Evolution of Love 2

A SHIFT INTO SILENCE

When I lie down, when I close my eyes and relax, I slip into another state. It is not at all like the waking state, nor the dreaming state nor deep sleep. I am totally conscious; at the same time I have lost all awareness of my body. I have the impression I am nothing but sight – sight with eyes closed. There, phenomena appear: faces, landscapes, intense and fleeting forces, things charged with such reality that, once back in the waking state, the words ‘seeing’ or ‘real’ take on a totally different meaning. But even without these phenomena even in daily life, ‘seeing’ has taken on a totally different flavor. Because the silence prevents us from recreating ourselves from moment to moment, because it prevents us from interfering, thinking, projecting and maintaining this mental filter. Reality appears to be much more alive, much more real.

It’s as if the moment in which the radical change (or whatever it is called) took place is etched into the present so that it’s visible all the time. That moment cannot be forgotten; it has given meaning to all the rest. This something is there before everything else and enables me to perceive things without being there. Something which, in hindsight, lets me know that what I see, what appears before me, appears now, and only now. In a split second, what appeared is finished, gone. There is nothing but now. The previous moment, the following moment, are just two abstract ideas. The deep feeling, the invisible thing, that always plunges me into this sensing, is really what sees. It is a strong, obvious clarity that no longer allows me to blind myself with what my physical eyes see. It is simultaneous; at the same time I see with my eyes, just like I used to, I see things appearing, just like I used to, but at the same time I perceive the silence, the constant presence which prevents me from staying in the head, in the past, in the future. This simultaneity brings me to life in the moment. This is what makes the moment so intense, and it is this, too, that results in there being nothing but the moment. Because there is simply no room for anything else. This is true for ‘Yolande’ and it can be true for anyone else, too. I would say it is the intensity, this sensation in the foreground, which sees. It is before seeing, before the eyes, before the sense of sight. And it sees before the eyes – so what does it see with? (Silence takes over, broken only by the discordant music of a lawn-mower)

It sees – period. I don’t perceive through my eyes, nor through my understanding or my thoughts. And this vision is so powerful that I cannot take the phenomena that appear for real. I just can’t. That has become impossible. At the same time, the silence, the constant presence, is so intense that I feel that I am constantly alive – alive like never before. Even in those uncomfortable moments in life when I am sick, tired or whatever, this sensation, the presence, is there. So I feel like I am really alive.

~ Yolande Duran-Serrano

In 2003, and as a result of a spontaneous awakening, Yolande quits her career and her lifestyle to devote herself to the observation of the silence/presence she speaks of. She currently shares her experience and her point of view in gatherings and retreats all over the world:

"The whole problem arises from the belief that we are this person. Silence is our true source and is natural in every one of us"