"One day it becomes a pearl"

I went to my power of now meeting. We did an exercise where we sat in silence. The first time was for five minutes and the second was for 10 minutes. I used to hate silence, at night when I was a child when the house was quiet, "he would come", my perpetrator would come to me. For years I could not be in a quiet place, or I would feel uncomfortable in silent moments of the conversation. But now, it is different, because I am different. I love silence and can sit in peace with my self. In the meeting the point of the exercise was to observe our inner voice, what it was saying and doing. I sat in silence for awhile noticing the back ground noise, the people in the group, and my mind was quiet. Than, I thought to my self "Alex has nice shoes", "look at that small chair", and then my mind took off thinking of my book, colors of the room, wondering how other people were doing. So the first exercise did not go too well. The second time we were told to try to stop the chatter in our head, each time and stay in the silence. I was in silence and present for a long time, then I got excited and thought to myself "I am doing it! yeah" and the thoughts came pouring in, I did not even realize it. Then I stopped got back to being present and 10 minutes went by so fast I could not believe it. It is crazy, we must be thinking every second of the day, how sad is that. It is like an oyster daily grinding away at that piece of sand and one day it becomes a pearl. I'm grinding!!!!
Lauren