AGNI AND THE POWER OF SILENCE

After the seminar I moved out of my house, packed my bags, hugged my loved ones tightly and started my journey. Agni gave me a lunch date at his house in Santa Fe, New Mexico on a Friday. So I flied to states, rented a car and got on my way towards him.

I had no plan whatsoever for my journey ahead. I made a reservation at a hotel in Santa Fe for a week and thought I would decide what to do next, after seeing Agni. Being on a journey that is so unknown, to the point where sometimes I have no idea where I’ll be next week or in two weeks for an indefinite amount of time, was very challenging for me in the beginning. In the first month of my journey I kept having mini anxiety attacks whenever I thought about future or ‘what I was doing with my life’ -because I literally had no idea. However having these anxiety attacks about future really pushed me to master my ability to live in the present.

Because I had anxiety whenever I thought about future, I decided I better not think about it. It was just too much to deal with. So I started directing my attention to the present moment to avoid the anxiety of unknown future. And the way I did it was I would start asking questions about today. So I would start talking to myself and say for example: ‘Well dear Didem, you might have no idea where you will be next week but you know where you are today and you actually have more important matters to think about such as what to have for lunch today? Are you gonna go to a restaurant or get a take out and eat in your room? What kind of food do you want to eat? Do you still gonna go for a walk after lunch? Have you even decided yet what do you want to do this afternoon? Well you also need to get gas for the car at some point, have you done that yet? No. Then you don’t get to think about next week yet, you first figure out what to do today and do what you need to do and then you can think about tomorrow or next week or future’.

Once I start focusing my attention on today along with my breath, I realized my anxiety was going away and I was able to actually enjoy the moment. And so I kept using this strategy and I still do. Whenever I start getting anxious about future and what am I doing with my life, I ask myself: ‘Didem first answer these questions: do you know what are you gonna have for dinner tonight? You were going to do laundry today, have you done that yet? Have you done your daily meditation? Or daily walk? Well I’m sorry but you don’t get to think about future before finishing today’s to do list.’ So I go on and go through my day, focus my attention on whatever I am doing or need to do that day.

This ‘one day at a time’ strategy helped me a lot to truly stay and enjoy present. After about six months into my journey, my mind now is naturally focused on this moment most of the time and it is also much easier to bring my attention back to now whenever I am distracted. Hence recently I realized that I don’t really have anxiety anymore even in challenging, stressful situations such as being stuck in the middle of a jungle in Costa Rica (because I misread the navigation and it turned out where I drove was not a road but was just a muddy path leading into the jungle) in the middle of the night, in complete darkness without any cellular connection. The moment my mind started racing ‘oh my god how are you gonna find your way out, you are stuck, you have no connection you cannot call anyone, it is dark, do you have to walk in the dark, what if there are animals, how are you gonna find someone to help?’ -I was able to redirect my attention, breathe and say ‘well Didem you still have a lot of gas, your car’s headlights are working so you can still see ahead and your car is a four wheel drive, so how about you try to turn around and get out first. You’ll worry about what to do next if this doesn’t work.’ And I was able to get the car out of the mud, out of the jungle and back on the road. I did not even need to think about half of the things I was worrying about in the first place. So why worry about not being able to get out of darkness before even trying?

However when I was on my way to Agni, I was still in the beginning of my journey and so I was still not very good at being present and being zen with the unknown future. So the uncertainty of everything was still very scary to me and therefore my mind was desperately looking for some sort of certainty. I hoped Agni would give some of that certainty to me or at least point me towards a direction. At this point the level of trust and confidence I had for my own heart’s wisdom was also very low. I still had this strong core belief from the way I grew up in modern education and society that ‘I don’t know, only a wise teacher knows and I should listen and follow the wise teacher’s directions.’ So I hoped Agni would either tell me to stay in Santa Fe and receive training from him or from someone he knows. Or he would tell me where to go or what to do next. I was still seeking comfort and security outside of myself, I was still searching for answers in another. When Agni opened the door, I looked at him with these seeking and searching eyes.

Agni answered the door with his heart warming smile. He looked into my eyes and the way he looked into my eyes made me feel very seen and known. I felt like he knew me, as if he knew who I was in my essence, as if he even knew my past and my future, maybe even the things I did not know about myself. He had very warm, loving but also very penetrating and wise eyes. Whenever he looked at me, I felt his gaze deep in my soul, in every one of my cells. He greeted me in a very friendly way, we hugged and then he took me inside for our lunch.

During our lunch we enjoyed our food, drank wine, talked about our life adventures and laughed a lot. He never gave me a ‘spiritual talk’, he did not give me any advice, he did not try to teach me anything, he did not point me in any direction, he did not suggest me to do anything. I desperately waited for him to teach me something or point me in some sort of direction, any direction really. Yet he had no such intention whatsoever. When I asked about what kind of trainings I could get, as if he read my mind, he only answered ‘I don’t give trainings anymore.’ And he did not say anything else. He did not tell me to stay or to go anywhere, he did not tell me to listen or read anything. He basically said nothing. Absolutely nothing. He looked at me with loving eyes and only said this: ‘listen to your heart’. I asked him my spiritual name and he wrote ‘Urala -ambassador of pleiades’ on a piece of paper. I asked him what it meant and again he only said: ‘ask your heart, your heart will tell you whatever you need to know’.

At the time I did not understand the meaning, the beauty, the importance and the value of Agni’s silence. To understand, I had to live and see more. After five months of living, experiencing and encountering so many people -some of them being very spiritual, I only now understand the precious gift Agni gave me that day. Now I understand that Agni actually told me a lot without saying anything. Not saying anything but only ‘listen your heart’ was his way of saying =‘you already know, you don’t need to look at me or anyone for answers’, =‘you only need your heart but nothing and no one else’, =‘you are enough for you, trust yourself’, =‘are you aware of the wisdom and answers that reside in your own heart? Only look at your own heart and no one else’, =‘no one’s answer, including mine, is more valuable than your heart’s own answer’.

What better way of honoring and empowering someone? I did not experience or come across any word or sentence or paragraph in my lifetime that is more empowering than his silence. Now I understand how greatly he respected and honored me that day by saying nothing despite his vast wisdom.

Through his silence, Agni gave me the most precious gift in the world that day. He showed me the way towards listening, respecting and honoring my heart. He gave me the gift of the path towards my own inner wisdom, inner power and self confidence. If Agni said ‘you can stay and I can teach you’ that day, I’d stay in a heart beat and I would learn to rely on Agni but not myself. If Agni gave me an answer that day, I would learn to ask him and not my heart, and I would believe that he knows the answers for me, not me. Instead Agni reminded me something far more important that day, he reminded me that I can trust my heart, that I can rely on myself, that my heart already has all the answers I need and that I can follow my heart without any doubts or fears. He had the immense power to be a mirror to my heart and through his silence I could hear my own heart: ‘it is okay, you can trust me.’

When it was time for me to leave, Agni hugged me, pointed my heart and he whispered to my ear one last time: ‘always follow your heart and you will never go wrong’.

Even though Agni did not ‘teach’ me anything that day, I kept learning from him and our encounter in the following months. Most importantly I learned the power of silence. In an age when we are drowning in words, quotes, books where everyone has an advice to give and something to say: I learned how powerful and empowering it is to not really say anything to anyone. I learned that whenever we give advice or try to teach something to anyone, whenever we give our opinion on someone’s way of life without being asked, we are taking their power away from them. Because when we give advice or try to teach, we are giving them the message that they don’t know what’s best for them, that they don’t have the answers but we do (which is a very ego-centric and pretentious approach) which can be very disempowering and even disrespectful.

Everyone has a heart and everyone is hosting God and God’s wisdom in their own heart. Moreover no one’s heart is bigger than the other. Our hearts are the same and they are one. So at the end of the day no one truly knows more than the other. Everyone is holding their own truth and their own answers inside their own heart.

Therefore I learned that one of the biggest virtues is stay quiet. I learned not to say anything or give my opinion unless I am asked. Even in the most cases where I am asked, I learned not to share anything that is not truly coming from my heart. I learned not to dump all the chatter of my mind on people and shout their own heart’s voices down with my own chatter. I learned the most beautiful gift you can give to someone is to be a quiet mirror to their own heart so they can see their own beauty, their own truth and their own answers. And I am eternally grateful for Agni to be a powerful role model for me. What I learned from his silence was way more than maybe all the books I’ve read in a lifetime.

Well to be more precise: I learned to direct myself toward this direction as this is so much easier said than done throughout day to day life. However even though I am not able to do this all the time, or most of the time :), I still embrace myself and point myself in this direction in a very loving way because all I can really do is my best and I try my best everyday.

After I left Agni, I devoted myself to listening my heart but then quickly I realized that it is not necessarily easy to listen your heart. First of all how do you even know the voice of your heart? In a world where our minds are screaming at us everyday and we are so polluted by everyone’s opinions, our strongly rooted conditioned fears, how do you even hear your heart? How do you know it is your heart speaking but not your mind? Or not your past traumas? Or not your fears? How do you distinguish all the noises? Well I understood there is such a thing as the art of listening your heart. I am still learning through up and downs, and many mistakes along the way. But I also learned during this process not to be afraid of making mistakes as they are the crucial part of learning the art of the heart.

There are times when I think my heart is telling me something and then I realize it is my fears. But that’s okay too because from this experience I learn the texture of the feeling or the sound of my fears and so I learn what is not the sound of my heart which brings me closer to knowing what is the sound of my heart. As I listen myself more in quiet, I can distinguish the noises better each day. And so once you set your intention on listening and hearing your heart -then every experience whether it be joyous or painful, grounding or frustrating, leads you back to your heart. As a wise author said ‘I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars’. And so I started loving hearing my heart as it shows me the way; yet I also started loving all the other noises as they all show and lead me back to my heart.

I talked about the beauty of silence, yet I talked way too much again. But all the words are from my heart :)

So I left Agni and set my intention to listen and follow my heart but as I said I was confused. Yet I had no rush and all the time to learn. So I went to a coffeeshop just to chill and while surfing on the internet I came upon this magical place on earth called White Sand Dunes. It was only 3-4 hour drive away from where I was. When I saw the pictures on the internet, my inner five year old child completely took over me and all I could think was ‘I AM GOING TO TUMBLE DOWN WHITE SAND DUNES!’ Dreaming about tumbling down the sand dunes I completely forgot the whole thing about what is my heart’s voice or not. So I did not even think or analyze, I just made my reservation in a hotel nearby and was set to go to see the white sand dunes. I guess sometimes the best way to listen your heart is to give the wheel to your inner five year old :). And so I was on my way to white sand dunes, without knowing that I would find love out of nowhere in the middle of a desert. This is how I met Andrew <3