When I’m weak, I ask.
When I’m strong, I share.
—Robert Mason
Even as a boy, my dear friend Robert was a sensitive filament, registering all levels of existence, near and far. It reverberated in him and made him anxious. He remembers his mother taking him to their family doctor who prescribed a small pill called Quiet World.
Robert and I are in our seventies now and the quiet world, after all these years, has a much deeper meaning. It refers to the ground of being, often accessed through silence, that gives context to trouble and pain and yes, anxiety.
The work of self-awareness, it seems, is a constant practice of re-finding and re-entering the quiet world without leaving the surface world. So we can stay whole-hearted in the deep and open-hearted on the surface.
How, then, do you experience the quiet world? What was your first introduction to it? What helps you return there? How would you describe it and how would you name it? Who would you like to bring there with you?
At this time of life, both Robert and I wear hearing aids. And sometimes, it’s confusing to navigate the settings. On a recent visit, I was helping Robert find the setting he likes best. I asked, “Why this setting?” He said, “Because in this setting I can hear others and I can also hear myself.”
The setting is called Calm One. On a deeper level, Calm One is a profound mental and emotional center from which we can both hear others and ourself. Both are needed to enter the quiet world that lives below trouble.
What, then, is your calm setting? What prevents you from hearing others and yourself? What needs to be lessened or removed to re-inhabit such calm? Can you trace how being open to others and yourself, at the same time, can give you access to the quiet world? And likewise, how can experiencing the quiet ground of being help you stay calm and receptive while walking in the surface world?
Practices help us be more fully here. The way staying open and receptive helps us stay calm. And being calm gives us entry to the quiet world that holds the noisy world together.
Our inner work is not to run from either but to let the deep inform the surface: in our mind, in our heart, and in our relationships—day by day. So that, however briefly, the world can calm down, enabling us to remember and reanimate our eternal kinships.
The work of self-awareness, it seems, is a constant practice of re-finding and re-entering the quiet world without leaving the surface world.
Questions to Walk With
In your journal, describe a time when you couldn’t hear yourself because of the voices of others. How did you recognize this? What did you do to regain the ability to hear yourself?
In conversation with a friend or loved one, discuss the last time you entered the quiet world. What led you there? What did you bring back into your daily life? How close are you to the quiet world now?
The Quiet World, from Mark’s upcoming book, The Path of True Experience: The Art and Practice of a Full Life (May 2027)
My quiet world is one full of bird song. Loud and unadulterated singing. Especially when the nightingale arrives and brings me peace both day and night.
I can tune out when my husband hogs the conversation or professes to be right or even righteous at times. I go to my quiet and calm space in the trees and pretend he’s background noise.
My quiet world evolves when I'm in flow with the brush to the canvas, the pencil to the page, or gazing with nature; in flow with what surfaces.