When you and the silence become friends, it will speak to you as loudly as anything you could ever hear from the outer world. Soon you will not be able to ignore its voice, which after all is the voice of your own spirit calling to you.
A journey may feel as if it sweeps towards the skyline, but the sound it makes is always within yourself. The seat of transformation is within.
It is not enough to seek and care; to pay lip service to all manner of ideals. Real witness is what counts. It is something to do with leaps in the dark. Recognizing that Truth is hidden. But transformation towards truth is something else. It is practice and diligence.
As they talked together of The Way, the obstacles, the people, the signs ... you felt the great importance of the physicality of the quest. All of them stressed the power of silence: the need to be alone and find oneself in the silence. Moving alone, with silence as the single companion, seems a most profound means to register the natural balance of the world without, and world within.