“Sit alone, you will hear every answer you’ve been looking for,” Uriel Maksumov.  How many of us are willing to sit with those alone feelings?  I know I hate them.  I constantly need something—in this moment I have 5 screens in front of me and music going while I type and monitor my 9-5.  I’m desperate for answers but I’m so anxious I can’t sit still long enough to hear them.  The answers are within but so often we don’t talk about the impact of the unexpected on the answers we expect.  What do we do when we’ve followed our intuition and somehow still end up falling flat on our face?  I’m one of the first to say get up and keep going to anyone else but when it comes to myself, my instinct gets rattled to the core.  Every mistake seems to be a crack in the foundation and the last thing I want to do is sit where I can hear everything breaking.  Or at least that’s my fear.  I’m also afraid I won’t hear anything.  I’m not sure which is worse to be honest—seeing the breakdown of what you know or finding out there is nothing to guide us anyway, not even ourselves.  The point is I know I’m not alone when I share that fear. 

With that being said, however, I will also admit the validity in sitting alone.  There are times we need to eliminate bits of what’s around us because we can’t process everything at once.  The more we simplify the easier it is to get a true read on the situation and to hear/feel/understand/intuit what needs to be done.  There comes a time when activity is just that: activity.  It isn’t serving any purpose other than creating movement and movement without purpose can cause destruction and chaos.  Think bull in a China shop.  To that end, learning to tame the beast is necessary. The skill of sitting and reacclimating to our own senses takes time especially when we’ve already trained ourselves to be so desensitized to the reality around us along with our own knowing.  Maksumov is right—the more we sit in silence we find the keys to what we’re looking for.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  And truthfully there may not be a huge breakthrough or any type of revelation needed—we may simply need some time for our minds to reset from all the chaos we put in there every day.

Sitting in silence is scary—as I said there may be a point when we aren’t sure if we hear everything we’ve done wrong and our being seems to be coming undone or if we hear nothing.  I guess if we hear nothing that may mean there’s nothing to be done in that moment, but that fear is that there isn’t anything to guide us.  If we can’t do it ourselves, then what?  The thing is I would never suggest this to anyone, so the question is why do I allow that thought to enter my own mind? That’s something I’d need to be willing to sit in silence with.  These have been a rough few months and I know I’m feeling the edge of some burnout so I’m not entirely in my normal mindset—that should be one of the greatest reasons to stop and sit in the quiet.  There are certain walls that will only break when we are willing to let them crumble instead of beating our heads against it.  Often times the answer is subtle and it’s only in the quiet with focused attention we’ll hear it.  So breathe, shut down the screens, learn to let go and just take in what needs to be heard.