SILENCE
Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation - Thomas Keating, OSCO
I focus on silence because there's a shortage of it in our modern age. We’re bombarded with noise: the incessant droning of both foreground and background information vying to invade our awareness most waking hours of the day. Sadly, many of us have developed an unhealthy addiction to this constant stream and in the few moments we have each day where we find ourselves free from the bombardment, we proceed to fill in the blanks with our own commentary - most of which is just repetitive, unconscious droning about the past or future. We zig-zag through a maze of thoughts about places, people, successes, failures, hopes, and fears - normally a recitation of the past or an expectation of the future. We unconsciously inhabit a mental reality completely isolated from the one place we might happen upon God: the present.
The other animals who share this planet don’t seem burdened by this proclivity. Both their instinctual processing and inductive knowing appear to exist in the subconscious brain and act upon the present as needed and only as needed. In other words, dogs can learn to sit and, once trained, will do so on command. They have stored an inductive memory that is pulled to the foreground anytime it's needed. They do not, however, reflect upon how they came to have it, how they manage to recall it, why they were taught it in the first place, how they might improve upon it, how much longer they'll be called upon to do it before they graduate to shake or lie down, or what will happen if they become too old and feeble to perform it.
For better or worse, this capacity is part of what it means to be human: the drawing of both past and future into the present in an effort to grow. We investigate how we might learn from what has happened to leverage what's happening to the benefit of what will happen.
As far as it all goes, this isn't a bad thing. We hold within us the chance to experience the unfolding of time, the slow realization of a destiny God wants to show us, and a living faith that both are part of a fabric God crafted into a beautiful, immutable tapestry at the dawn of the world. We run into problems when we doubt this destiny or try to bend it to our own designs, for our own, private benefit.
Unfortunately, this describes almost everyone who's ever lived. When we do this, we become something other than what we really are and begin to adopt false ways of being. Dogs, unable to draw upon past or future, will never be anything other than what they are. We, on the other hand, plot, scheme, manipulate, dominate, betray, and even kill due to a twisted sense of self, an ego, that fears both the past and future and, as such, seeks to privatize the benefits of growth for its own, personal security and preservation. We looked at the past, projected it into the future, and forgot who was standing with us in the present. And like Peter, we began to sink.
How does silence relate and can it provide a remedy? First, the repetitive, unconscious recitations we subject our minds to are the food that nourish our false ways of being. Once put in the service of our doubts and personal ambitions, they serve to preserve the ego by magnifying the harms of the past and underlining the need for ever-increasing security against potential future harm. This insecurity distorts our awareness of who we are to the point we identify with the ego construct we've created and mistake it for ourselves. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Jesus spoke of this often. He said those who long to save their lives will lose them. What we customarily regard as life is, in fact, nothing more than layers of falsity we use to insulate ourselves. Since our ego constructs seem to us ourselves and their fruit our lives, we must lose them as Jesus said. They must die for the true self to rise from the ashes. With silence, we calm the frenetic noise that feeds the false self and begin the process of cutting off its life source.
The second benefit involves the renewal and cultivation of the real. If animals are ever-present because they have no concept of the past or future, God is ever-present because for him all moments are synchronous. He’s simultaneously in the past, present, and future. With our limited perception, however, we can only experience him now. If we’re willing to do this, to quiet our internal commentary, our presence becomes grounded in the presence of God.
In this grounded state, we submit ourselves to the light of Christ where, as Paul wrote, “everything exposed by the light becomes visible, and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.” In receptive silence, we cultivate a genuine experience of God, with the power to transform our shadows into light. This I-Thou orientation is pure being, grounded in the eternal now. It’s God’s native tongue, speaking silent, transformative words in the depths of our being.
Ultimately, quieting the mind drives away the forces that keep us enslaved to death and draws us near to the light that truly is life, to the One whose light slays our false ways of being, illuminates who we really are, and raises it from the dead.