Feb 28 2025
Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards) – Take Refuge in Silence
Take Refuge in Silence
by Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards)
All sound arises out of Silence
and dissolves into Silence.
All thought arises out of Silence
and dissolves into Silence.
The universe arises out of Silence
and dissolves into Silence.
Suffering arises out of Silence
and dissolves into Silence.
The unbounded spaciousness of Silence,
filled with the clear light of Awareness,
dissolves the roots of pain and sorrow.
Take refuge in Silence and know
unshakable joy.
/ Image by Cristopher Sardegna /
Life has been very full for me in recent years. Several significant life challenges, the sort that feel like life and death in the moment. Adding to that, financial responsibilities have made it necessary for me to keep high work hours in my day job through it all. I had hoped, following my move to Oregon a couple of years ago, to connect more to the local poetry and spiritual communities and also to publish more books for the Poetry Chaikhana. But it was not to be as simple as that.
I have been reconnecting with the Divine Feminine lately, and the Mother can be comforting, nurturing, abundant, but at the same time She sometimes says, “You’ve got some work to do so get to it! Let that be your worship for now.”
Learning to strategically walk the cliff’s edge of action and exhaustion, refining that skill, that too is a form of worship, when dedicated to the needs of others.
Breathing hard can be a sign we are on our path. A well-walked journey sometimes requires us our all, and then some. It is often in those moments of total dedication that we find the greatest opening and spaciousness. When the activity in our lives overwhelms and we are not quite keeping up, we might just shift our perspective and recognize that we are not that activity, that we are not even the person engaged in the activity. And then it becomes a dance.
Having said all that, this song of Silence speaks to me. Everything emerges from a great Silence, an eternal Stillness. And returns again. This is not speculation, it can be directly experienced. This is the unbounded spaciousness. We say silence or stillness or spaciousness or Nirvana, but it is not empty in the way we think of the term. It is empty of “thingness” but this underlying Reality is, in fact, full. This divine Silence is rich with life, the source of all life. It is filled with awareness. When we return to that state, we are flooded with an unshakable joy. We might call it the healing embrace of the Divine Mother.
It is in this Silence that balance is restored and we rediscover our true nature.
Whether your life is noisy or quiet, may we all find time to restore ourselves in Silence.
Sending love! Have a beautiful day!
Recommended Books: Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards)
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| Kali’s Bazaar: Gifts of Devotion to the Divine, Buddhist Wisdom, and Kundalini Yoga Tantra | The Soul’s Journey: Guidance from the Divine Within | Kundalini Rising: Exploring the Energy of Awakening | ||
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Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards)
US (1952 – ) |
Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards, Ph.D.) has practiced and taught meditation for over 34 years. He is the Founder and Director of Anam Cara, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching meditative practices. The name Anam Cara is Celtic Irish for “friend of the soul.”
Kalidas has studied and practiced in the Kundalini yoga tradition, Tibetan Buddhist and Huichol Indian shamanic traditions. These rich reservoirs of wisdom have expanded and deepened the transpersonal and Jungian psychological perspectives of his professional training. His mystical experiences began as a young child and have continued throughout his adult life. They have been the real guiding force behind his studies and training. His profound experience of the Divine present in everyone, at all times, and in all places has lead him to a life of service in teaching and supporting others on their journeys into the Divine.
Kalidas grew up on Long Island, New York. In 1970 he began studying meditation and psychology in college.
He spent three years preparing to become a Vedic monk under the direction of Swami Muktananda. He was a disciple of Swami Muktananda’s from 1976 until Muktananda took mahasamadhi in 1982. For the next 12 years he continued to study, teach and serve under Gurumayi Chidvilasananda’s tutelage. He has run meditation centers and an ashram in the United States and he has taught meditation at a variety of institutions in Canada, India and the United States. For years he helped to train meditation teachers and meditation center leaders for the SYDA Foundation. He headed up a team of professionals who dealt with individuals going though intense Kundalini processes in the ashrams. At Swami Muktananda’s ashram in Ganeshpuri, India he served as clinic manager and helped to run the mobile hospital that provided care for the desperately poor native villages in the rural area surrounding the ashram.
As Lawrence Edwards PhD, Kalidas maintains a private practice in Bedford, New York, working with people interested in spiritual growth and Kundalini, as well as doing biofeedback, neurofeedback, transpersonal psychotherapy, hypnosis, enhanced performance training, and meditation training.
Thank You Ivan for Kalidas poem on silence. I was not familiar with this poet, but this
poem is so important for these times we live in. There is so much information and
some of it is just noise. So silence is a respite and can bring us joy and peace.