“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.  Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens.”

— Carl Gustav Jung

There is a special kind of silence that exists when we move into a space inhabited only by ourselves.  Now that my children are grown, I spend many hours each day alone.  I love the peaceful feeling of my own home when the noise of electronics is silenced and the only sounds that intrude are those of the birds and the wind.  I love my quiet days and the opportunity they offer to hear my own thoughts and listen to the music of my soul.

Although I enjoy this feeling under normal conditions, having the opportunity to spend a week without the daily rhythm of family life has taken this experience to a new depth.  My mind is not cluttered with what to cook for dinner, or what time we need to be at a basketball game, or what appointments are on the calendar, or what reminders I need to deliver to the people I love.  They are on vacation, and there are no calendar entries to track.  I can eat when I’m hungry and not worry about producing a meal at a prescribed time.  In short, I have no excuses to be distracted from being in touch with my own heart and learning its passions, separate from the influence of the outside world.

We become so busy just keeping pace with the interactions and responsibilities of life in a family — life in a community — that our heart songs get lost in the noise and the clutter that are part of being human.  I like what Jung says about dreaming — that it is what we do when we look outside.  Dreams are such valuable tools for deciphering the world and untangling the dilemmas we face; and usually our dreams point us back to our hearts and turn up the volume on the music that lives at the center of our being.  It would be wonderful if that music always could be the first thing we hear as we walk through the world; but, try as we might, we become distracted, and sometimes the tangles are hard to undo.  We find ourselves walking to the beat of a tune that in no way resembles the song of our heart; and only in our dreams do we hear its faint melody as we untie the knots we have made of our lives.

We cannot always live in a state of retreat — there are people we love; there is work to be done — but I think it is valuable to find time to look into our own hearts and to hear and embrace what truly is our own.  I sit in the silence that welcomes awakening and let my own melody play without impediment.  I hear its notes and embrace its beauty, and I promise myself that I still will hear it when the noise of my full and abundant life intrudes once again.  I will open my heart and let my music flow into the world as I walk through it each day; and I will learn to weave my song harmoniously with the songs of others whose dreams exist in the waking hours and are not silenced by the noise that comes from outside.  Perhaps this is how we learn to dance.