“Silence is golden” acknowledges the spiritual reality that is uncovered and discovered in silence. The silence that is golden is not the absence of sound, for sound can actually bring you into Essence, but the absence of mental noise, which often spills out through people’s mouths as chatter. In those rare moments when the mind is quiet, the golden radiance of Essence can be experienced subtly. The world looks and feels different when the mental chatter has ceased and the silent stillness of your true nature is experienced. Then it is possible to experience life purely, without the filter of the mind. When that happens, life takes on a subtle radiance that is beautiful and peaceful.

It’s not the silence, itself, that is golden, but the absence of egoic thought, which allows for the quiet Presence that you are to be experienced. Thoughts are noisy, whether they’re inside your head or expressed. Thoughts attract and demand your attention, pulling it away from what is real and true about life. Thoughts are manufactured by the ego and reflect the ego’s values. They demand this and that from life, complain, fuss, and fume. All this negativity is hard to ignore. Your thoughts give you the impression that there’s a problem you need to do something about. Like a screaming child, the egoic mind is difficult to ignore and silence. It seems that attending to it is the way to silence it, but the opposite is true. Involving yourself with those thoughts only keeps the noise going.

When you’re identified with your thoughts, you’re agitated, contracted, and ill at ease. But when you notice that there’s a silent Watcher who is disengaged from them and just resting in silence apart from them, you begin to tap into the potential of your true nature for peace. You are this Watcher, not the chattering mind. You have a mind, but you are not the mind. You are the space in which thoughts appear. This space is silent, all-encompassing, embracing, and allowing. It receives and allows everything that is happening without being touched by it. You are that silent, yet deeply rich and infinite, space. The space becomes filled with chatter at times, but the space remains the same: pure, unblemished, and unchanged.

When you put your attention on that space or on the silence in between the thoughts, you fall into the spaciousness of your Being. You become it, if even for just a brief second. The more you notice that space, the more familiar you become with it, and the more you are able to see the truth about it—that it is who you are. This silent, all-accepting conscious space is what you and what everyone and everything else emanate from. Consciousness is what you are.

You are far more precious than you have ever imagined. You are not the petty voice of the ego. Your true self is hidden from you by the false one. Waking up to the truth only requires accepting the possibility that you are far grander than you have ever imagined. Your imagination of who you are has led you astray. You are not any of your self-images, but beyond all images and all thoughts. You are the space in which thought emerges and the space in between the thoughts. This silence in between the thoughts is golden because, like gold, it’s precious, pure, eternal, and true, unlike thoughts, which are evanescent and of little value.

By simply putting your attention on silence, you become it. Everything stills, and there you are!