Sound and Silence

I have been contemplating why it's especially important that each person finds their own way of expressing spiritual practice and ways of being. People often admire the truly devoted practitioner who is able and chooses to attend a temple on a daily or weekly basis, perhaps even to the point of becoming a nun or a monk. While this is certainly a good thing to look up to, not everyone has the causes and conditions to take on this path.
  We might even try to divest ourselves of things in our life to attain what seems like a simple, austere life, not realizing that every life, no matter what the situation, has an inner complexity. Respecting this complexity and the ways that spirit meanders (instead of proceeding in a linear way) is so integral to developing a respect and tolerance for the diversity of different forms of spiritual practice, as well as one's own unique position in all of it.
   One way of practicing this respect is to go back to this idea of polarity therapy, and to actively practice it. If I am in a busy intersection with lots of noise (both internal and external), I can picture my left hand holding a ball called "Noise" and my right hand holding the ball called "Stillness". Then I can reflect: is one of these completely bad and unacceptable, while the other completely good and holy? What happens if the world suddenly reverts to "total stillness"? Will that make everyone's mind at ease? And is the Noise I am upset about really related to sounds, or is it more about an inner reaction that I can observe instead of trying to "fix" by getting rid of sounds?
   When I evoke these kinds of questions, I start to see that both silence and sound have the same source in mind, and one is not superior to the other. In fact, the only "noise" is the noise my heart makes in getting unduly upset with the sounds, while silence is inherent in noise when I choose not to be upset or disturbed by the sounds. In this way, the busy intersection and the beautiful park becomes places of stillnes.