A memorable moment during a recent trip to Wells Gray Provincial Park in BC happened on our very first hike.
We walked out to Moul Falls, one of the shorter falls in the park, but special because you can easily walk down to the base and even swim in the plunge pool.
Jasmin and I ate lunch on a bench overlooking the falls and then walked down to the base.
The pool is in a kind of half-dome carved out of the stone, likely by the falls eating away at the rock over thousands of years. The bottom is wet (naturally) and mossy. Despite the spray and the roar of the water, it is a very ‘silent’ and peaceful spot.
We walked behind the falls, soaking ourselves in the process. Then we decided to sit down on a rock and chant a mantra.
We used the mantra ‘Gate Gate’ which has the property of helping to silence the mind.
I tried to focus on the mantra more intensively each time I prounced it, barely hearing myself beside the crashing water, but feeling the vocalization reverberate within me.
With each breath I began to feel more and more ‘present’ in that spot. My senses felt more accute and clear, and the inner chatter began to die away.
There was a distinct moment where I felt extremely silent within, as though my internal world was also an empty chamber in which the sounds of the waterfall could reverberate.
And at that moment the sound and somehow the feeling of the waterfall did not seem external anymore, but something that vibrated inside of me and was part of me.
I felt much more clear, aware, and peaceful on the walk back home.
I later reflected on a passage from the book Peace of the Spirit Within, where the author Belzebuub writes about beauty.
He says (quoting from memory) that we can never know from an intellectual perspective what true beauty really is. We will never understand intellectually what it means when the inside and the outside vibrate in mystical unity.
Only with practice and conscious experience can we understand these things, is the implication.
I had never really understood this before either, but it felt like in my experience at the waterfall I approached an understanding of how this could be.
It seems some people associate awareness or inner silence with a kind of emptiness in the pejorative sense — a lack of feeling or a sense of dullness.
But it seems just the opposite to me. Paradoxically, I found that real silence brings a greater sense of life. Being empty is actually when I feel truly ‘full’. Lacking inner chatter, I feel complete.
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