TALKING this was written by mrs. staveley

"Let us think today about talking - inner and outer talking - and the
harm we do ourselves and others by this mechanical process.
We have an experience and immediately feel the urge to burst
into speech, to translate it into words, to try it out, as it were, on
others.

We have done this so much in the past that we no longer believe in our
experience unless we put it into words. It is not real to us unless we hear
ourselves. Isn't it very strange when you think about it? Surely the reality is in the experience and not in the words I dress it in which inevitably limit and contain it. And yet we believe in words. It is almost a compulsion to talk. With some it amounts to disease. We can see, or
rather hear this in others, but do we hear in in ourselves?

I have an experience. It is mine, unique to me. If I put it into words
I externalize it, limit it, even distort it. My experience is no longer
mine. It is a newspaper or textbook account of itself.

Try to see this: How much is lost, how much is changed, so that I no
longer live my own life but a newspaper account of it. It is dull,
banal, stereotyped.

In Ecclesiastes it is said: "There is a time to speak and a time to remain
silent." Do we know this? Can we sense it? Even when we remain silent
outwardly the talking machine is racing ahead inwardly so there is no
room for a new impression to enter. The work tells us to practice inward
silence even more than outer. Do we try to do this? Do we even know
where to begin? Perhaps not yet. We have to begin with outer talking.

It is very well known that it is less difficult to remain silent
altogether than it is to refrain from speaking about one particular thing. Is there something you very much wish to speak about with others? Try to catch the moment when you fail, when you forget - the sensation of indulging a weakness, the self-justification that follows, the turning aside from any flicker of conscience. Or perhaps by some accident you are able to refrain from outer talking; then watch the rush of words in your inner world. Make the effort to stop, to avert your inner attention to something else. Almost always when one can do this there is an accession of strength. My not speaking (inside or outside) strengthens me; or rather, I keep my strength for myself. I can sense that the compulsion to talk weakens me. Try to do this. It is a very important part of the work."