By Gonny 
There is a kind of silence that comes after exhaustion.
A disagreement ends because nobody has the energy left to continue. A desire fades because it could not be fulfilled. A struggle stops because there is nothing left to fight for.
From the outside, this may look like peace.
But is it?
A beautiful Sufi poem makes a remarkable distinction. It speaks of a pure silence, and then adds:
“Not the silence that arises when living dogs feed upon a dead body.”
The image is shocking, perhaps intentionally so. It invites us to look more deeply.
What kind of silence is the poet talking about?
Certainly not the silence of defeat….of resignation…or of the silence that follows conflict when all participants are simply too tired to continue.
That silence belongs to the world of struggle.
The poet points toward something entirely different. He points toward a silence that was already present before the struggle began.
A Course in Miracles makes a similar distinction. The ego is constantly active. It seeks, compares, judges, fears, desires, defends and attacks. It is always looking for something that will finally complete it. Yet every achievement is temporary, every victory fades, every possession changes, and every identity must eventually be defended.
The ego spends its life feeding on things that cannot truly satisfy.
Like the living dogs in the poem, it remains busy, restless and hungry.
Sometimes the search collapses under its own weight. We become tired of trying to be someone. Tired of proving ourselves. Tired of carrying an identity that never quite feels complete.
Then a strange thing begins to happen….thr noise starts to soften!
Not because we have solved all our problems, but because we become less interested in maintaining the story of who we think we are.
Many people recognize this stage. There can be a feeling of letting go, of sinking inward. The personal self becomes less solid. Old definitions no longer seem convincing. The need to constantly explain ourselves, defend ourselves or improve ourselves gradually weakens.
At first this can feel unsettling.
If I am not my achievements, who am I?
If I am not my history, who am I?
If I am not the image I have built of myself, what remains?
The ego interprets this as loss…..the Spirit recognizes it as remembrance.
What remains is not emptiness….it is presence, freedom from identity, it is quiet awareness that existed before the person was imagined.
A Course in Miracles teaches that beneath every fearful thought, every judgment and every story we tell ourselves, there remains the Self that God created. Untouched. Unchanged. Completely whole.
The poet asks: “Do you know this silence?”
Perhaps this is the most important question we can ask ourselves.
The silence that does not come from winning or losing, but is here before every story begins…and remains after every story ends.
Perhaps that is why so many mystics, saints, sages and awakened teachers eventually fall silent. They have discovered they can only be fully known in stillness.
The silence is not empty.
It is alive.
And within that living silence, we begin to remember what we have always been.
With love and light,
G.