Matthew W. Sanford

My life has taught me that there is a wealth of strength within us, there is nothing we cannot handle. Life presents it's purpose and beauty in all sorts of ways. The trick is to stay open to one's strength, to not deny or strive to prove it, but rather to simply have it.

If nothing else, my life has taught me one thing: The mind and body that I have are the only mind and body that I have. They deserve my attention. And when I give it, I receive so much more in return. Learning to fall gracefully through one's mind-body relationship is not a submission. One learns to fall gracefully in order to roll.

There is still so much to realize. My experience tells me that the silence within us can be experienced energetically as a nourishing sap. When this happens, consciousness changes shape. For example, I have never seen anyone truly become more aware of his or her body without becoming more compassionate. A mental state like tolerance can deepen into a three-dimensional state of true patience. Nonviolence can become more than a moral principle, it can become an integrated state of consciousness that includes the body. And, of course, for good or for bad, the silence within us also contains the opportunity for choice.

Silence is the word I use to describe the empty presence we experience within our experience — between our thoughts, between each other, between ourselves and the world. We feel the silence when we daydream, when we appreciate the beauty of a sunset, or when the love of our life truly walks away. It is an inward sense, often experienced as a longing or an ache. It is a feeling of emptiness and fullness at the same time. The silence is the aspect of our consciousness that makes us feel slightly heavy. It is the source of the feeling of loss, but also of a sense of awe.

As I wake up to the horror of traumatically induced body memories, I am forced to feel death — not the end of my life, but the death of my life as a walking person. I absorbed death as I watched that young boy having screws twisted into his skull. The silence within which I found refuge was a level of dying.

In principle, my experience is not that uncommon, only more extreme. We all experience different levels of dying throughout our lives — the process of living guarantees it. As each day passes, especially in our later years, we become increasingly aware of our own mortality. If we can see death as more than black and white, as more than on and off, there are many versions of realized death short of physically dying. The death of a loved one sets so much in motion: grief, a sense of loss, tears, anger, a transcendent sense of love, an appreciation of the present moment, a desire to die, and on and on.

Then there are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel your mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.

What about the day we began working not for ourselves, but rather with the hope that our kids might have a better life? Or the day we realized that, on the whole, adult life is deeply repetitive? As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death; a little part of us is dying so that another part can live.

-Matthew Sanford Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence

listen to interview online