room

Room

“When we make a place for silence, we make room for ourselves. This is simple. This is radical. A room set apart for silence becomes a sanctuary – a place for breath, for refreshment, for challenge, and for healing. It is helpful to keep the space plain and simple; a few cushions, a rug….simplicity allows the sense to rest from stimulation.

Silent spaces invite us to go to the inner room – the room inside ourselves. By making room for silence, we resist the forces of the world which tell us to live an advertised life of surface appearances, instead of a discovered life – a life lived in contact with our senses, our feelings, our deepest thoughts and values.

When a space is reserved solely for mindful practice, the silence seems to deepen. A room devoted to silence honors and invites the unknown, the untamed, the wild, the shy, the unfathomable – that which rarely has a chance to surface within us. It is a visible, external symbol of an internal reality: an actual room signifying space within ourselves set aside for silence.

Gunilla Norris, Inviting Silence

Photo by a hundred visions and revisions
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phase3/2995950426/