The Shining Silence Beneath the Noise

If the world is too much with you, this essay may help

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., one of the most heroic and besmirched individuals of our time, has written a new book, The Real Anthony Fauci.  

Recently he gave a book talk which is not only informative but inspirational. His answer to a question about how he stays strong in the face of constant attacks is worth your time alone.

Kennedy explained he has “a spiritual life which makes [him] feel calm even when the furies of the world are attacking [him].” He added, “I know I'm supposed to be telling the truth. I have a clear idea of what I need to do on any particular day. I have a capacity to focus on that. Defeat, failures, complaints, criticism…I don’t have any control over whether we win or lose.”

Kennedy is married to actress Cheryl Hines. Cheryl plays Larry David’s ex-wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm. The fictitious Larry has no capacity to feel calm when he feels attacked.

In the current Season 11, Larry has gotten into a bad habit of inadvertently slamming doors. People think he is angry at them. In one scene, Larry slams a door in Cheryl’s home. Cheryl is incredulous that Larry didn’t hear how loud the door closed.

Cheryl: You must be door deaf.

Larry: I’ve always thought my hearing was a cut above the average person.

Cheryl: scoffs

Larry: Especially disparaging remarks directed at me. Larry whispers, You f...ing a..hole. I can hear that, like, from 150 yards away.

Since Curb is all about perceived slights, like many of us, Larry has a superpower to hear and often misinterpret any slight directed at him.

Curb is funny because there is universality (however exaggerated) in the mindset of Larry’s ego.

In creating and defending our self-concept, we take personally what others say. And, we have a superpower that treats our thinking personally.

Consider this observation by Ben Hardy: “the average person has between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative, and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.”

As we become aware of our thinking, we notice that many repetitive themes revolve around our interpretation of what someone else did or said. Many of our thoughts are judgments of others or ourselves. What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with me? Many of our thoughts are imaginings of the future, as we rehearse scenarios in our head.

Like Larry, often our thoughts involve a rule we have made up, known only to us. When someone breaks our rule, conflict unfolds in predictable ways as we defend the story of me, our self-concept. There is no peace in that self-concept, but its familiarity brings a dysfunctional comfort.

It is helpful to become more aware of the sense of constriction in our body that these thoughts create. With awareness comes an increased capacity to shift our mind away from our thinking and back to the present moment. It takes little thought to be present to this moment.

Our thinking can be a barrier to the life we want. When we are present in the moment, we can experience a state of flow; we experience more peace and accomplish more.

How can we walk through the world experiencing more peace and less conflict?

I offer a simple exercise to reclaim the peace available to us each moment. Take a good look at a photograph you have seen before. It might hang in your home or office or on your refrigerator. Most days, Google, Amazon, and One Drive send me look back at this day emails with links to older photos. The photos I look at might be several years or over a decade old.

While you have seen the photo before, you might see it in a different light if you pause. If you look with stillness, you might feel the pure Love and the vibrancy of the moment captured in the photo.

Poignancy might arise, too, because many moments occur in which we don’t feel Love. Your mind may have been occupied by thinking that clouded over full enjoyment of the moment in which the photo was taken.

The gifts of the moment are never lost and are saved for us.

Our thought clouds are mind-created. Some days, the cloud cover we create is denser; but Love is always there offering its gifts. We can open our gifts at that moment or in a future moment.

You can apply this photo exercise to the present by noticing the noise created by the narrator in your head that hovers over what you are doing at any given moment.  If you notice that narration without judgment, your mind will immediately settle. What lies beneath the narration is the Peace and Love that you are looking for.

Thought-created clouds part when we have a little willingness. A little willingness does not mean that you can control your thinking. Control doesn’t work. As we try to control our thinking, our resistance lets our thinking take control of us.

A little willingness means in the moment you are willing to turn your attention towards something more valuable, a shift in purpose, if you may. When the thought-created clouds seem impenetrable, it is simply because you value your thinking more than the moment.

The silence experienced beneath the noise has inestimable value. As we notice our thinking but do not judge, resist, or justify our unwanted thoughts—we find those troubling thoughts pass by as quickly as clouds drifting by on an otherwise sunny afternoon. Then, clarity, ease, direction, and peace have space to arise.

Facebook’s proposed metaverse or the holodeck in Star Trek: The Next Generation has it backward. The holodeck was a recreational area on the Enterprise where the crew could live out a vivid, lifelike virtual reality. When the simulation ended, all that was left was an empty room. On the holodeck or the metaverse, simulation is needed to create a rich experience. In real life, silence brings a rich experience to the foreground. Our noise, our mental simulation that interprets our reality, deadens and does not enliven our experience.

RFK, Jr’s., comments pointed us to this law of living: If you begin by having your purpose in mind and don’t take seriously the clamor in your head, you can sink into the vibrant reality beneath all the noise. That reality is far from the empty room of the holodeck; it is living richer than any thinking or computer program can ever create.

Your choice: the noise in your head or the richness of the moment. Choose wisely. This moment will never return.