The LOUD silence and the veggie bits

What if there was quiet in the mind? What would that experience be? What if one could be in
an empty room with no phone, computer, games, social media, books, or anything?
How LOUD would the silence be? Every experience replaying in the mind-conversations,
arguments, anticipated conversations, fears, terrible or ecstatic memories, fantasized futures,
fantasized “re-do” conversations or actions. Why would anyone voluntarily do that?!
Every single one who meditates has experienced this LOUD silence. Beginner meditators or
seasoned meditators experience(d) this. I think of it as the “veggie bits.”

Did you ever roast a large pan of veggies? It slow roasts and smells so good! The food is ready
to be taken out of the oven. Yay! You remove the food from the pan and serve it. Meanwhile,
the pan has cooled down with parts of the food that were burnt stuck to the bottom, and it
looks bad. Flarp! That’s a mess! That will take so much scrubbing and scraping. Sad face with
single tear emoji!

Most of us do the same thing in this situation. Instead of fighting with the pan, we squeeze
some dish soap on the pan, and then fill it with hot water to soften the stuck-on stuff and de-
grease, right? We leave the pan in the sink for a while and do other stuff in the meantime. Let’s
say a half-hour has passed, and we go back to look at

Some of the baked-on veggie bits have floated to the top of the soapy water. GROSS! Green
face holding back a dry heave emoji! Seriously, WTF?! (What The Flarp?!) We did this to have a
clean pan, right? By adding warm water and soap, the situation is much worse now!

We stand at the fork in the road (food pun!) or the choice point.

One choice, or one tine of the fork in the road, is quitting, giving up, and/or cursing the pan, the
food, and the self for making the mess-AGAIN! This may spiral into blaming or shaming
thoughts, “This is my _’s fault!” or “I’m an idiot or bad person for making this mess-
AGAIN!” We may think, “I’m never trying that again. This is terrible.” or “See, I tried, and it
doesn’t work for me.” It goes on and on and on! This choice allows the water in the pan to
evaporate, and the “bits” to remain adhered to the pan. The next meal and the subsequent
meals continue to hard-bake layers of burnt-on bits! Eventually, we forget what the pan
originally looked like.

A different choice, or the other tine of the fork in the road, allows the chooser to recognize this
mess as part of the cleaning process. In order to have a clean pan, we must tilt the pan to allow
the gross, disgusting “bits” to go down the drain. Easy, right? Clean one time and done forever!
Nope. We look at the pan to see some of the burnt-on bits were released, but not all. Some of
those are really seemingly fixed in place! Some have been cemented and ignored for so long,
that we just keep baking new bits on top of old bits. We don’t like the bits. We may hate the
bits. Like we haaaaaate some of these bits, or we’re terrified to look at the bits. It’s “too much
work” to dislodge them, so we’ll accept them as fate or attempt to outrun them. We can even
buy a new pan to avoid the baked-on, hardened bits. We can post pics of our new pan, “It is so
much better than my other pan! I never have to deal with those bits again!” Wink with tongue
out pic! Even in the perfect picture, the mind’s “bits” keep coming up to the surface. What do
we do? Buy another pan??!!

Meditation is the warm, soapy water. Meditation is not a one-and-done fix. Nothing is. No thing
is. Meditation, along with other practices, is the gentle softening of our most stuck “bits.” As we
continue to practice bringing softness, warmness, compassion, and love to our most hardened
and habitual “bits,” our minds begin to trust that we are safe. We are safe enough to offer and
release our perceived “safety bits” to our Higher Love Self to be replaced with higher
Consciousness and Love. This quiets the LOUD silence.

Enjoy the warm, soapy water!

Much love,
Carolyn