When I first began walking this path of presence, I was told again and again by my teachers: you must get comfortable with the unknown, with the silence, with the stillness.
Intellectually, I understood. Experientially, it was another story.
The first times I sat in stillness, I felt like I was dropping into a void. The mind screamed at me: There has to be more than this. This is it? This is all there is? Over and over, the thoughts got louder until they nearly drove me crazy. I couldn’t stay there. The silence felt too much, the emptiness unbearable.
But life has a way of gently preparing us for what we’re ready to receive.
After spending the past three and a half months immersed in deep inner work, something shifted. It took me about six weeks to adjust—not only to the vast quiet of being here in Arizona, but also to the deep silence that surrounded me when my husband was gone for three and a half months. With no one else around, no familiar noise or daily conversation to fill the space, I was dropped fully into the stillness. At first, it felt stark. Unfamiliar. But then—something opened.
Now, experientially, I see what I could never grasp before. I don’t just tolerate the silence; I welcome it. I don’t just face the unknown; I rest in it. And more than that—I love it.
I hesitate to use the word crave, but it’s the only one that comes close. Not in a way of desperation, not as if I “need” it, but as if it is the place I want to return to again and again. The stillness has become home.
It is nothing you can hold. Nothing you can grasp. Nothing you can control. And in that, there is such freedom.
For years I heard the words: This is love. Love is a frequency. Love is subtle. I could nod my head, but I didn’t really get it. Love, I thought, should be big, obvious, loud. But no. Love is so gentle it can only be felt in stillness. It is subtle, pure, unshakable.
It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t demand attention. It simply wraps itself around you like a cloak of warmth, like the comfort of being held in the womb of the Mother.
This—this indescribable quiet, this presence without edges, this tender nothingness—is love.