On finding home
- lilypetroff
- Mar 12, 2023
- 5 min read
Silence is all we dread. There’s Ransom in a Voice— But Silence is Infinity. Himself have not a face.
Silence is All We Dread
by Emily Dickinson
“There is a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon . . . Once you know the way the nature of attention will call you to return, again and again, and be saturated with knowing, 'I belong here, I am at home here.”
The Radiance Sutras
I take a deep breath and place my hand over my heart for a few moments, feeling the contact of my palm resting on my chest before beginning to type. While part of me feels the need to qualify, "yes, I'm aware of how cringey, tropey, and spiritually basic that sounds" –– most of me has come to appreciate this simple gesture.
In my former post (on intimacy with self) I wrote about my love of silence. This remains true. But I also, like Emily Dickinson pithily describes in her poem, fear it. For me to speak to my love of silence without speaking to my fear of it feels out of integrity, because for me, they live right alongside one another.
There are many ways I could attempt to unpack my fear of silence, which for me these days feels synonymous with Presence with a capital P, Love with a capital L, and God with a capital G. Silence calls me home, and yet, I cannot open to it fully, even if I long to offer myself to it wholeheartedly with abandon.
Sometimes the word fear doesn't feel sufficient. Recently, I attended a gathering where I witnessed a non-dual dharma teacher work with a fellow student/attendee. Gently and kindly the teacher said to the student, "Oh, there's a terror here, huh?" Despite having a different lived experience than this person, the acknowledgement of their terror, made space for me to fully acknowledge mine. Sometimes parts of me aren't just afraid. They're terrified.
Terrified of what? I think that answer proves different for each of us, but we each have our own version. While aspects of my fear response feel existential (I don't feel like exploring that aspect here today), I'm coming to see how my fear of Silence, Presence, Love, Spirit, God, whatever you want to call it, mimics the fear underlying all my relationships, which includes my relationship to self.
At the core of my fear in relationships –– relationship to the divine, relationship to humankind, relationship to self, and even relationship to nature, lies a fear of being abused. A part of me learned along the way that it always needs to maintain some vigilance, some amount of contraction at the core, because if it lets go fully, it might get hit. These hits might be physical, or they might be emotional, in the form of sharpness, coldness, and hate. They might come from the outside of me, or they might come from the inside of me. Either way, relationships, on some base level, are to be opened to conditionally, as what they have to offer ultimately, is conditional too.
As I watch myself write these words, I'm aware of how bleak they sound. In my everyday life, I'm not orienting towards my relationships with a lot of conscious fear. I feel grateful to have many relationships in my life where I feel deep love, intimacy, and trust. I also believe it's healthy and wise to remain sensitive and alert, on some level, towards the scent of abuse.
All the while, the me that feels responsible for maintaining even the smallest contraction, simultaneously fears and longs to release its grip –– to fully let go. Though terrified of doing so, it longs for somewhere it can lay its armor to rest, and free its tired mind from the subtle exhaustion of managing Lily's experience.
I've fantasized over such a place. I know it exists because I've been there before, if only briefly. It's where I came from. It is home. I am guided back by the memory my body still carries, though subtle and faint at times, and the glimpses of grace I've experienced walking through this life. Like a bee, I am following the fragrance back to its source –– back to my own most precious flower.
Oftentimes I get lost. I follow a scent that feels familiar, even if I know it won't bring me to the nectar I'm thirsting for. Other times I'll defer to other bees with fancy titles who I deem wiser and superior to tell me which direction to go, even if my instincts tell me otherwise.
Following my own inner compass has often felt like flying blind, but I'm coming to trust it more. I keep safe, and fiercely protect the little shards of home I've picked up along the way like my most precious treasures. They are my talismans, my rumpled map, and my beacons of light to guide me when I inevitably get lost in the darkness.
Many, if not most of you who subscribe to this newsletter have at one point or another offered me these very things whether knowingly or not. Marie's ageless twinkle in her eye, Jack's unbridled giggle, Bobby's open arms, Debbie's sorrowful tears, Nick's idiot jokes, Jonny's warm shoulder, Catherine's mama-bear worry, Miranda's enveloping boobs, Wesley's steady gaze, Montana's discerning words, Nina's pure song, and Matt's gentle smile (to name a few, non superior to the rest) have all brought me back home. And for that, I am forever grateful.
For a long time, I could only access these moments through contact with something outside myself, be it a person, an animal (bless dogs and cats and blue-eyed donkeys), a tree, or a mountain. Left to some of the blueprints I inherited, and learned projections of my own mind, my "God" can feel like an abuser. The voice of "Silence" can be warm and inviting, but it can also be harsh and mean. The face of "Love" can be smiling and attuned, but it can also be stiff and disappointed. Never quite knowing what they're going to get, parts of me are always subtly bracing themselves for when the abuse will arive. Like most abusive relationships, there is mostly goodness with just a little bit of bit of abuse.
A lot of my inner work these days feels related to unwinding the belief that any amount of abuse is acceptable in a relationship, and certainly unwinding the belief that real Love, real God, real Silence operates in such a way. Something inside me can trust and see more clearly now that real Home never feels this way.
My practice these days is about learning how to teach the parts of myself that feel terrified, of myself and others, that they don't need to be afraid by placing my hand on my heart. Even if my mind gets confused about what Love is and where to find it, my hand seems to know and help me remember. For a long time, I believed that I needed to swat away the hand of loving, attuned, presence in order to find God. Isn't that funny? Ironic? Tragic?
Thankfully, I'm finally beginning to believe otherwise. I'm beginning to realize that my own hand, my own heart, can be the place where I feel safe to lay everything to rest, to give myself with total abandon, to fully let go. That Silence, and God, and Love, and Home could dare I trust, be right here.
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