Only silence,
Thomas Merton said,
Can reach that dimension of reality that is too deep for words.
He also said,
Silence has many dimensions.
It can be a regression and an escape,
A loss of self or it can be presence,
Awareness,
Unification,
Self-discovery.
Negative silence blurs and confuses our identity,
And we lapse into daydreams or diffuse anxieties.
Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we are,
Who we might be,
And the distance between these two.
Hence,
Positive silence implies a disciplined choice and what Paul Tillich called the courage to be.
In the long run,
The discipline of creative silence demands a certain kind of faith,
For when we come face to face with ourselves in the lonely ground of our own being,
We confront many questions about the value of our existence,
The reality of our commitments,
The authenticity of our everyday lives.
Let's take these words into our own silence to see if we can't move beyond any negative experience of silence to be with it in its fullest positivity and possibility.
In this silence,
Can you discover those questions about the value of your existence that Merton speaks of,
The reality of your commitments?
Can you feel the authenticity or lack thereof in your everyday life?
No wonder what for so many could mean a releasing of stress and doingness,
Just being quiet.
It can also mean something overwhelming,
For in silence,
We must also face what we may have been neglecting.
Merton continues,
When we are constantly in movement,
Always busy meeting the demands of our social role,
Passively carried along on the stream of talk in which people mill around from morning to night,
We are perhaps able to escape from our deeper self and from the questions it poses.
We can be more or less content with the external identity,
The social self,
Which is produced by our interaction with others in the wheeling and dealing of everyday life.
In the silence,
We are challenged to be with ourselves,
To drop the social self entirely.
Now,
Who am I?
If you are sharing an awkward silence with yourselves,
Perhaps it's not working yet,
For there is no such thing as awkward silence,
Just being awkward in the silence.
Let go of the awkward.
Put down the mask.
Just be silently with yourself.
What you first hear in that silence may be the noisy screams of the social self pleading to not be let go of,
But you can let it fade for now.
And in real silence,
In the positive silence,
Open to an experience of the real self that arises,
Let us be in this silence and use these words from Merton to help us arrive there.
There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing precisely because it is so silent.
It can't be spoken.
It has to remain silent.
To articulate it,
To verbalize it,
Is to tamper with it,
And in some ways to destroy it.
How does it feel to be in this silence?
A silence that is perhaps your own,
But it might be argued,
Also belongs to all people.
It is my silence.
It is your silence.
It is our silence.
It has no location because it is not a place.
It is an indwelling aspect of identity itself.
How does it feel for you to experience your identity in this place without place,
In this aspect of yourself that has no location?
Merton shares,
If we are afraid of being alone,
Afraid of silence,
It is perhaps because of our secret despair of inner reconciliation.
If we have no hope of being at peace with ourselves and our own personal loneliness and silence,
We will never be able to face ourselves at all.
We will keep running and never stop.
In silence we don't just confront ourselves,
We become ourselves.
So continuing with this meditation,
Not as you listen to it,
But as you go about your day or evening or days ahead,
Feel its fragrance with you.
Know that that quiet is always there,
Not something we find in reality,
But a foundation before reality even exists.
We walk with it,
We talk with it,
We use it,
And perhaps even at times it uses us as well.
Merton continues,
In silence we face and admit the gap between the depths of our being,
Which we consistently ignore,
And the surface which is untrue to our own reality.
We recognize the need to be at home with ourselves in order that we may go out to meet others,
Not just with a mask of affability,
But with real commitment and authentic love.
Can you be with yourself in silence?
And without needing to think or plot,
Just listen and transform.
Can you feel through your conscious connection with silence,
Being in the process of your becoming?
And Merton reminds us,
When we live superficially,
When we are always outside ourselves,
Never quite with ourselves,
Always divided and pulled in many directions by conflicting plans and projects,
We find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do,
Saying things that we do not really mean,
Needing things we do not really need,
Exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.
Consider that right now in this silence is your most creative self.
Consider that this silence is a soil,
Harboring seeds of answers to questions yet unasked,
Of ideas without containers,
Of love without affection.
Recognize that you are not plugging into silence,
But that you are plugging silence into the depths of inner life,
Of consciousness,
And through this connection a divine creativity is being cultivated.
Be in your creative silence.
Some final words of warning from Thomas Merton.
The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence,
The peace of solitude which is necessary,
To some extent,
For the fullness of human living.
Not all men are called to be hermits,
But all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally.
When that inner voice is not heard,
When man cannot attain to the spiritual peace that comes from being perfectly at one with his own true self,
His life is always miserable and exhausting.
For he cannot go on happily for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul.
If man is constantly exiled from his own home,
Locked out of his own spiritual solitude,
He ceases to be a true person.
He no longer lives as a man.
He becomes a kind of automaton,
Living without joy because he has lost his spontaneity.
He is no longer moved from within,
But only from outside himself.
