Silence, Thieves, Love and Electrons

My last post was a short but sweet one mentioning the desire for contact which has been arising and also for silence (see “silent spaces”).  Today I had a video Skype session with someone and during that call, she started coughing, so rather than talking, we started typing while the video connection remained intact.  It’s hard to describe exactly, but it was beautiful.  It was contact combined with silence and my heart deeply needed that.  I hadn’t known fully how much until it was there, but then it was disarmingly apparent.  I’m not sure what it is about silence spent with another person, but it can be exquisitely beautiful.  The ego identity gets so caught up when we are in conversation.  In silence, we are much more present, much more simply “here” with one another.  It was one of those luscious moments where time seems to stop and you are just here, simply being.

While we were there in silence together, I typed about a break-in that had happened to my truck this past weekend in San Francisco.  I explained “when my truck got broken into, they took all those things, but they left my photographs I had printed for the magazine and they also left my favorite jade prayer beads.  It felt like even thieves can do nice things.  Even good things come from bad.”  My jade prayer beads I had purchased near Dharamsala in India last year and I carry them most everywhere.  I then typed “I don’t care who they are that stole my stuff and cost me hundreds of dollars, I still have space in my heart for them.”  It was and is very true for me.  About 30 seconds after I typed that I received a text message from a man to whom I sent over $400 for some meditation cushions last October.  He had first delayed me in delivery and for many months has been dodging my telephone messages and email messages.  It was almost surreal how I had just stated my love even for thieves and this man that I had effectively written off as a thief contacted me.  There is something to be said for the power of putting a certain energy into the world.

This morning, I also had a little discussion online about quantum mechanics and how outcome can be affected by observation.  It’s quite astounding really.  Watch this video on the affect of observation on particle physics:  Reality as we think we understand it to be is certainly something much different.  Mind boggling.

These topics somehow seem connected.  Like the electrons in the video that change their action simply due to the fact that they are being observed, so too perhaps human action is changed simply by being seen, by being loved.  And it all arises out of the silence.