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    The Silence of the Mind
    The Silence of the Mind
    The Silence of the Mind
    Ebook162 pages2 hours

    The Silence of the Mind

    By Ilie Cioara

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    About this ebook

    A practical book on meditation and enlightenment, a must read for any spiritual seeker. A more poetic Eckhart Tolle; Kahlil Gibran meets Krishnamurti. Ilie Cioara's message is original and unique, as he never travelled to India and never belonged to any traditional school. By practicing the silence of the mind, through an all-encompassing attention, we discover and fulfill our innermost potential of becoming one with the divine spark that lies dormant within us.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Hunt Publishing
    Release dateOct 16, 2011
    ISBN9781846948305
    The Silence of the Mind

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    • 5/5
      Who is Ilie Cioara? How do you silence your mind when it’s spinning out of control in a hundred directions at once? While scanning stores for books on Buddhism, Zen, and other teachings that will allow my life to evolve into one of enlightenment, or as Star Gate fans call “Ascension”, I came across an interesting author, poet, Romanian Mystic, name Ilie Cioara. Ilie Cioara was born in Romania in 1916 and died in 2004, an enlightened soul. His life was an incredible journey of a life-long search to reach a higher level of being; to live his life in an all-consuming spiritual world that freed him from society’s constant ambush that brought fear, stress, guilt, shame, sensory overload, and pain. A world devoid of love, compassion for his fellow man, a world that often brought on emptiness and despair for himself and those around him. Not a lot can be found online about his life, at least not that I have been able to find yet. There are a few good websites dedicated to his writings and books, and there are some beautiful You Tube videos that combine photography and music that will give readers a feel of what his books try to convey. This mystic started out Christian. As his quest for enlightenment moves forward through the years it evolves into more of a zen/buddhist-like belief that merged Christianity and Eastern Philosophy together into one awesome belief system. At this time, four books have been recently translated and published by O Books out of the U.K. My first choice was to purchase “Silence of the Mind”, a short 135 page trade paperback that may be short on pages, but is full of incredible wisdom and advice for any initiate into the world of learning the art of mindfulness and self-awareness. Within a few pages Ilie had knocked my socks off, had my full attention, and had me reading the entire book in one sitting. Topics discussed run through the whole gamut of the self-inflicting horrors of life we constantly toil and struggle through. Fear, joy, love, aloneness, happiness, aging, the destructive “ego”, avoidance, emptiness, pain, and many other arenas that our minds conjure up leaving us confused and out of control. Ilie approaches these common life struggles in small chapters that begin as a poem. Following the poem he breaks the lines down into a page or two of description that will open your mind to realizing how we easily damage ourselves. Ilie helps us learn to expand our minds and hearts into freeing ourselves from these mind aching issues that compress us into a mental prison. Learning about the “ego”, beginning a life of dedication to daily meditation, learning to breathe and to quiet our minds, to let go and focus on what is truly important for our lives and others, is just the tip of the iceberg for what Ilie Cioara wanted to teach us. He tells us to be still, to really listen, to stop living in the past and trying to control the future, by staying in the now. He allows us to seek an existence of calmness and serenity, one of beauty, and to slowly morph our lives into that of a spiritual and passionate existence devoid of expectations; one that is full of acceptance, and one free from close-minded people and materialistic things in life that we do not need in order to be truly happy. This book is a five star read, should not be missed by anyone seeking truth, love, and inner peace. I have just ordered the remaining three books and can’t wait to experience more of Cioara’s incredible wisdom.

      7 people found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Silence of the Mind - Ilie Cioara

    Translator

    Introduction

    This book is addressed particularly to all individuals interested in discovering the Sacred by practicing Self-knowing.

    Through these mirror-poems, written in simple words, easy to understand by everyone, we intend to expose the thinking activity of the ordinary human being, functioning as ego or surface consciousness. This exposure is realized with the help of lucid, all-encompassing Attention – an attribute of the Sacred.

    As the ego is encountered with the flame of Attention, it suddenly ceases its activity – it becomes completely silent. In the peace of the soul or psychological emptiness, a new consciousness appears – as pure Energy – in which Beauty, Truth, Love are reflected as in a mirror.

    All of these are revealed spontaneously, by themselves and through themselves, without any contribution from the knowing mind.

    Such poems – read in a certain way – help us transcend the finite world, integrating us into Infinity. They are unlike any other genre of poetry. Ordinary poems have their inspiration in the limited dimension, where the poet lives. All these poetical creations, through their content, are addressed to fellow human beings living in the same limited dimension and influence them accordingly.

    The countless stylistic metaphors frequently used in overrated poems can only confirm this statement. They have an intellectual, imaginary and sentimental effect, sometimes moving us to tears. But their beauty is only relative, just as all is relative as long as we function from the level of human conditioning.

    Intellectual understanding is and will always remain limited! As such, a literary critic will never understand someone who only expresses into words what he experienced in another dimension.

    All the poems in this volume tackle the same subject: the meeting with oneself, viewed from different angles. In this context, the repetition of certain words is unavoidable.

    But, in Self-knowing words are unimportant. What is important is what we discover behind them, that is, an integration into the reality of the moment. Each such encounter with reality is and will remain unique.

    Whenever one of the poems is being read, the repetition is only of the words. Each time, the experience of transcending from the finite into the Infinite will be newness, absolute freshness.

    Each encounter, performed through simplicity, weakens the egocentric structure that we have built and whose prisoners we are, causing our unhappiness and the unhappiness of the entire world.

    The frequency of the moments lived in this manner will finally demolish the walls of the ego. After this happy event, our being will be led by the Divine Spark within us, directing us through Love, Beauty and creative Intelligence.

    The poems are followed by a prose version, in order to bring more light into the subject and into each life problem it deals with.

    The manner in which the book is written expresses the reality of this experience. Each encounter with ourselves as egos represents a true window towards Infinity, melting us into the Whole, as complete beings.

    Ilie Cioara

    Listening and Watching

    Be still, stop, be attentive – a total attention!

    Neither past nor future, be with the present moment;

    Between you and what you listen to, let thoughts, images

    disappear,

    Be just pure listening, a whole being, boundless.

    The divine instrument – observation – alive and

    crystal clear,

    You listen and watch, outside and inside yourself;

    The whole thinking is mute – a tomb-like silence,

    There are no expectations, no ideal projections.

    All these will create in you a perfect order,

    Body and mind, the whole being, in a direct relationship,

    Able to understand any life phenomenon

    In a certain, real and profound way, as ephemeral as it

    may be.

    Such a simple meeting is pure meditation,

    Practice this all the time, in every circumstance;

    Start and end with a total silence,

    The whole being in harmony – in a timeless state.

    This peace gives you an ever-renewing mind,

    Completely detached from the old, integrating in the

    present;

    Psychologically, you are without center, boundless, you

    are Immensity itself,

    Able to embrace the Eternity of the moment.

    Through these simple meetings, the old man starts to

    crumble,

    A crack appears in the egoic structure,

    Through it, the accumulated energies start to leak and

    disappear,

    They were holding you prisoner from times immemorial.

    The Liberation started thus is continued, in time, until in

    the end,

    When the ego, the sad conditioning, perishes,

    The Spark – the Sacred within us – returns to the Source,

    Sooner or later this is everyone’s fate: total Liberation.

    Here lies the whole secret of knowing oneself,

    Mystery intertwined with spontaneous action;

    The only one which transforms, and finally liberates

    The conditioned being from its degrading ego.

    Always remember that knowledge keeps you prisoner,

    Be quick to understand its unintelligent nature;

    Give all your respect to the moment – meet it with

    humbleness,

    Through it, wonders open into the Infinite world.

    The clarity, accuracy and fluency of this subject, as expressed in verse, is so self-explanatory that writing its prose version seems more difficult and less dynamic.

    Self-knowing is based on the simplicity of listening and watching, both the outside world as well as the inner world – as reactions of the knowing mind. Finally, outer-inner become one single movement.

    The flame of Attention is the instrument which accompanies them, as a lucid flash of pure Consciousness, characteristic of the reality of our being.

    Through this wonderful contact between us and the flow of life, made directly and spontaneously, the knowing mind – as past and future – is completely excluded. Thinking becomes completely mute. The whole mind is in a state of complete passiveness, where we don’t expect anything, as a purpose or an ideal projection. The inner order, the psychological harmony from inside our being creates a natural wholeness – body and mind – an unchanging unity, able to have a direct relationship with any life phenomenon.

    We can call such a meeting: the state of meditation. It can be realized in any life circumstances – when we are alone as well as, for instance, when we find ourselves among a noisy crowd.

    The starting point for meditation is silence – it transcends the whole being into a timeless state.

    The peace of the soul – without being desired or forced, as we have shown earlier – provides us with a new mind, integrating us into Eternity on present moments.

    In this simple state of being, there is no center from which we look outwards and no boundaries which set our limits. We are the Infinite in constant movement, unfolding moment to moment.

    Through these meetings with ourselves, the egotistic structure imprisoning us loses its resistance. Finally, a real crack appears in the shell of the ego, marking the phenomenon of liberation. Simultaneously with this fortunate event – which comes as an unexpected surprise, uncaused by desire or imagination – the fragmented energies of the ego start to leak and fade away.

    From now on the whole being is led by Intelligence, acting through intuitive impulses.

    We must mention that the phenomenon of liberation or Awakening from the tyranny of the personal self is irreversible. It sets us apart from the rest of our fellow beings, by giving us a new outlook on life and a new mentality.

    Sooner or later, each inhabitant of this planet Earth will have to experience this fortunate phenomenon. It represents a turning point in the spiral of moral evolution reached by that particular individual.

    From that moment on, his personal evolution reaches a faster and faster pace, with massive eliminations of fragmented energies, accumulated since ancient times during our association with matter.

    One day, in a moment that no one can foretell, the pure Spark, absolute perfection, will return to the Source of the Sacred, from where it descended millions of years before in order to experience the duality with physical matter.

    Before ending, we need to remind that any advice on spiritual evolution demands that we put it into practice. By practicing it correctly, it will create beneficial effects, both on ourselves as well as on the world in general.

    The whole process of knowing starts and ends with the flash of the passing moment. Let us therefore give the moment all our respect, by encountering it with a humble mind. Only in this way it will reveal the beauty of life to us, as well as the mysteries of the Infinite.

    The Power of Emptiness

    The void or psychological emptiness is a strange

    phenomenon,

    It appears spontaneously, in the pause between two

    thoughts;

    As the old thought ends its course and disappears,

    Its end is the gate, natural silence ensues.

    Insist in being with it, as much as you can,

    The mind is completely silent, we are attentive – a clear

    consciousness,

    All meanings, boundaries disappear – us and the Infinite

    are One;

    Practically, we have a new mind – always fresh.

    Being in the pause – I become infinite!

    It separates two worlds. I leave the limited world

    And enter Boundlessness, through total melting;

    The whole being is calm – a constant sparkle.

    There is no time, no space – just everlasting Eternity;

    I move in direct contact with life, in a permanent present.

    I am Pure Energy, without motivations,

    The

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