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The words  - I have a dream… is something that each and everyone of have used many times through out our lifetime. But those words when spoken from the young vibrant mind of Martin Luther King that hot dusty summer day still makes the small hairs at the back of my neck stand up. And he said only these words …I have a dream.

 

It became a landmark in American history and forever changed the nation so that it finally joined the brotherhood of man. And all he said was – I have a dream.  So was it the words or was it the silence in between the words. From whence it grew in strength, from whence it came.  So my dear readers, I am humbled by your appreciation of this blog and if can I leave one single thought with you, it is that within you lies the fount of knowledge, a treasure house of capacity and an immense stronghold of strength that one can draw upon. If one were to choose to walk in the path of silence.

I too have a dream.

I have a dream that one day we will change the future of the human race.  These words may sound grandiose and have been echoed many times in the past by many great people. Yet, they hold true till today. 

If it is dreams that will define who we can become, then let us dream far and wide; let us dream to the dizzying heights of raising mankind to the ultimate purpose of living in harmony, in peace and in love—as envisioned by almost every philosophy and religion since beginning of time.

 

 

Lets take a look at what this whole ‘contemplation’ is all about. Ultimately the contemplation  is about NOW. This moment in time. Right here and now. Unfortunately most of us do not live in NOW. We are lost in the vagaries of yester years or we swing forward to our vision or day dreams of years to come. Either way, they are totally illusionary.  To be lost in the past or to be what might be the future is in essence, mental masturbation.

Hence,  just like the act, it produces no productive result. Its only self satiating.  Let’s take a look at yesterday, the past so to speak. The past does not exist. It is only there when you step into it. And u can only step into it from now. It’s only from this moment in time that it exists. There is no past. And your past can be dramatically different from someone else’s past. If u had an argument with someone yesterday,  your version and his version will be dramatically different. So whose past is the past?

So what is past? The past is viewed from this present. It is our tint on it. Our lenses that define it. Again the past is ruled by the present. And what about the future?  The future does not exist. It only exists in your mind at this moment. It only exists in the present. Your vision of the future can be dramatically different from the person sitting next to you. The past exists in the present and the future exists in the present. And therefore the point of contemplation as defined in the Sphere of Silence, is about controlling Now. Because when you control Now, you control all your past and you control all your future. Now is the only thing that exists.

Silence does not mean the end of speaking. It is not the end of anything. It is the beginning. A great man once said, it’s not so much the words you speak. But the silence in between them that give the fire to your message. Gives the passion to your message.  Silence is best because it allows you control.  Staying in silence for a day if one can manage it is an exercise that will test your will tremendously but leave u with a will to communicate and converse  with conviction.  The will to convince is a tremendous tool We see it all the time. Someone walks up to an individual and tries to convey to him, spends an hour unable to get through. Then someone else walks up to him, and in ten minutes manages to turn the person around. So is it the words, the logic or the language?

 

Or maybe its none of the above. Maybe it is the pause of the conviction that he is able to carry in the same words that his predecessor has used and failed. That force of conviction comes from within. An energy that is invisible, indecipherable, but incisive, impactful, without leaving a tangible mark on both the speaker and the listener. Sitting in the audience when great ones have spoken is something people carry for a lifetime. It leaves an impact not just in the eardrums but in the mid. It changes the way you choose to live your life in an instant.  Hearing Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Mother Tersa, JFK or  Mandela, all of them have left an indelible mark on our history and will continue to leave their mark for eons to come. Their words continue to echo and reverberate in far distant lands from whence it was spoken and there is no accounting for that resonance. For  that power. For that majesty.

One very simple way of time management, which by the way, is itself a wrong word since one cannot manage time. It is something u leave to the almighty to do. This grandiose term time management is actually just about managing yourself. And there are poeple who call themselves Time management experts. There is no such thing!

 

Trying to manage time is like trying to put a fence around the ocean or hold a cup full of air! So that be the case, my friends. So what are u managing when u say u are managing time? In the simplest essence you are managing yourselves.

 

A classic example – there was a  time I lived in the Philippines for close to 4 yrs. And Manila is very much like Bangkok, notorious for its long traffic jams. Arguably Manila is worse than Bangkok.  While I was there, I had to put up with these very long traffic jams and sometimes u can be caught for so long that it takes an hour to cover one mile. So making sense of schedules in Manila was totally nonsensical. However one attempted to make appointments and attempted to keep them and leave the rest to the forces of the traffic Gods.

 

So, during one of these tempestuous moments, I was seated in a taxi with a good friend of mine and  I was already about 45 mins late for an appointment and it didn’t look like I was going to get there anytime soon. Now even by Manila standards that particular jam was horrendous. As we were edging our way down the traffic, it appeared that I was going to have to cancel this appt or not make it at all. And in particular for me, this was the 3^rd time I was trying to meet this individual. So it was frustrating for me. I was venting my anger on anything and everything that moved. The birds in the sky to the people sitting in the cars around, to the seat I was sitting on. I was doing this for a good 30 mins before I realized that my friend was sitting there amiably with an almost beatific smile on his face and his hand in his jacket pocket and he seemed to be murmuring to himself. For a moment there I said to myself- maybe he haslost it! The traffic situation after all these yrs of living there had demented the poor chap. I tapped him on the shoulder and said- what in the blazes are u grinning about?  I don’t see anything to smile about! We are caught in the middle of the jam and we cant go back to where we came from. We can’t move forward. We can’t open the car doors and the AC is not working. And I can count on the drivels of sweat running down my spine.  Thence, he looked up to me with an almost saintly smile of his face – what’s the problem?

 

The problem is that we are wasting our time and our day! He said- why would u imagine that I would allow a silly traffic jam to waste my time!  If I had to leave my house everyday and allow the jam to affect my life which is a daily occurrence in Manila,  I might as well not leave my house.

 

Now that stuck me as strangely rational. Here I was raising my blood pressure and condemning anything and everything and feeling helpless, and he seem perfectly calm. So I asked him what he was doing sitting there staring at the window…that can’t be particularly delightful! Then it struck me – Are you on something? What are you on? Give me whatever you are on…give me 2 of it!   Right now I really feel like I could do with it.

 

He said no drugs my friend. This morning as I left my house, I got up too late to do my normal spiritual practices. I usually allot an hour to do my prayers and a round of my rosary beads. I missed it this morning and I was very upset because it throws off my day. And right now the good Lord has kind of balanced it out for me by giving me back my one hour. 

 

Then after I finish this I have at least 6 letters I need to send out and he brandished a pen and a letter pad and said, “I am ready to get to work!”

 

And at that moment in time. …This is a little bit before cell phones became the norm, I was blown off the wall….if I am in control of my life, then I wait for no one. The more I am out of control, the more I find myself waiting. And that is essentially what this practise of the Sphere of Silence is all about.

This is not a book for someone sitting on a rock contemplating on a lotus pond.  Not for someone who is retiring into a forest and walking the path of zen. This is not a self realization book and not meant for spiritual upliftment of mankind.

This is a day-to-day manual that can be used to create a dossier of one’s own progress thru life. The objective is to stop, think, reflect, introspect. It's is meant to question, challenge the standards that we have become accustomed to. We have allowed ourselves to fall into somewhat of a trap by allowing our habits to dictate our destiny from thought to word, word to deed, deed to habit, habit to character, character to destiny.

The objective of the book is to break the process at the very onset, when at the thinking stage. If thought is the architect of your destiny, then it’s the thought that needs to be the force of change. Its thought that needs to be addressed and challenged.

As we grow in material gains, acquiring various trappings of wealth, we are trapped, ensnared, and locked by it. We don’t seem to be able to get out of this comfort zone. Hence, the process of this book is designed to challenge it.

In essence, the book is designed to look simplistic and designed uniquely in a fashion that is meant to attract the reader's attention and draw him to every page. It's with this in mind that the words and the phrases used are all designed for a  specific purpose, to stop one in their tracks. The attempt here is not so much to overload the individual with information, but to make him find his own solutions within himself. It is my position per se that all of us have answers that are unique and specifically designed for our position in life. These answers though are sometimes very clearly in front of us, usually completely overlooked if not ignored. It’s the purpose of the book to search and find these answers ourselves. Atleast to begin the process that would lead the process.

Answers change, day to day as it were. If it does not, by then, by definition we have not changed. Our ability to analyse, assess and apply these answers in day to day life grows as we grow. Hence, the answers to these problems, appear different to different people. These answers have many levels of understanding and many levels of application. And this process is something that engages you at every level.

Life is not just in colors…its in hues.  Therein lies each of us, the answer within each of us. The quest to these answers actually leads to us asking better questions. And that would be the ultimate purpose of this book.

In essence all of us have an internal source of energy. Something that we acknowledge in many ways. Eastern culture refers to as 'Qi'. In Sanskrit it is referred to as 'Prana'.   It’s a mental/physical/spiritual energy source. Its an internal balance that this energy source creates. This internal balance is between the kinetic and potential, the yin and yang, the negative and positive, the shiva and shakti in Hinduism. This balance of energy is found within us. The sphere of silence forces one to basically tap into this energey and build up its reserves in a way. Its an application of self discipline everyday.  Keeping silent for one hour , we are forced to communicate with oneself.  This helps us get in touch with ourselves instead of living in a façade.

 
We create this artificial barrier between who we are and who we want the world to perceive us to be. We walk around with this mask, assuming the face behind the mask in reality is the mask itself. Here I refer to the masquerade that one is forced to put up to live in the social strata. The three essential questions we have to ask every day:

1. Who we are?
2. Where we are?
3. Where are we going?

 
We need to ask these questions everyday because the answer to these change everyday. The process of analysis helps keep us very much in touch with ourselves. In this process we build up the inner "Chi", the strength in action, the versatility in language.

 
The application of this doesn’t have an immediate or direct  objective. If one doesn’t even achieve the objective just the process of trying everyday is enough because you have embarked on the journey. There is no such thing as the proper time or proper place. There is no waiting for the right time. It must be done everyday, like breathing.  It is the trying that makes all the difference. Eventually, there are people without trying very hard, simply by virtue of their being manage to achieve an hour a day. They actually gain from the process can be lead. The trying is fundamental to the change.

Someone who managed one hour is maybe ahead mentally, physically, spiritually to someone who managed 20 mins a day.  But to someone to who this comes easily, is not growing. For someone who struggles to do this 20 mins, is pushing oneself and hence the percentage of growth is higher.

You cannot define the process by the  1 hour or the 21 days. But define it by how much of a struggle it is for you. Hence, naturally the process of struggling against oneself , however mediocre it may seem to the rest of the planet, is what is important.

I don’t lay any claim to the originality of the process. Something that I acquired gratefully…….. its a labour of love to take it across the planet. The effect it had on my life. By making it a process that I could share with others.

 

Silence speaks volumes and from silence comes volumes. Words by themselves are filler not substance. To find the right word requires silence not further verbage. From the right thought comes the words. Once the right word is found, the rest comes garbage.

Silence, if done right, is the height of communication. The deepest feeling can only be communicated in silence. Silence is not the absence of words or sound, it is the presence of the Almighty within us and hence is the medium of deep thought, from which springs forth in speech and in writing, the true eloquence of the single word, properly used the slight intonation, the right pitch and the subtle touch of inflection can convey both authority and credibility.

Conviction and consternation also stem from this modality which in turn can only be inspired by the throes of silent introspection.