Easily Amazed

[fiz]

[fiz]

When there are no words.....fullness prevails.

[thomas]

chk-chk

[fiz]

Here in the open temple of vulnerable waiting, there is no clock.

Nor is there a presence of waiting.

As I listen to intrinsic fullness while among friends in a room, I remember just how rich it is to share silence together. I discover again that when silence is what is being shared, words really are not the point.

They can be, but they don't have to be.

In this other way of speaking, words may fall and land upon this silence being shared, ornamenting it; punctuating it; leading back to it; while making their sounds.

In this temple, words are always falling away, leaving a nice big empty space in the middle of everything, like a common bowl woven out of the substance of listening.

To stand in this temple may be to risk feeling unheard, due to the enormity of the silence. Anxiety easily arises amidst all this unfilled space. It too is part of the silence. Its gift is this intrinsic vulnerability that accompanies sharing particular words and sounds and colors amidst so much wide-open aloneness.

To finish speaking is to let the silence return, and maybe even burn -- through everything spoken or shared. I find there is a quiet dying in this leaving off and letting go, not knowing what will happen next, if anything.

I hold myself here on this invisible temple ground, and bow to this clear, silent listening space. My waiting here is not a waiting for, and not even a waiting out. It is waiting: the activity of silent, open space.