Quiet

(Hilary Rhodes, September 2008)

You have just experienced a minute of quiet, but was it quiet? I am not asking the question about the physical noise in the room, a few coughs or sneezes but was it quiet in your mind?

What were you thinking about? Be honest now, put your hand up if you were thinking of something to do with school … something to do with home …. something to do with a friend or just day dreaming without really having a clue about what you were thinking. Why does this happen, you are given a minute to be quiet and thoughts rush in to fill the space, the vacuum. Yet why do we have these two moments of quiet before and after the idea presented to you, in the Aiglon meditation?

We have them because John Corlette, the founder of Aiglon, wanted his students to have the opportunity to have a moment of calm in their hectic school lives in the first silence and the opportunity to reflect on what was said afterwards or simply to continue the silence in their minds.

Many adults find that their busy lives just overtake them completely whether they are in business, finance, films, teaching, whatever they use to make their money, and some of them burn out. They find themselves searching for something that will give them the possibility of living lives that are calmer and often they turn to meditation practice. How many of you or your parents or friends practice meditation? ........

So what is meditation and how can you practice it in this time that is called meditation at Aiglon? You don’t have to wait for stress and burn out to sneak up on you?

Meditation is rather like the sound of this gong. Listen very carefully so you can hear when the note has stopped. [gong sounds, and sound persists for a long time before it fades away] Maybe you were still able to hear the gong after I started to talk again. In the same way the meditator’s mind is very loud at the beginning of meditation but as he or she practices awareness of something very specific, rests his or her mind on that one thing, then the mind clams down.

Try this: become aware of your body sitting in the chair, relaxed, your feet on the ground, often it is useful to close the eyes and be aware of the chatter in your mind. Then start to notice your breathing, that’s all, simply notice how you are breathing, is your breath high in your chest or low in your tummy area……… Now start counting your breaths as we sit in silence for two minutes which is the recommended time of quiet at the beginning of an Aiglon meditation. Mentally make a note of how many breaths you took. Now take your awareness to your body again, find it sitting in your chair again and start the day, every day, in a calm and relaxed manner even for the briefest of times. It is possible to control and quieten the mind.