For my 100th article about personal transformation I wanted to speak out about silence. We were told that to be good children that we should be “Seen and not heard” and society conditioned us and told us that we should “Suffer in silence”. I say, "Nonsense!" Break the silence.
We do not suffer in silence. We can’t suffer in silence. We won’t suffer in silence. Victor Hugo wrote that “It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.” On this day I will remember that I don't have to suffer in silence. Read that again.
Silence is the language of shame. Shame is the language of childhood trauma. Fear is the language of the ego. Silence is the language of exile and of the psychopathic toxic, dysfunctional ‘Cancel Culture’ trolling, predatory terrorists. Viola Davis wrote "The predator wants your silence. It feeds their power, entitlement, and they want it to feed your shame." Coco Gauff wrote that "If you are choosing silence, you're choosing the side of the oppressor."
Voltaire wrote in ‘Candide’ that “Secret suffering is crueller than public misery.” Silence is the language of suicide. How can anyone know what is going on for you if you don't speak up and speak out? André Aciman wrote “And I am the most miserable man alive, and more so because no one at this dinner table has the slightest notion of what's tearing me up.” Silence, however, is the medium through which Universe (or love, or ‘God’, or whatever you prefer to call it) speaks to us, so that we can speak up. What do I mean by that?
Do you feel that your nervous system is dysregulated, that you are discombobulated, and that your soul is ‘bejangled’ (I invented that last word but it feels like an accurate description of how we feel if we let our Selves ‘suffer in silence’)?
As Simon and Garfunkel sang in ‘The Sound of Silence’ from ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (I have visited that Bridge in Devon and the water that runs under it is rapid-like and troubled.) The key is not to throw your Self into the torrent of dysfunctionality and shame when you are crossing the beautiful bridge that is life.
Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’ from ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’:
Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence"
As Simon and Garfunkel sang “’Fools’ said I, ‘You do not know silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach you. Take my arms that I might reach you.’ But my words like silent raindrops fell. And echoed in the wells of silence”
You do not need to say ‘Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again’ (which is a description of depression). We don’t speak, and we don’t truly listen. This is the root of our depression: That’s why it’s called ‘talking therapy’ and why, in my role as a Transformative Life Coach (TLC) I will listen to you like you have never been listened to before. Why? Because you already know all the answers of how to be, what to say, and how to live your life, but until you hear your Self speaking out loud, you will not hear its message.
In the last verse, Simon and Garfunkel sang “And the sign said, ‘The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.’” The signs, the synchronicities, as Carl Jung, the psychiatrist and spiritual Master, called them, are written everywhere. We just don’t see them until we are brought to our knees and look up at them. Amit Ray wrote “God is whispering in your heart, in the whole existence, just tune your ears.” Wisdom comes from the heart, not the mind. NIkki Rowe wrote “Our hearts speak the same language but more importantly our souls share the same voice.”
Stillness allows our still quiet voice (that of our true Self) to become a mighty roar. Your mighty roar is a call to the wild, back to the undeniable forces of Nature. As Professor Brené Brown wrote "Someone, somewhere, will say, 'Don't do it. You don't have what it takes to survive the wilderness.'This is when you reach deep into your wild heart and remind yourself, 'I am the wilderness.'"
Franz Kafka wrote "You do not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."
Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual Master, wrote “You are never more essentially, more deeply, your Self than when you are still.” So, how do you find stillness, so that you can hear the still, quiet voice inside you that is the highest version of you? This voice is found during meditation, which I recommend as a vital daily practice, and which I discuss in my article:
In meditation, we reach a point where it’s so quiet inside our head. For me, it’s the sound of my brain when nothing else is going on. No thoughts. Nothing. Just listening to the sound of silence, as Simon & Garfunkel sang.
As Mother Theresa said "We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how Nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls."
Our unstill minds
What’s that place of ‘unstillness?’ It’s where most of us are most of the time. Our minds racing around, like stock cars circling the Daytona Speedway.
Worrying about our financial situation. Getting riled up that somebody didn’t say hello when they walked past us. Road-raging from our outer critic. Fretting about whether our child is going to pass his maths test. Checking our phones and social media.
This is what most of us do... All day long. Every day.
And it’s not us. What’s not us? Those thoughts. Those worries. It’s who we think we are, but it isn’t us. If it’s not us, who or what is it? It’s our ego.
Stillness gives you intuitive words to speak. As Dr Wayne Dyer wrote "Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness."
It is stillness, rather than silence, that is golden. Stillness gives birth to your voice.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in 'Le Petit Prince' that “I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...”
Stillness is a gift that you can give to others through your presence: William Butler Yeats wrote “We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”
An initial period of silence
While you regroup, build your foundations and connect with your Truth, a brief period of silence is normal. In fact it is essential to your later bearing fruit. As Rumi said “The tree that does not speak of plenitude feels the quickening of its roots in the earth. We know what the silence of the moon gives; it is the silence of the root that makes the branches and the fruit.”
To use the metaphor of the bamboo: This plant grows silently underground for years, then, one day, it's shoots fire upwards and it grows into mighty canes. Gardeners would say it's unstoppable. And so are you.
As G. K. Chesterton wrote "Silence is the unbearable repartee." No-one wants to 'hear' your silence.
Speaking out gives you peace. Che Guevara wrote "Silence is argument carried on by other means."
Silence is a pit-stop; not a place to dwell
Henri Frédéric Amiel said that "He who is silent is forgotten; he who abstains is taken at his word (or rather, lack of it); he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow becomes smaller; he who leaves off gives up; the stationary condition is the beginning of the end."
Only fools are silent: As Publilius Syrus wrote "Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage." Elie Wiesel wrote "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
Your voice builds bridges, like Simon and Garfunkle's 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', to friendship. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Alice Walker wrote "No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow."
Conclusion
As Adabella Radici wrote “Invisible tears are the hardest to wipe away. Just let it out, my friend.”
That stillness is the essence of who we are, as Eckhart so eloquently states. It’s our true, conscious Self, unencumbered and unshrouded by the business of our thinking minds. And as is the case in dealing with the great mysteries of the Universe, sensing without intellectually knowing is as close as we humans can get. Be still, my friends, but never, never be silent. Not unless your silence is able to speak volumes. Roar until you are hoarse, then roar some more. That is how you get well. Find your voice. Speak loud, and speak proud. That is how the world will know your Truth. For my article on my 'VOICE group for men' click here:
For my article on the power of vulnerability click here:
Build your fleet: As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence." As Harvey Fierstein wrote "Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." Be brave, have a voice! Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote "To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men." As Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote in 'Hope Against Hope' “I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.”
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Hello,
I am very pleased to meet you. Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my website for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching.
See you soon,
Olly Alexander Branford MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.