Learn to be quiet

~ Live & Learn

Noell S. Oszvald - Silence - Art - Photograph

You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

―Franz Kafka

Artist: Noell S. Oszvald: “Silence” via artlimited.net via yama-bato.

Quote Source: blogut via creatingaquietmind

Other related Kafka posts:

29 thoughts on “Learn to be quiet”

  3. Love it and ties back to some thoughts running through my mind after your blog on productivity. Where, in our quest to be productive,to be efficient, to maximize every opportunity within the time we have given to us, do we get to do nothing; to be silent; to think (or perhaps not think and just feel)? For me, success is not only defined by what I accomplish, but also by what I learn, by how I grow and for me, I need the silent time, the quiet time, the waiting time to do that. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. Love that and it’s ironic that it relates to how I have been learning how to breathe properly. Breathing & being still…easier said than done with my brain racing all the time!

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  6. David,

    Things I could have said:

    Oh, thank you. And, you know what I mean.

    No you don’t!

    And yes, you purposely did.

    Learn who you have wronged, and be most aware that any untruthful attempt at ecstasy, perhaps acquired for her, has in no way been conveyed to me.

    Properly post it wherever it applies,

    Marty

    \

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  7. I find Being quiet, truly still, incredibly difficult. Yet in those rare moments I can achieve that state, I am rewarded with a sense of rejuvenation and “centeredness” (I think I just made up that word) that I find almost intoxicating….

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    1. I’m with you Lori. It happens so rarely. Calm. Peace. Still. And yes, intoxicating, that’s the word. You’ve captured it again – it’s intoxicating when experiencing those rare moments.

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  8. An important place to visit everyday I think, if one can..It restores, humbles, awes. Yet the picture..was the image bowed with the stark beauty of stillness, crying with the knowledge of a reality unknowable to us, is her silence so stark and bare that no one can reach her?

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      2. I would give 100 likes to Mimi’s comment because it actually is like the continuation of the above post. Loved them (The post and the comment).

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  10. MyTai Chi teacher used to come up to me in lessons and say “relax”, and I’d reply “I am relaxed”, and she’d say “no you’re not”, then I’d get more tense than I was in the first place because I couldn’t achieve a level relaxation that existed outside of my experience.

    I don’t go to the lessons anymore, but just do the limbering up Qi Gong exercises most days, at double the speed that my teacher would’ve have approved of.

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