When silence speaks

View from our Taos house

I came across some old photos of the house we built in New Mexico, and it really made me nostalgic for the days when I thought I was going to live in an adobe house, or in this case, old adobe barn converted to a house. It was a wonderful place, the old dairy barn from the hippy commune next door, the commune featured in the movie "Easy Rider." How much better could it get? I had the sage brush surrounding me and the Taos mountains looking protectively down upon our little homestead. It was so right, until it went so wrong.

Looking back, I can see the nudges from the Universe, the little whispers that told me it wasn't right, but I allowed myself to be pulled further into a shared dream and I couldn't see my way out of the rose colored room until I ran smack into a wall. Face first. Talk about a reality check. Things went from rosy and magical to downright depressing as our dream house turned into the house that couldn't be built. I began to attach bad feelings to the place, and saw signs everywhere that said "Get out! You don't belong here in this art community." I felt like I was being rejected by the great and mysterious Taos mountain. And maybe I was.

Only in Taos

We ended up back in Colorado, the black hole of my existence (it keeps pulling me back, no matter how far I go or how long I stay away), and a friend told me that perhaps the great mountain that I grew up in the shadow of was even more powerful than the one in New Mexico. Maybe. But I had no love for Pikes Peak, not like I loved the essence of New Mexico...the quirkiness, the heat, the snow, the mud, the environmentalists, the artists, the writers, the movie stars, the sage brush, the ravens and bears...all of it. I was so in love with a place that was more, it was a state of being, and it was me.

I spent years dreaming of going to the land of the lizard, the home of my spirit, and when I made it there, I blew it, pulled into a romance of convenience, of mindless existing, and my spirit stopped speaking. I spent the first year in Taos, wondering where my spirituality had gone, where the guardian spirits that used to walk along beside me, had gotten themselves off to. Everywhere was silence. It was the most beautiful place I could ever hope to be, and my heart sighed every single time I walked out the door of our little rented adobe house. When I looked at the sage, I couldn't help but smile. I was home. But it was too quiet. The animals didn't come to bring me messages, the wind no longer whispered, and the river's babbling was a foreign language to me. What had I done to lose myself in the land where I thought I was going to find it all?

I hated the silence. I hated that the Universe seemed closed to me. I wasn't meeting the right people and nothing seemed to be falling into place. But I refused to listen, refused to give up my dreams of latilla fences and adobe walls. Funny how it all works out and how sometimes we aren't given a choice anymore. I was being pulled away from the land of my dreams and back to a place I couldn't wait to get away from.

I still don't know for sure why I couldn't live in Taos, but I hope all of New Mexico isn't closed to me. I still harbor great fantasies about Earthships and sagebrush and quiet nights full of stars and clean air. I know this uninteresting house we live in now isn't it either...is it? And someday, maybe if I'm ever so lucky, I can return to the land of my heart and spend some small amount of my life hanging out in an adobe house in the middle of the high mountain desert, and maybe I'll even paint a little as I pay homage to the late, great Georgia O'Keefe, who understood and gave in to her love of the New Mexican, desert land.

Now I understand that the silence was the message, and if I had taken the time to shut up and stop looking, to enjoy the quiet and connect to it, I would have found a peace so pure it would have eliminated any doubt I was having about my connection to all things spiritual. For in the silence is the knowing--the greatness of the Tao, the power of the Universe, everything and nothing all wrapped up into one big, beautiful ball of wholeness. In the silence. By searching, I missed what was staring me in the face. And maybe it wasn't about Taos not wanting me there, but about my own closed mindedness, which the energy reflected out and away from such a creative and loving place. Or, maybe my Ego got scared of losing itself in the silence and created a situation where it could gain the upper hand by sending me out of such a spiritual and enlightened space.

One day soon, I will again attempt to venture south into the land where my heart lives, to see how it all "feels" to me now, ten years later. And I will remain open to whatever may come, even the blessed silence, for in that simple meditation of listening to the nothing, I can feel myself as I am connected to everything else. Maybe that is enough.