7 Days in Silence: The Rhythm Beneath Reality

Entering the Heart: Dropping the Surface of Life

Most people imagine a meditation retreat as a silent sanctuary.
But silence, too, has rhythm.
Music isn’t just sound—it’s silence.
The rests between the notes are part of the melody.

This reflection comes from a recent 7-day retreat guided by Thomas McConkie and held within the Lower Lights School of Wisdom—a community rooted in contemplative practice and adult development, devoted to whole-person transformation and shared awakening.

There’s a common assumption that a retreat is where you go to relax and bliss out. And sure—there are moments like that. But more often, stillness brings to the surface what daily life keeps hidden. The first 72 hours can be surprisingly volatile. As the stimulation and responsibilities of modern life fade, what’s been buried begins to rise—tension, emotion, resistance.

But that’s part of the process.

As the outer layers peel back, something deeper comes online. You drop out of your head and into your body. You begin to move from identity into essence. And slowly, you start to feel the presence of others—not just as personalities, but as something more.

The retreat begins in silence, and for many—including me—those early days are the most intense. It’s like the turbulence a plane hits just after takeoff—shaky, unsteady, uncertain. But if you stay with it, there’s often a shift. The system recalibrates. The body settles. You reach something like cruising altitude—not because the work is over, but because the field starts to carry you.

One of my favorite parts of each day was the morning chanting. We didn’t chant to perform, but to wake something up—not just the body, but the part of us that remembers we’re not separate.

By midweek, it felt like the whole valley was breathing with us. The birds, the rain, the trees, the group field—everything in sync. Time loosened its grip. Something beyond time was pulsing through.

That’s when I began to feel it:
the rhythm beneath reality.

The Rhythm Beneath Reality

That rhythm wasn’t just around me—it was within me.
Not just the arising of each moment, but its passing.

As my teacher, Thomas McConkie—founder of Lower Lights School of Wisdom—shared, drawing from Shinzen Young, it’s one thing to notice what’s arising—but there’s deeper grace in noticing what’s gone.
In watching each moment release itself.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.

Each breath carrying a kind of music.

I’ve never considered myself rhythmic, but something shifted. As we rotated between sitting and walking—hour after hour, day after day—life began to move with a cadence I could feel in my body. In a few of the meditations, something surprising happened: the flow of experience took on a distinctly musical rhythm.

Not just metaphorically—it felt like music. The sensations, thoughts, even the silence began to move like waves in a piece by Ludovico Einaudi—contemporary classical music that’s wordless, textured, and emotionally rich.

The disturbance didn’t disappear. When difficult emotions arose, they did so with just as much clarity as the moments of peace—but they no longer felt like a problem. They were part of the score. Their presence made the stillness even sweeter.

Even eating came alive. In silence, without distraction, the simple act of chewing became a kind of music in itself—flavors and textures rising and falling. Each bite grounded me further into the rhythm of being.

A rhythm not just of experience, but of emergence.
Like an invisible score playing underneath everything.

Grace Doesn’t Arrive—It’s Already Here

My intention going into the retreat was simple: to surrender more deeply—especially in my body. I’ve made big life choices from that place—like stepping away from my job—but my nervous system hasn’t caught up. There’s been releasing, but also tension still held underneath.

Part of me hoped that if I surrendered fully enough, the release would finally arrive. That grace would descend like a gift, and my body would open in response.

But midway through the retreat, a quieter truth emerged:
Surrender isn’t something you arrive at.
It’s something that’s already here.

Grace doesn’t wait for the perfect moment.
It lives in the imperfection.
How you get there is where you will arrive.

Letting go of the fantasy that life will one day be free of disturbance brought a kind of freedom I didn’t expect.

Grace didn’t erase discomfort. It revealed that discomfort wasn’t a barrier to presence—it was part of it.

This is what grace actually feels like.
Not an escape from turbulence, but a rhythm you can begin to trust—even when it’s hard.
A deeper intelligence holding both the tension and the letting go.

This is the turning of the rhythm.
The full note and the rest.
The inhale and the exhale.
The moment that feels like death, and the one that follows—reminding you you’re still here.
That you never left.
That the music of life includes it all.

Trusting the Rhythm—Even When It’s Hard

Even in silence, I noticed it—that subtle efforting. The quiet hum beneath the surface. The part of me wondering what I should be doing, how I should be showing up, what needs to happen next.

Control doesn’t always look like rigidity. Sometimes it’s just a barely perceptible leaning forward.

I didn’t have one dramatic moment of letting go. But somewhere along the way, I realized I already had. A deeper current had been moving in me long before I could name it.

Trust didn’t arrive as a thought.
It came as a feeling—anchored in the chest, warm and expansive.
Not a concept, but a knowing.
Not an idea, but a presence.

This kind of trust isn’t passive—it’s what so many burned-out modern humans are slowly rediscovering, as the false promises of productivity begin to lose their grip.

Since returning home, I’ve been meeting the unknown—not as an abstract idea, but in the real details of life. There’s plenty I don’t have answers for. Trusting it all doesn’t come naturally. It’s difficult. It feels unnatural.

But it also feels right.

Like I’m no longer fighting the current.

I’m moving toward it—not with resistance, but with a quiet yes.
The kind you don’t need to explain.
The kind that feels like it’s already been answered.
Yes. Period.

Living from the Heart: A New Way Home

What I’m carrying back is simple, but not easy:
a trust in life as it already is.
Not in outcomes or guarantees—but in the rhythm itself.

A trust that meets the moment with openness, because something in me knows it’s already whole.

Since the retreat, I’ve noticed something new in how I experience people. Not their words or energy—but the essence beneath it. The quiet pulse of goodness each person carries, even when they don’t see it themselves.

I’m learning to feel for it in the little moments. In passing glances. In conversations. In the space between words—where something unspoken is waiting to be seen.

You don’t need to be on retreat to live this way.

You just need to pause.
To shift your attention.
To wonder what might be waiting underneath.

Try letting go of the performance in just one interaction today.
Say the thing that’s real. Ask the question you actually want to ask.
Especially with the people closest to you.

Essence-to-essence living isn’t a technique.
It’s a remembering.
A way of seeing what’s already there.

And maybe, if we keep looking beneath the surface—of people, of systems, of ourselves—we’ll start to see the whole world differently.

The Invitation

This week, try this:
In one conversation—at work, at home, or in passing—pause.
Listen for the rhythm beneath the words.
Even five seconds of presence can shift everything.

Even in the burnout of our systems—digital and human alike—there’s a deeper signal pulsing through.
The tech worker drained by endless sprints.
The Bitcoiner disillusioned by the system.
The seeker burned out by effort.
They’re all listening for the same thing:
rhythm, meaning, restoration.

We’re not here to control the song.
We’re here to become part of its rhythm.
And if you listen closely,
you’ll find the grace is not in the noise—
but in the rests between.

-Matt