Your thoughts are a useful servant if they are serving a greater Wisdom.

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski

Your thoughts are a useful servant if they are serving a greater Wisdom. Your thoughts can be a relentless tyrant imprisoning you behind the bars of anxiety. The key to being released from that prison is silence. Father Thomas Keating said, “Silence is God’s first language.
Everything else is a poor translation.”
Cultivating silence in your day is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is diving beneath the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day to rest in the sacred quiet that is already there. It is in that sacred quiet that Being itself can speak.
Music is only music because of the silent spaces between the notes. Hand two musicians the same music and their performances are different even though the notes are the same. Their artistry resides in the silent spaces between the notes. Without those silent spaces we are left with noise.
Silence is the doorway to everything that matters. Our thoughts pretend we are in control and all we need to do is think harder or louder. Anxiety is the result of anxious thoughts and we think the remedy is more of those same thoughts.
Silence dives beneath those thoughts awakening the heart and soul the way breathing enlivens the lungs.
We are all meant to be contemplatives. This may take many forms – centering prayer, meditation, yoga, painting, hiking, kayaking, dancing, singing, fishing, mindfulness, simple breathing – but each one of us is meant to have space inside that is quiet, uncluttered, undistracted where we are present to the deep love, wisdom and eternal breath always present to us.
Being present to Sacred Presence in silence changes the way we are present in the world. As the saying goes, “The wise are still and speak when Wisdom speaks through them. The foolish constantly speak because they have nothing to say.”
Try this – Don’t fight your thoughts. Anxious thoughts enjoy a good fight and resist by digging in. Instead, create space that invites silence. Imagine diving beneath your thoughts listening for a deeper Wisdom that loves you beyond your imagining and knows what’s best for you. Imagine choosing not to be the servant of your anxious thoughts today and, instead, led by Wisdom.