I read this David Whyte quote today on OnBeing: “…a radical letting-alone of yourself in the world. Letting the world speak in its own voice and letting this deeper sense of yourself speak out.”
Having just spent a week in Turks and Caicos, walking the beach, reading quietly, spending hours without speaking, well, I get it. And I know I need it.
David continues: “In silence you find the death of the periphery, the outside concerns and the place where you’ve been building your personality and where you’ve been building who you are starts to atomize and fall apart…that giving over to something that seems like it’s going to be undermining you to begin with and lead to your demise. And the intuition unfortunately is correct. You are heading to your demise; it’s leading to a richer, deeper place that doesn’t get corroborated very much in our everyday outer world.”
In these moments, my thoughts clarify and my voice becomes clear. In the silence, I discover what I need.