The silence of meditation is not the silence of a graveyard; it is the silence of a garden growing. There is no deadness in a garden, but in that all-pervading silence an intense activity is going on in the ground which will later take form as buds, blossoms and fruit. So, too, in meditation there is not a blankness, but a rhythmic activity of the Spirit. As the mind exhausts itself the Spirit comes through, and we are in the realm of heaven. True, we are still on earth, our feet are solidly on the ground -- the holy ground of spiritual awareness.
When everything familiar has been sheared away -- either because we have physically separated ourselves from our "home", or because our inner exploration has taken us beyond our old self -- we are presented with a great opportunity for spiritual growth. At such time, we are likely to examine our lives more deeply than we ever have before and be asked to trust far beyond our understanding. T.S. Eliot knew this place very well and expressed it eloquently in his poem, "East Coker":
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all
in the waiting.