2022).

Questions.

A question is a transport system, an elevator down into connection. A question is not necessarily asked because it seeks an answer, especially not an answer that is quick or responsive. A question is a gateway to deeper connection. It is intimacy… intimacy in exploration rather like playing magically in a forest (with your imagination) and then, should an answer come from another adult human (someone perceiving themselves as adult), it is rather like interrupting a child playing by pointing out the silliness of the game or the practicalities of using plastic teacups for a hot liquid, which was, in fact, being filled with imagination (not a hot liquid).

To be free to ask a question into the open space allows for an extending outward to really examine what is in the space of the question. And who is asking the question? And who is answering the question? There is a navigation occurring when silence allows itself to ask a question of itself through another. It is a weaving, an inter-weaving, into an agreement to be, to just be.

Questions do not exist to generate answers, necessarily, depending on when and where they are asked, and how. In the setting of dialogue, to ask the right question is to share one’s contemplation of their own love relationship with the silence. The silence holds the questions and silence generates answers. To answer too soon from a place of ‘knowledge’ or ‘opinion’ is to assume that the question does not know itself in the silence, as already an expression of an answer. Question and answer co-exist in the silence. To interrupt a question with an answer from outside the silence shuts a door. Don’t shut doors. We need to know that it’s safe to ask question as a way of expressing that we are, in fact, present and sitting in the seat, the whole seat assigned to us. (do not sit in silence’s seat, nor contemplation’s). The do not seek caretaking, caressing, they are adults in their innocence, they just require a seat at the table, and they will bring their wisdom energetically if we are patient. Our questions, these questions, are behind the wisdom and the wisdom is behind them.

The 7^th Note.

‘Ask the right questions and you’ll find that the universe is listening to your mind. We are not short of answers it’s the questions that we seek, the questions are the gateways, the things that set us free. Ask the right questions and you’ll find that the universe is listening to your mind.’

Questions are how the universe lets us know it is listening, it is ready to engage. When one asks a question out loud in the company of other humans, in particular, they are not necessarily helped by another human imagining that they need to answer it, unless they ask the question within themselves, thus it is that rather than two people gazing at each other, they are sitting side by side and gaze at the horizon together, watching the sun set. In that companionship in the presence of the question that is now holding, generating, surrounding, and penetrating the space, there is a mutuality that can emerge within the aura - ambiance - of the question as it is asked. There are other ways of asking questions that are loaded with impatience and urgency and those should be answered because they may have urgency in the answer, like a situation that needs caretaking. But when a question is asked as a contemplation, it is not the human asking it is the human offering the question - they do not need saving. (It is a gift). A question asked in the right way and received and welcomed in the right room has an edge of invitation to it that is rather like the 7th note of an 8 note scale. That 7th note tantalizes for a reason. (Mozart). The 7th does not need resolving, it needs contemplating, feeling with.

Don’t answer the question.

For me there is great privilege in being able to ask a question in the company of others. Rather like a focused potluck where we have each been asked to bring a dish but the dish can change during the time together. Each dish will last as long as it needs to last, it will last as long as it lasts. Some dishes can sit on the table and generate beauty and inquiry without needing to actually be addressed (eaten). That (answering) can sometimes be a way of taking that dish off the table, when it has not yet served its purpose. Its purpose is something that is discovered within each participant, or not. Over time, if it is resolved too soon, then it does not really get the chance to fulfil itself by its presence.

There is no haste in this space, by agreement there is no haste. That is the richness and beauty of dialogue - it is prioritizing both questions and spaciousness and observations and sensations. In a way I am that dish that I have brought and perhaps whatever is shared from this dish wants to be enjoyed and savored, not resolved. In that allowing space is created to grow into, to adapt one’s shape, ones experience of oneself in a new way if the question becomes the host of my new experience perhaps I will return to an old place.

Silence knows itself better than I. Better than I know myself. When I become silent, I connect with that river that runs through me from before and beyond me. I am on that river, I am in that river, I am that river. I am watching that river. A river is happening.

The right space can receive the right question. The right space for a question one can receive that question without requiring an explanation. How do we meet someone’s question? How do we demonstrate self-restraint in making, in bringing another chair into the circle for the question that has come in through the door, itself a doorway to a door. To answer the question is to remove that seat so the question no longer has somewhere to sit, in the urgency to clear it up, remove confusion and anxiety (to resolve it). This tidiness and efficiency, sweeps away the curiosity that the question brings as its gift. To wonder with the question is to gaze together. And then I can know myself in a new moment and I might like that, I might discover something, I might release something, I might appreciate something, I might understand. But there is companionship.

It can be rather insulting to the visitor i.e., the question (or the bringer of the question) to answer it too quickly. It’s rather like the guest at a party where they have just started to take their coat off and the host of the party is helping them put it back on - misunderstanding that the question intends to stay awhile. In the hosts' haste to be of service (to the guest) they have in fact misunderstood the role of question (the guest).

Questioning deepens intimacy. (answering questions can - albeit accidentally - interrupt or reject intimacy). Answering questions is like visiting Avebury, after a long journey to get there, and one of the volunteers comes up and says, “I’m so sorry madam there are only 5 minutes left, you don’t have time to come in and visit this ancient site”, and you have to turn around to leave. (unsatisfied and unable to fulfil your purpose, and the play that was at hand)

Some questions are for answering and some are for visiting with/being informed by in the space that the question opens up.