The Silence Terrifies Me
No matter all the words spoken, no matter the eloquence of the written word, the prose, wise and insightful soliloquy – the truth always resides in the silence. For it is in the silence that both our wound and love can be felt and experienced.
Our mind loves to rationalise, tell stories and even convince us that all is ok, even when it is not. Somehow the mind also believes that if only we could explain our story well enough, completely enough, not forgetting any detail that this will ensure that others will not only understand us, but also see us with compassion and then embrace us fully. Very often, the opposite is true as the mind creates a smokescreen to cover the deeply hidden secret of our innermost wound. Even in the attempt to heal, and our longing to heal can be strong, we can keep ourselves in separation through handing over to the mind work that the intellect can never accomplish. As adults we can try to placate our most intense feelings of injury through rationalising the behaviour of those who played their part in creating our separated wounded self, however, this merely serves to placate that part of us that is adult – it does not reach the parts of us that have been locked away since early childhood and which still have great influence over our actions and reactions in the world and within relationships.
In Family Constellation work, the truth of a family system is revealed without masks, pretenses, stories or projections. What comes to light are events and traumas that caused the sweetness of natural love to either cease flowing or to flow in distorted and injurious ways. As this deeper truth comes to light poignant moments of silence emerge in which grace can be said to be present. It is in this silence that we can either flee in terror, fearing to feel and to face that which we have buried, or we can surrender to the silence and be lifted towards a resolution that hitherto was seemingly impossible.
As we restore the natural flow of love, tears may flow as they carry out the job of cleansing our heart of the hurt and then the silence in which peace is found returns.