Silence
One of the five principles of Embodied Tai Chi is 'attention'. We need to stop doing and just be. Be silent and listen. But not listen in the Western sense of hearing language - information. Pay attention to your inner physical self. This helps you to find a silence in not thinking. With patience and practice you may perceive your natural world differently. You may also have intuitive thoughts just come to you. Not voices in the Western sense but perceptive intuitive 'voices'. Then we may see the wisdom of non Western cultures:
Lakota Narrative on SILENCE from Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ (1889–1971):
“We Indians know about silence. We are not afraid of it. In fact, for us, silence is more powerful than words. Our elders were trained in the ways of silence, and they handed over this knowledge to us.
Observe, listen, and then act, they would tell us. That was the manner of living.
With you, it is just the opposite. You learn by talking. You reward the children that talk the most at school. In your parties, you all try to talk at the same time. In your work, you are always having meetings in which everybody interrupts everybody and all talk five, ten or a hundred times.
And you call that ‘solving a problem’. When you are in a room and there is silence, you get nervous. You must fill the space with sounds. So you talk compulsorily, even before you know what you are going to say.
White people love to discuss. They don’t even allow the other person to finish a sentence. They always interrupt. For us Indians, this looks like bad manners or even stupidity. If you start talking, I’m not going to interrupt you. I will listen. Maybe I’ll stop listening if I don’t like what you are saying, but I won’t interrupt you…
People should regard their words as seeds. They should sow them, and then allow them to grow in silence. Our elders taught us that the earth is always talking to us, but we should keep silent in order to hear her.
There are many voices besides ours. Many voices…”
Deer Women and Elk Men: Lakota Narratives of Ella Deloria (1889–1971), educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist and novelist of Yankton, Lakota heritage.https://davidprice-26453.medium.com/the-gift-of-silence-a191959347a3 , accessed 24th April 2023
