I’VE BEEN FORTUNATE in my time to meet some genuine traditional teachers. I’ve been further blessed to sit with them and talk, to walk with them out onto the land. Our times together were always punctuated with silences. Our talk was a sharing of the sacred breath of Creation, and silence was an act of reverence.
I never realized before then that silence is a spiritual thing. Most of my life I’d felt awkward with silence, seeking to fill gaps in talk with a quip, a rejoinder, an observation. The silence I experienced with traditional teachers were intentional breaks in thought, left there as bridges to emotion.
Like many people, I came to Native spirituality hoping to get things clarified and resolved, preferably instantaneously. I was looking for the sweat lodge, the pipe, and the traditional medicines to heal my old wounds and salve the raw spots that living had left on the surface of my being. Initially, I believed that my presence at ceremony would be enough in itself, that a morning smudge of sage or sweetgrass would elevate me easily beyond old pain and fresh hurts. I had a lot to learn.
A sweat lodge is not a band-aid. A pipe ceremony is not an aspirin. The real work of healing comes in how we apply the principles from those ceremonies in our daily lives. Nothing ever happens instantly. Most of the time we struggle to achieve our goals. It’s in that struggle that warriors are born.
Silence allows you to pause and reflect. Like most people, I was hooked on doing. What those tribal teachers were telling me was the opposite: Be. Then become. It sounds so simple, but it flies directly in the face of everything we’ve been taught. If I can make more money, then I will be content. If I get a good job, then I will be secure. Once I have a solid love relationship, I will be satisfied. And on and on. Getting comfortable with silence helped me to turn all that around. Being spiritual, in the Indian way, means simply getting in touch with whatever moves your spirit. Silence is one tool I employ. A painting, a photograph, a good book, the words of a song, a blues riff, the touch of a hand, quiet talk, a walk with my dog: all of these things also move my spirit. When you learn to carry that feeling into everything you do, your life becomes a ceremony—and that’s the whole intention.
Close your eyes and feel the silence. There will be lots of time for talk beyond that.