Sounds Of Silence

Wisdom Without Words

Humanity in these post-modern times is gradually coming to appreciate the power of wordless wisdom. Perhaps this is a natural result of ubiquitous doublespeak, which has lamentably evolved into a primary mode of expression throughout academia, advertising, personal relations, and politics. When verbalized conceptualizations lose their hold on lived and living experience, the primordial energy of silence becomes overwhelmingly relevant. I am reminded of this fact virtually every day as I stroll across the rocky high desert acreage of Lucky Six Farms. Down every trail and every turn, I am confronted by silence so complete that it can only be characterized as awesome. And it is within the abyssal depths of that awe that a real wisdom gradually manifests.

Pure Wisdom Of Pure Nature

The grand workings of Mother Earth reverberate across that all-consuming quiet. Every sense strains forward in response. Her movements are slow and deliberate as the great granite boulders, some as large as a multistory building, populating the mountainsides. In this connection, it is fascinating to note how Native American Tribes believe even the stones here have souls and harbor feelings. Such sensitivity can only grow from the sheer force of ever-present silence and the patient calm it inevitably engenders in all who come to seek it out. On these sacred lands, even birdsong is rare, almost as if such notes were saved only for the most pressing communications and heartfelt outbursts. Animals seem fully as aware of the penetrating presence, the intense significance of silence as we humans.

Merging Self Into Wisdom

Like pieces of flotsam sinking beneath the mirrored surface of the sea, we find our egos, our pettiness, whatever of us that is not cosmic merging into the utterly imperturbable, the self-evident - and Biblical! - “I am.” Indeed, there is something profoundly divine in this uncanny desert silence. I believe this is because wisdom equals truth, and truth is necessarily distorted in the telling. Just as ineffably minute quanta cannot be touched or even investigated without changing their state, so the pressure of descriptive words chaotically warps the absolute, perfect state of true Being. For this reason, hermits and mystics of all faiths have sought the miraculous wisdom of silence. Hopefully, just a bit of this transcendent magick is conveyed through our purifying herbal products, which remain the most natural and direct expressions of Mother Earth’s peaceful fecundity.

By Alan Beck