The Roar of Silence

Why is it that the human person is scared of silence? Peace and quiet is something that we yearn for in the abstract, but once it is actually presented to us, we flee from it. We do anything and everything to drown it out. The idea of going for a walk, or sitting down with no music, podcast, or other stimulation sounds torturous. But the oft refrain still comes, “I wish for peace and quiet.” We even allow the last bastion of silence and tranquility to be invaded in our lives today: sleep. How common is it to have some sort of noise playing while you try to drift into unconsciousness, even if the noise is not words or songs – but just noise? This is how badly we dread true silence. Why?

In silence, we find peace. We find peace because we truly sit in the present moment and allow the currents of the past and future to wash around us and not be pulled under by the riptide. Silence provides us with peace, tranquility, insight, and even a connection to transcendence. God speaks to us in silence. However, silence is not free. Silence is a dark cave to enter, and the path within is a long, unlighted way. The terror in silence is in that which silence demands of us. Silence is freedom and to have freedom you must be freed from the things that keep you in chains. In seeking to experience silence, you are entering the arena to slay the demons that block your path to freedom. We yearn deeply for the freedom and peace found in silence, but we dread the combat to get there.

The tranquility found within the cave of silence is guarded by the dragon of your fears. Noise keeps the dragon away, but it keeps you from entering the cave. Noise can numb you and feed into you the illusion of emotions that you seek to experience, but man knows that the peace of silence and the transcendence found therein is greater than the fleeting pleasures found in constant stimulation. Your fears are an elaborate network of experiences and conclusions, some real and some fake, that you have created or allowed to be created within your mind. All of this is created as a safeguard from the dragon, from losing out on achieving peace, from experiencing the silence it will take to get you there. But fear was never protecting you, it WAS the dragon you allowed to be created. It wasn’t protecting you from the uncomfortable feeling of growth and tapping into that silence, from transcending, from letting a version of you die into the silence. Your neglect lets the dragon grow stronger and stronger. You can run from this for some time, but you cannot run forever. Sooner or later, you will be faced with your crushing silence which means that you will come face-to-face with the dragon that guards it.

The answer is simple, but hard. Go fight the dragon and get inside that cave. Everything you fear stands between you and everything your soul needs. Everything you truly want is within this cave. Dragons are not fearsome creatures that prowl the world searching for combat. Dragons are zealous guards of great treasure. They are the demonic vanguard of all that is precious. They are beasts to be slain by heroes, or they are behemoths set to feast upon cowards too weak to grasp their own destiny. The constant noise and stimulation don’t just keep you from fighting this dragon – is the lullaby OF the dragon. And it feels good, to allow yourself to be lulled into acquiescence to the ancient evil seeking to oppress you. Only if you falter and fail to stimulate yourself enough will you feel the itch of silence. What terror we feel when we realize this? The moment when the veil is lifted, and you can see the cave of silence to which we yearn to enter. The peace that we do not live in. We see it only in fleeting glances before the dragon brings us back with his lullaby. But the dragon doesn’t exist as you do, he only must keep you out of the cave for the length of your life. That is but a minute to this ancient evil, but to us – it is everything.

In silence, we come into contact with time itself in this sense. Our place. Our realization that for us, time is finite. There is only so much love we can give on this Earth because we will no longer be here one day. The silence in letting the present captivate us while the past and future fade into the background. It is truly coming into contact with the deepest parts of us, the true human soul inside you. This soul may live longer than one lifespan on this Earth, but the body it lives in will not. Silence centers us back to this tiny soul. It brings us to this soul that bridges us to eternity, an eternity that evades us in our current form. Silence provides us with the peace to connect to this soul and bring it forth from all that which we heap upon it, to bury it. It pulls it forward so we can truly feel, so we can truly exist as a person and not a mere animal.

Does an animal seek silence? Absolutely not. Perhaps for a practical reason, such as being able to hear prey better and plan its attack. But no animal seeks silence in an effort to seek peace. Animals do work off of continually being stimulated and responding. Waiting for the next stimulus to captivate them so that they can act. The in-between moments for them do not possess the same fear and panic that they do for humans. Even if an animal did have a panic response to lack of stimulus, it would be purely related to a physical need unmet, not a spiritual need unmet. Humans act upon stimulus, but in between these moments of stimuli is the call from the bedrock of our existence, the soul that calls you to transcend your being. The human completely physically satisfied feels this pull. Still, this man finds a physical stimulation to engross his attention instead of heading into the cave where his destiny is.

You have a soul that yearns for connection to the eternal, to God. Within the cave of silence, you are called too, from the other side of silence. As stated, God primarily speaks in silence. Is your fear of Him making the dragon stronger? He calls you into the cave. He calls you to eternity. He calls upon you to come face-to-face with the dragon that blocks your path. You will not be fighting alone. You know yourself to not be created as a coward, forever terrorized by the dragon. A coward who seeks comfort in the lullaby of the dragon, the very entity he knows oppresses him, the very entity he knows he must slay to start working towards that which he truly wants. You were created as the hero who slays this dragon! You will be clothed in armor and sword to do so, but you must go. You must go because it is all you can do. Because you may act like a coward, you may wish for comfort and meager pleasures – but the one true piece of you demands that you enter this cave. The one true piece of you will always be there as well. You may bury your soul, but it is something you cannot escape, for as long as you are bound by time, your soul will know it must fight the dragon and pursue the silence beyond your fears. So, take heart! Recognize yourself as you are, all that is good and all that is bad. Resolve to slay the dragon. Resolve to seize your destiny. Take control of your life in all that you can by thrusting it into the terrifying silence. Do not fear the dragon, slay him. Do not run from silence, embrace it.