What is the Difference between Silence and Calmness in Spiritual Growth?

I’m sure most of you know about the social networking sites Facebook and
Twitter. With both of them, you have a limited number of characters to
make a connection with the other members and present your question or
statement. On a recent post I wrote on both Facebook and Twitter the
following statement regarding spiritual growth and development: “The
answers are in the silence.” I then attached my virtual meditation page
from this website for folks to use.

From this statement someone asked me the question: “What is your
experience with silence and calmness? Isn’t there a difference between
understanding and integrating this? And in my experience there is still
a big step between calmness and silence.”

I answered on what is called their “wall” so I could say more than the
normal amount allowed with the following words: “I’ve had varying
experiences with silence. I’ve had experiences like thinking I was
meditating for only 10 min or so but turned out it had lasted 4 hours.
Mostly I only have a limited amount of time to meditate with my timer
set so these experiences of expanding time and no-self are not as
dramatic.”

“Calmness to me seems more of a psychological state rather than being
seated deeply in silence. But learning to calm ourselves down is a great
skill. We would have to start with an ability to slow ourselves and calm
down enough in order to simply be with what shows up internally. This
moves us toward deep silence. Being with what reveals itself in the
moment is what helps us find and work our way towards being our True
Selves. The True Self connects us with that which is greater than our
small “s” selves.”

“Yes, a glimpse of this deep silence is a start on the road to
stabilizing a state of unified consciousness. After an experience of
oneness in meditation, we can learn to weave this embodied experience
into our everyday lives and into every moment. Eventually the weave is
so tight that life breathes us with no separation. That means no
separation between subject and object.”

There is much more that could be said about this but for now I will
leave it here with these thoughts.

I thought that this might be helpful spiritual information as well as
for those not on these social networking sites, this is a way to see
what kind of interchanges are happening between people on these kinds of
sites. It’s amazing how deep as well as valuable some of the
conversations can be.