Silence

Aug 24
2011

Two Perspectives on Silence

Dr. Amit Nagpal, New Delhi, India, and

Janet Smith Warfield, J.D., Florida, USA

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Dr. Amit Nagpal’s Perspective

“The bell of mindfulness is the voice of the Buddha calling us back to ourselves. We have to respect each sound of the bell, stop our THINKING AND TALKING and get in touch with ourselves, breathing and smiling. This is not the Buddha from the outside. It is our own Buddha calling us home.”

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Bell at Buddhist Shrine, Oahu, Hawaii

Bell at Buddhist Shrine, Oahu, Hawaii

Silence. I decided to go myself into silence before I wrote the post. Few minutes of silence and I started to look at silence from a completely new perspective. Why do we equate silence only with verbal silence? Silence can be mental silence, emotional silence and spiritual silence. In fact, in my opinion verbal silence gives peace, mental silence gives joy and spiritual silence gives perfect bliss. Verbal silence gives us an opportunity to do self-reflection and develop deeper understanding of things. Mental silence provides us relaxation and clarity of thought. Emotional silence provides us equanimity and equilibrium. Spiritual silence provides us bliss and enlightenment.

Creative solutions come up in the moments of silence. Silence can even boost our self-esteem and confidence by making us the springs of ideas, solutions and divine inspirations. It is a sad contradiction of human society that we have invented powerful silencers for our vehicles yet our minds are making disturbing and never ending chatter.

If silence is so beautiful, why is the society so afraid of it? Often when we see a silent person, we ask her/him, if anything is disturbing her/him. In the well known book, “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom, the teacher (Morrie) observes fifteen minutes of silence in the class and finds that silence is embarrassing and we find comfort in noise.” Is it true that the more insecure we feel, the more we talk and the more secure we become, we get more and more silent? (Dear Readers, please post your views)

Tony Cuckson, Irish author says, “Human BEings have become human DOings. It is the rhythm, Do, Be, Do, Be.” There is a nice romantic Hindi song, “Kucch na kaho” which roughly translated means, “Don’t say anything, and in fact don’t speak at all. What is there to speak? What is there to hear? You know and I know. The moment has also come to a standstill.” So get into silence for a few minutes and you can romance not only with your beloved but with nature and the divine too.

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Dr Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant and specializes in Personal Branding with a holistic touch. He is based in New Delhi, India. His philosophy is “Take charge of your life and your brand.” To know more about him, click here: http://www.dramitnagpal.co.in/p/about-us.html

Copyright © 2011 – Dr Amit Nagpal. All rights reserved

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Janet Smith Warfield’s Perspective

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Janet Smith Warfield works with wisdom-seekers who want understanding and clarity so they can live peaceful, powerful, prosperous lives. Through her unique combination of holistic, creative, right-brain transformational experiences and 22 years of rigorous, left-brain law practice, she has learned how to sculpt words in atypical ways to shift her listeners into experiences beyond words, transforming turmoil into inner peace. For more information about Janet, go to www.janetsmithwarfield.com; www.wordsculpturespublishing.com; www.wordsculptures.com.

 

Copyright © 2011 – Janet Smith Warfield. All rights reserved.

 

Piercing the Veil of Word Illusions and Creating Our Own Reality

Jul 14
2011

Two Perspectives on Piercing the Veil of Word Illusions and Creating Our Own Reality

Dr. Amit Nagpal, New Delhi, India, and

Janet Smith Warfield, J.D., Florida, USA

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Dr. Amit NagpalDr. Amit Nagpal’s Perspective

 

Words do not matter. The meanings do. Words are understood in the context in which they are spoken, the tone which is used, the cultural interpretation added, and bias for/against the individual. With all these factors mixed, our personalized meaning of the words is ready. Words are actually a cocktail.

Two words which have always fascinated me are ‘exploitation’ and ‘love’. While the dictionary says exploitation of resources is positive and should be done, the same dictionary says that exploitation of labor is negative and should not be done. Is labor not a resource?

Love is such a glorified word since the languages began that I am scared of using it even in close relationships. Is humanity not basically selfish and incapable of love, the idealized love, we always talk about? I prefer to use the word ‘care’; it does not create unrealistic expectations. The background which the word ‘love’ carries makes me feel that only a spiritually advanced person has the capacity to love. Ordinary mortals like me don’t. What ordinary mortals do is only an exchange of emotional energy, a business. Maybe when you develop the capacity to truly love, you cannot restrict it to family and close relationships. You will be in love with everything around. You will become a Rumi, a Kabir or a Mother Teresa.

Do words wear the veil of illusions or do we human beings add the veils to them? Words only convey approximate meanings. No wonder lawyers have to work so hard at them. After the lawyer has worked for long hours on refining the language, the opposing lawyer finds a loophole to give a totally different meaning to the same words.

Under such a background, do words matter? To me, they don’t. To me what matters is the meaning hidden behind them, the intentions, the feelings, the emotions, the tones and overtones, the vibrations that they carry. To me what matters is the non-verbal part, the honesty which you can see only in the eyes, the genuineness which you can feel only in the smile, the coldness or warmth which you feel in the vibes that they carry, the underpinnings and overtones which tell more about the sincerity than the words themselves.

The more we clear ourselves of negative energy, the more sensitive we become to the subtleties behind the words.  We develop maybe a seventh sense of reading the intentions, listening to the unspoken messages, smelling the vibrations, tasting the warmth or the coldness behind and feeling the touch of the soul (or soullessness) of the entire communication.

Then only can we create our own reality integrating the words with the environment and comprehending the essence of not just the words but the integrated communication.

If my words do not make any sense to you, please sense what is between the lines, between the words, between the alphabets…..

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Dr. Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant and specializes in Personal Branding with a holistic touch. He is based in New Delhi, India. His philosophy is, “Take charge of your life and your brand.” To know more about him, click here: http://www.dramitnagpal.co.in/p/about-us.html

Copyright © 2011 – Dr Amit Nagpal. All rights reserved

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Janet Smith WarfieldJanet Smith Warfield’s Perspective

A Co-Creation Allegory


Imagine you are part of a beautiful moving picture. The picture flows. The story line flows. One scene moves flawlessly into another, and you move with it. You are totally immersed in the flow.

Then suddenly, you bump into a rock or tree or mountain and experience pain. You bump into a monster and experience fear. Your mind wants to understand the pain and fear because you want to control it and stop it. Your mind moves outside the flow and becomes an observer. Your mind has now divided what was once just flow into:

  • Flow, and
  • You as observer of the flow.

You have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge and been cast out of the Garden of Eden. Your mind has stopped the moving picture at a single frame so you can analyze it, dissect it, understand it, and control it.

Science does this very well. So does orthodox religion. However, each of these is only a single limited understanding within the confines of the single frame they have stopped.

Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

If everything is a dynamic flow of energy, then each one of us is a minuscule part of that energy, all flowing and connected. Rocks are energy. Trees are energy. Cockroaches are energy. Words are energy.

Our minds can artificially stop the flow to try to understand and control it, but all our minds can truly understand is that one single frame on which we are focusing at a particular moment in time. This is understanding of a sort, but it is only partial understanding. Depending on where we stop the moving film and which frame we look at, the perception, dissection and analysis differ. When our minds hold onto any one single frame, any one set of words or symbols as Truth, we remain divided and separated from the energetic flow. When we allow the energy to flow through us, we tune into all that is and become magnificent co-creators of something much larger than any one of us individually.

To know is to know that we don’t know. We can only co-create.

When we shift our beliefs that words say something about an external reality to beliefs that words, for sure, say something about our perceptions of an external reality, we can choose to shift our perceptions to something that works better for both us and everything around us. We all then return to the dynamic energy flow of the Garden of Eden as conscious co-creators.

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Janet Smith Warfield works with wisdom-seekers who want understanding and clarity so they can live peaceful, powerful, prosperous lives. Through her unique combination of holistic, creative, right-brain transformational experiences and 22 years of rigorous, left-brain law practice, she has learned how to sculpt words in atypical ways to shift her listeners into experiences beyond words, transforming turmoil into inner peace. For more information about Janet, go to www.janetsmithwarfield.com; www.wordsculpturespublishing.com; www.wordsculptures.com.

Copyright © 2011 – Janet Smith Warfield. All rights reserved.