Letter - Also content in silence

To the editor:

[Referring to] It’s Our Turn: The blissful sound of silence in a noisy world: [By Tara Bitzan in the Echo Press on May 18, 2012] “After all, according to The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, ‘The keynote to harmonious life is... silence!’” So true.

In our house, I am the one who is content in silence, always turning off the unlistened-to radio, the unattended-to-music that my wife leaves on. (We don’t watch any TV.) And I can drive for hours immersed in my own thoughts or perhaps my own singing. Yet the “practice” of silence is to help prepare us to find that place of silence within our very being. Then that calm inner center will be there for us so we can be in it even in the midst of the noise and chaos of ordinary life.

“Life in the world, which brings a person into contact with all sorts of undesirable people and affairs, makes spirituality more difficult, but at the same time it affords a test of the will and of spirituality. One may be more spiritual in a cave in the mountains, in silence and in solitude, but there one will never be able to test one’s spirituality: whether it is strong enough to bear the contact of a contrary environment. To be ready for all responsibilities and all activities, to have a family, friends and cares, to pay attention to friends, to serve friends and enemies, to say to the worldly person, ‘I can do all that you do, and more than that,’ and at the same time remain spiritual - that is the greatest spirituality.” ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Carl Karasti

Winton, MN

Tags: opinion, letters