“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die for the roar which lies on the other side of silence.” George Eliot

Ken Wilber states that the average person between ages 25 and 55 only grows .5 stages. This is to say that people largely show very little real growth that would get them to the next stage or level of growth, maturity, or performance. He goes on to suggest that those who spend about an hour per day for four years in disciplined silence seem to achieve about a 2 stage jump in their development. Wow! What would it look like for that kind of performance improvement to emerge within the key areas of our public and private lives?

The notion and practice of silence, solitude, prayer, or meditation seems ridiculous against the pressures, demands and common pace of life. For most, I think the idea of entering into these alien practices feels like giving up something that is impossible to relinquish. What is too often missed is that this experience of stilling and resting in our gravitational center is about a presence gained with ourselves, others and the larger world, more than it is a matter of absence. We don’t necessarily need to go somewhere, close off, shut down, as much as learn to attend, hold, experience life as subject versus the sterile norm of making it a thing. This quieting helps us see, hear, be and do with increased purity and potency. When that happens, we hear the roar which lies on the other side of silence.