The Silent Gateway

As a Quaker, I’m well acquainted with the silence of worship.

Not surprisingly, silence takes strange forms when we try to describe it, when we break our silence about it and use words to define its content.

We talk about the “depth” of silence. But why not the “height” of silence? Do we not transcend in the silence? Or, as Quakers say, do we “settle” into silence?

As someone who is hearing impaired, in the world of noise and speech, I’m at a clear disadvantage. But in silence, my “hearing” is as good as anyone’s.

Silence is the great equalizer.

I find that my “silent hearing” takes place at various levels. I try not to think of the levels as “up” or “down” although they do have a spiritual hierarchy.

The first level is “thought hearing.” The thoughts are similar to those that get me through the day except that they aren’t stimulated by my immediate surroundings. What I “hear” are reflections. Reflections on my life.

The next level is “feeling hearing.” That’s something akin to “getting in touch” with my feelings, or the feelings of others. The phrase links the sensation of touch/feeling with that of hearing. Clearly, when we get beyond words and thoughts, we begin to do more than “hear.” Indeed we are often “touched” by what we “hear” when we allow ourselves to feel. It might frighten us at first, but we should be open to being touched by what we hear/feel in the silence. It may move us to tears of sadness or joy.

Beyond feeling, is “being hearing.” It can be defined in terms of the opposite of the first two kinds of hearing. It is utterly free of both thoughts and feelings. Practitioners of Zen will recognize it immediately. It is the “hearing” of “is-ness.” It is all and nothing at the same time. And it, too, expands from the single sense of hearing. At this level our entire beings become one, all-encompassing sense organ.

I could stop there, because I know these levels and have, to a greater or lesser extent, experienced them.

But as I grow older and ponder what might lie beyond this existence, it seems to me there is a realm of “hearing” beyond thinking, feeling and being. For lack of a better word, let’s call it “non-being hearing.” Put that way, it seems to be simple “egoless-ness,” but I think (and feel and “be”) that it is more than that. It is all-encompassing. It beyond all and nothing. It is out of time and out of place. It is perceived by a “sense” beyond any senses that we know or conceive of.

Can we experience this last form of “hearing” while we are alive? Does it require the death of “being”? Can we experience that “death” while still alive?

I am certain there are those who believe they have had such an experience. It may have been drug induced. It may have been during a near-death episode. Or it may have been the result of a mystical experience.

Whatever or however it has happened — or will happen — its gateway is silence.

Feeling it

I’m finally learning how this blog site “visits” thing works. And it is confirming, in strange ways, a lot of my suspicions about this presidential campaign.

All the “visitors” in the past week aren’t reading about Mount St. Helens or my motor scooter diaries. No need to “warn” them that I’m going off their topic of choice: Sarah Palin’s glasses.

Alas, they never even see the posts about what E10 does to two-stroke engines or how I walked away from Mount St. Helens a wiser man.

And they will never see these words either.

No, they are coming directly to the “spec-tacular” Sarah post.

Yesterday when I googled “Sarah Palin” and “glasses,” the Red Electric came up something like eighth on the list. No wonder I had 800 visits on Saturday, up from the normal 40 to 50. It’s still running around 150.

As the glasses freaks mellow out and go back to doing whatever they do, the visits will drop.

The rush to read about Sarah’s glasses is a reminder that it’s not what Sarah (or any politician) says that will get her or him elected. It’s not what she tells Charles Gibson; it’s how she looks — how she “feels.”

Yes, television is a tactile as well as a visual medium.

Tactile is a concept, first applied to our “Teflon president” Ronald Reagan. Nothing stuck to him because he was just such a “feel good” guy with a sunny personality,

And nothing is sticking now to Sarah with her intriguing marmish glasses and her “frontier fundamentalism.”

Not Bristol’s baby
Not Troopergate
Not Bridge-to-Nowhere flip-flops
Not hubby’s secessionist streak
Not state per diems on her own house
Not bravely shooting fish (wolves) in a barrel (on the tundra) from an airplane.

Why isn’t it sticking? We don’t live in a rational, thinking times. We see, relate and feel. That’s why the Christian Right us so excited about Sarah. Religion and reason don’t mix. It’s all about “feeling it.”

How Sarah looks and acts trumps what she has (and hasn’t) done, and certainly what she merely says.

Memo to Barack Obama: Look and act presidential and pissed as hell! Let’s feel it!

Don’t quietly lay out your education policy in front of a bunch of kids, teachers and administrators assembled in a school library, as you did the other day. (Shhhhh!! This is a library.)

Take it to the streets, Barack. Put it to throngs. Large ones.

Whip them up. The streets are where drop-outs end up. Tell 'em that if they “get back in school,” the Obama administration will make the schools worth getting back into.

Go after the plutocrats, the politician with nine houses, the “bubble” politician who thinks you aren’t rich until you make $5 million a year, the oil barons and the Gucci Gulch lobbyists.

Do it, do it fast and do it with feeling!