Listen to the silence

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Most people are always searching for happiness as if it was something very distant from us. We ignore the beauty of the world that surrounds us because we are no longer able to observe it. Our minds are engaged in chasing something that sometimes is not a real goal but only the illusion of it: train to go to work, conferences, meet clients, pursue a career. The inability to observe the beauty that surrounds us is strengthened by the fact that our minds are full of thoughts, noises. A mind full of sounds will never appreciate the charms of life. Very often we are in a temporal trap forgetting to live in the present. We remember the sufferings of the past by feeding further pain and sinking into anxieties caused by the uncertainties of the future by trapping us further into a real mental prison. This mental prison creates a feeling of emptiness. Then we begin to wait for something better to arrive in our life that is perhaps better than the situation in which we think we are. In other words, we want to anticipate something that can change the position in which we are now because the present situation is uninteresting. Awareness reminds us to stop and listen quietly.
At that moment we must breathe and allow silence to become current in our life as if it was an essence that will enable us to see the beauty of life. No more past, no more future, just the present. The noises in our minds begin to disappear, and we start to have a profound sensation, powerful and very conscious. We are finally able to see what surrounds us and above all, we can see it positively without mental barriers that obstructed the clearness of the vision of creation. We can finally say that we are free. This sense of freedom is one of the real secrets of happiness. To be free from anxieties and fears creates a great sense of inner fulfilment.  Being able to say "I am free" is a powerful statement because many of us are not. Freedom allows us to see, to feel and therefore to exist. 

Giuseppe Loporchio

Source: Silence, T.N. Hanh

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