Waking in the morning with a head a full of ideas. Sometimes fragments, sometimes clear actions to take, but busy. Busy and loud. Like to start the day in silence. Listen to what the rich silence has to say. Which in a way, is a funny thought. Because the silence takes the constant thought and breaks it down into a rich, thick pool. It speaks in texture and meaning. So the words disappear. Ah, so nice.
I find silence speaks the longed for language of the whole. So the ideas make more sense, ultimately. And in a way don’t really matter. So funny. How to explain? Ideas are like wayward children, easily distracted and distracting. They forget they are part of a whole. They. I. Same.
So, in the pool of silence, they marinate and dissolve into the rich textures of now and always. Dissolution of thought, so nice. And what is left is an indescribable feeling of larger than. Of each pore filled with life so when the ideas bubble up again, they speak through the silence.
And now they have direction and color, infused with purpose.
I love the silence in the morning. It lends a happiness of doing to the entire day.
Here is a meditation to enter the silence:
Rise and Fall of the Breath – a meditation
About Rhonda Schaller
Rhonda is a long time meditator, artist and educator teaching visualization, mindfulness and meditation as life and art practices for over 30 years. She is a certified visualization meditation and qualified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher. She is a Visiting Associate Professor and Assistant Vice President for Resilience, Wellness & Well-being at Pratt Institute; founder of the Meditation Incubator project, and a Made in NYC fellow. She chairs the Pratt Resilience, Wellness and Well-being Council, founding chair of the Mindfulness Initiatives in Student Affairs Committee, and Mindful Pratt community. Rhonda was recently awarded a Emily Hall Tremaine Grant for her Mindful Collaboratory project, a national training and study for artists and arts leaders in meditation and mindful community building. She was also awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant to bring contemplative and wellbeing pedagogy into faculty teaching and learning at CIT, Ireland. She is the author of Create Your Art Career (2013, Allworth Press), Called or Not, Spirits are Present (2009, Blue Pearl Press), and contributed chapters for The Mindful Eye: Contemplative Pedagogies in Visual Arts Education (2018, Common Wealth Pub) and Starting Your Career in the Fine Arts (2011, Allworth Press). Her artworks are in the permanent collections of Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester and Dartmouth University's Medical School Art of Healing Gallery.
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