Another Silence Day

Yesterday, July 10th 2018, marked the 93rd anniversary of the date in 1925 that Meher Baba began the silence that he maintained until his death in 1969. Normally I remember this anniversary and if possible I try to maintain silence from midnight to midnight of that day. Yesterday I plum forgot until I was sitting in Starbucks around 4pm with my granddaughter and happened to notice an email about Silence Day. Oops.

I didn't say anything to my granddaughter but later, when we were walking back home from the mall, to my surprise she asked "Isn't today Silence Day?" Now my 15 year old granddaughter is not a Baba person and knows very little about him. However, she remembers my efforts to maintain silence during years past but I was nonetheless surprised that she remembered the exact date.

She sees photographs of Baba everyday, there are several in the house, and this has helped to keep him in the back of her mind. She spends a great deal of time in her study (which used to be my study) and there are portraits of Baba there. In the photograph shown in this post, the portrait on the right is a long time one and the other on the left is one that I brought back recently from Australia and that I display somewhere there in whatever temporary accommodation I find myself in.

I had the date marked in my Google Calendar on my smartphone but it wasn't set up to send me a reminder, as I thought it was. I've since remedied the situation and also set up a second reminder in the calendar on my MacBook, where previously there was none (neither entry nor reminder). Hopefully next year I'll be ready to observe a day of silence.

The day after writing the previous paragraphs I watched a talk given by Shireen Bonner, the daughter of Baba's youngest brother Adi, in which she coincidentally made mention of Silence Day. She described the difficulties that she and her husband experienced while travelling on that day from India to Bali on their honeymoon while still observing silence. It really brought home to me how disappointing my own failure to observe silence on that day had been. I felt Baba was giving me a gentle nudge, reminding me that I needed to be more more mindful of him. Next year on Silence Day, I'll be 70 years old and I am making a resolution now to never again forget to observe silence on that day.

I also realise that I should watch more videos from the Meher Baba Archives to help me become more mindful of Baba in my day to day life. I watch a great many movies and it would be embarrassing to quantify the amount of time I spend watching them on a monthly basis compared to the amount of time I spend watching Baba-related videos. This link gives some more information about Shireen.

An interesting addendum to my failure to observe Silence Day is that while at the mall on that day, I tried to withdraw around A$250 from an ATM but the transaction timed out and was cancelled. Unfortunately, the amount was still deducted from my bank account and I'm in the process of trying to reclaim the money. It seems that Baba has fined me for my carelessness! Just joking but the ATM incident is serving to remind me of the day as I fill out an ATM Dispute Form detailing what happened.