Meditation—The Silence That Awakens
This afternoon, several hundred new visitors from across the Chicagoland area gathered at the Science of Spirituality International Meditation Center to hear Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj’s free public talk, Meditation: The Silence That Awakens. Simultaneously, through a live broadcast reaching more than one hundred SOS locations across North America, South America, and Europe, thousands of new seekers and members of the sangat joined the gathering.
The spiritual Master explained that the greatest obstacle separating us from the remembrance of God is the noise pollution that fills our lives. Similar to air and water pollution, which make life difficult for us, noise pollution keeps us from the silence we need to fulfill our life’s purpose.
This pollution comes in many forms, he said. It is present in the constant noise of the outer world: the sounds of our homes, workplaces, cities, and the unending stream of communication and information competing for our attention. The endless demands of processing and deciphering this information consume our time and scatter our focus. Yet there is an even greater form of noise pollution: the restless activity of the mind itself. Thoughts, desires, worries, ambitions, fears, and the continual pull of the senses keep our attention flowing outward, occupying us with the passing concerns of life while obscuring its deeper purpose: to know ourselves, to know God, and to realize our relationship with the Creator so we can find our way back Home.
Meditation, the spiritual Master said, is the process of withdrawing from the noise and entering the silence in which the soul awakens. Silence is not emptiness or inactivity. It is in silence that the companionship of the Creator is experienced and the treasures hidden within the soul begin to reveal themselves.
The greatest prayer we can offer is not for the countless things that occupy our attention, but for the one gift from which every blessing flows: to know God, to remain in God’s remembrance and to live in God’s presence. In the silence of meditation, this prayer begins to be answered.
