The Hour of Silence

“Remember the day on which without fear in your heart, you met your first silence? The dread hour had sounded, silence went before your soul. You saw it rising from the unspeakable abysses of life, from the inner sea of horror and beauty, and you did not fly.

Bethink you of that moment and tell me whether silence then was not good and necessary, whether the caresses of the enemy you had so persistently shunned are not truly Divine.”

-Maeterlinck

 

THE LAST and I might say the first enemy you will have to settle accounts with is yourself. The most difficult period of life is the ALONENESS—when you come face to face with this self who has become swollen through a thousand incarnations and who has had the whip hand for aeons. That is why so few people can stand to be alone. They do not want to meet this monster, it is only when you can stay with him for a while that you finally discover the “heel” which is vulnerable and can destroy him with his bag of tricks—with his ancestor teaching and beliefs, garnered from appearance. It is only when you face the Liar and the Father of it with some of his lies that he takes cover. “Who did hinder ye that you should not obey the truth”?—you have the answer to this now. And who is it that told you, you were naked and therefore ashamed? Why ashamed?

It is wonderful, when this old demon is re-evalued and found to be a pack of lies and discovered to be utterly powerless, once you have taken your thought away from him. He deflates like a balloon punctured by a pin.

And then the Alone place is the place of revela­tion. The place where the extended senses take over and you begin to see and hear and understand some of the new dimensions, and more especially you begin to understand the “Reason for the hope that is within thee.” There is a purpose for the God created You—it is not just following the successful path of your forebears, going through a series of meaningless pictures, fooling yourself with the idea you are getting somewhere, only to find you have come out at the same place you went in.

“Myself when young did eagerly frequent, Doctor and Saint and heard great argument About it and about; but evermore Came out the same door wherein I went” 

There is a purpose in Life which is sadly missing in the life of the Adam dreamer. “Ye must decrease”, is spoken to this thought production so that the “I (the eternal Being) will again increase into his full stature, and find out the purpose of being. It is glorious and golden when we beg beyond thelife—and see that it is continuous and eternal and has an infinite field of action. Discovering the True self we find we are SENT for a purpose— we are sent a LIGHT and this releasing of L IGHT is so great it reveals the purpose being.

Papers are full of stories of successful men, how they have slaved, worked, night and day, gone through all sorts of hells and finally amassed afor­tune and died. No wonder the Preacher said “Vanity of vanities—all is vanity.” Yes all is vanity and il­lusion and the deluge of words, optimistic as they may seem, has no power to change this futility and frustration. 

“Could ye not watch with me one hour?”—the willingness to fold the tent and steal away into the desert and be alone, away from teacher, preacher, book and lecture—is replete with results.

Suddenly after you have faced this chimera that seems so terrible on the outside you begin to see right through and see the mass of thoughts you have stored up as real which are merely accepted beliefs inflated and made real by acceptance, and then brought into activity by Race consciousness. If you believe in evil and the race consciousness is particu­larly rampant on that subject at the moment, you are carried right along into the thick of the battle. Maybe you will emerge somewhat the worse for it all—but the chances are you may not. Until you accept a thing it cannot come into being—yet the moment you do, you find agreement which results in establishing it on the earth. “It shall not come nigh thee”, is said of the one who has not accepted the belief and is therefore above the line of the activity of race consciousness.

Everything that the human thought has tried to do from its level or initiation and hypnosis can and will be carried through into manifestation by the SELF—the Christ of God which you have dis­covered by being alone.

The Alchemy of the medieval philosopher and wise man gives way to the revelation of Spirit which actually can and does have the power of changing disease into health—limitations into abundance and sorrow into joy—not as a magician does it but as the Son of the Most High reveals the stream of Spiritual Light descending into the crooked shapes of human thought and disintegrating them. It is wonderful—it is secret—and it is done not for show —and not for a price but for the automatic results that follow pure recognition of the Presence. A child can or could do it—and so can you—if you can­——-

The magic of doing “tricks” called miracles by the human thought is intriguing–but how can a power that can walk through fire, water, solid walls etc.—function in a mind that is filled with the egotism of the little Adam self? The inside of the platter must be made clean before it is a fit receptacle to receive anything. And this does not bespeak the terrible struggle and overcoming so often pictured with it—it does bespeak of a mind that has arrived at a place where it REALLY believes in something higher, greater and more powerful than all the combinations of human thought, no matter how tine honored. It is wonderful and glorious—when you think about it you want to do something—want to shout for joy, or throw your hat in the air.

And so you MEET your first silence—which is not a mumbling of sanctimonious words of a man —but an actual surcease from words, ideas, precon­ceived notions and desires–a steady gazing into the light until you are swallowed by it. You are in the silence NOW—and that which is told you shall be called from the housetops. It is wonderful!

 

Walter C. Lanyon