God silence

I first became intrigued with the idea of silence when I studied John Cage in school. Cage was fascinated with silence. He was on a quest to experience true silence. The only problem he kept running into was whenever he purposely got quiet there were still sounds from things in this world beyond his control. His musical composition which Cage is most famous for is 4:33. Four minutes and thirty three seconds. This composition can be played with any instrument in any ensemble.

The music is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of nothing. Of silence. What we get is not silence though. Sounds from the audience, the street outside, the theater walls give the true performance. Whatever is heard during this period of "silence" becomes the musical piece.

Cage discovered that even when he tried to be silent there was no silence. He researched the science and went to the only true sound proof room which was located at NASA. We somehow finagled his way in to finally experience true silence.

What happened? Was John Cage one of the only humans to experience true silence?

No.

What happened in the most silent room in the world was he could hear the blood rushing through his veins. You turn off all the sound in the world and still your body is making noises. Cages conclusion was: there is no such thing as silence.

Whenever people talk about silence I always want to tell them that John Cage says there is no such thing as silence. It's my need to be right. Sometimes when you have the need to be right you cut yourself off from learning anything new. And once you stop growing you start dying.

So maybe we could stop thinking about Cage for a second and ask ourselves what does silence mean in the context of spirituality?

Is God silent? I try to speak with him but with no direct communication. Is God passive aggressive? They say to respect God's clock. You have to wait.

What if God is the silence. I'm totally rambling right now.

In mediation we get quiet. Why? To get beyond our thoughts. To get beyond our brains. To get to a place of higher awareness. The more time we spend in this silence the more we bring calm and wisdom to our real life. We are borrow wisdom from the silence.

Who's gonna take time to get quiet? Some nerd who has nothing better to do. Actually nerd think too much but maybe someone will think his way into not thinking so he can think better when he does think.

Make sense?

Get silent.