Traffic or Transcendence?

Despite what I have heard from others, it really is quite easy to find silence in this world. I’m not talking about sensory deprivation. That kind of experience is hard to come by. What I mean is that it is possible in the course of a normal day to achieve a level of solitude and relative quiet such that most intrusive noises are eliminated, even if it is just for a few minutes.

I find that time when my kids are in bed and my wife is off somewhere doing something important for our family that needs to be done. If I allow myself the luxury, I can find silence. In my newly established Man Cave, I can create this luxury a bit more readily, at least that has been my experience to date. All in all, it is possible to be someplace quiet.

Oddly, what breaks the silence is the inevitable chatter of the voice inside my head. It’s not a disembodied voice, some sign of mental illness. No, it’s much more pedestrian than that. It is, quite simply, me. My brain doesn’t chill; it just goes and goes and goes. I used to think the phenomenon was unique to me, but I have met enough people who get what I am talking about to know that most people have an inner voice that is constantly rambling. It wasn’t until reading Eckhart Tolle that I came to learn the nature of that inner voice.

Eckhart calls it “the ego,” and it is simply the part of your mind that is tied to the physical plane, to the world of form. You higher self, your TRUE self, is a consciousness that is apart from the ego. The ego is a series of thoughts and processes; consciousness is one’s spiritual, universal essence. When the world around us is silent, the ego grows uncomfortable. It is tied to the external world, so it needs to be grounded in external stimulus to keep a sense of itself relative to the rest of the world. So, the ego talks. It reminds of you of things that happened during the day. It comments on the temperature. It reminds us of all the things we didn’t accomplish today or that must be accomplished tomorrow. In the absence of outside stuff it creates inside stuff. That’s the nature of the ego.

In silence, we should strive to quiet the ego. If we can quiet the ego, our consciousness can take over. The words and the chatter distract from the true nature of our connection to the universe. It keeps us from knowing our interconnectedness to everything around us. They say that the universe is made of something like subatomic strings. How would we know? We’re too busy thinking about traffic tomorrow morning. Traffic will come, no matter how much or how little we think about it or worry about it. What won’t last forever is this momentary, conscious connection to the vibrations and energy patterns of this reality. It will slip away, eventually, as the details of surviving day-to-day take over again. Is it really worth sacrificing the potential to gain true insight into the nature of existence and reality just so you can sweat tomorrow’s weather?

Then again, I could be full of shit. Sure, but what if I’m not? Traffic or Transcendence?