As a lifelong Quaker, I have a deep relationship with silence. But it's not really the silence, per se, but the deep listening that the silence potentially invites and enables. There are those in Quaker circles who argue that the goal is to exist all the time in a state of deep listening, which means that you're listening in every conversation, during every song, in line at the DMV. Silence is only the training ground, it's not the goal. The goal is learning to listen.
I've also been in gospel choirs, and there is nothing more divine that I've ever personally experienced than a soloist who has the training and vocal chops to offer themselves up as a vessel. What a joyful noise! And it exemplifies the other goal of Quaker worship, which is to learn how to offer yourself as a channel for Spirit into the world.
I've never personally understood the philosophical dedication to self-erasure. Why would all of this glorious manifestation exist if not for us to attend to and participate in it?
Oh Asha, I totally agree. I'm not Quaker but I'm in the meditation world, and in particular, the Buddhist world. Often I feel like the desire to quiet the mind is translated as putting a pillow over one's experience to mute it. In the teachings, it seems like all of our experiences--our thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc.--are seen as manifestation of Truth but not Truth itself. Of course, the learned people would might say that this is a misunderstanding of the instructions (I'm not sure. I'm not a learned one). But whether this "muting" is correct or not, it's very present. As you said, it's a self-erasure.
For me, I want to roll in life's experiences. I want to taste them, breathe them, vibrate them. I can't get enough of how amazing it is to be part of this Mystery. Even my most painful experiences (and I've had a lot), are divine. I may not like them but I would never want to get rid of them. It would feel like I lost part of myself.
I'm like you. I use silence as a training ground. It's a respite so that I can be present at other times. Silence has it's own beauty but it's not the only beauty. I treasure my silent times and my noisy times equally.
This is a good observation that I haven’t heard elsewhere. I’ve thought of something similar when I hear of these young men committing violence with guns - maybe they are too alone, too much in silence and need to get out to concerts, play drums or guitars and jump around with hundreds of strangers and friends in mosh pits. Too much of anything can be unhealthy, even silence.
The ranking of silence over sound rests on a dualism I distrust, in which spirit is purer than matter and the ineffable outranks the effable. Essentially the mystical version of masculine over feminine, ascendence over on the ground or even in it or under it, mountaintop quiet over marketplace (non commercially but instead primarily meaning amongst the people) mess of human intimacy and its attendant expressions.
I love this conversation about the dualistic view of silence over noise. I've had a similar conversations about nature. I've heard people say that they need time in nature to reset. By "nature" they often mean that they want to be in the woods, by an ocean, in the desert, or at the very least, in a garden. And it's true--those places are lovely and it's a little easier to reset there. But isn't all of the earth nature? Aren't our buildings and cars and schools and hospitals ultimately from the bounty of Mother Earth? Why is metal less "natural" than wood? If one thinks that "nature" is not touched by human hands, then where on earth will you find that??
I don't ask these questions as a theoretical debate. I ask them because I want to experience everything as nature, to live in the lush abundance of Mother Earth. I don't want to be dualistic and think that "this is nature and that is not". I know that your article was about silence and noise but I see this same dualism everywhere. Thank you for saying this out loud. I'm still trying to find my voice in my Substack and I haven't had the clarity or skill to name this out loud yet.
I'm sitting here in a café eating a homemade biscuit with my coffee. It is de-lish, but yes, white flour and probably bad fats and I could have chosen the wholegrain scone. Oh well. It reminded me of my Grandma, who was a quiet woman who made a lot of noise whenever she cooked, pans banging, keeping time with her singing, or when she killed a chicken for supper, a certain sqwak and her soft apology, then deathly silence, or when Grandpa would come home drunk. She was loudest in the latter, both remonstrations, then tears, then reassuring words to all of us. In fact, years before I was born, she made so much noise about the his drinking that he agreed to sign their farm over to her as sole owner after he was caught gambling acreage away. Today, though, with respect, Rob, I just experienced your substack as high comedy! I laughed out loud, interrupting the silent study of my fellow biscuit-eaters staring into our hand-computers, searching for meaning. I couldn't help it, because you wrote things like:
+ So the meme’s genealogy runs like this: Spanish mystic to Trappist monk to New Age poster to the imaginary mouth of Rumi. The internet borrowed a glamorous Sufi to sell a piece of austere Christian metaphysics, because “silence is purest” plays better in an ecstatic desert than in a monastery down the road from the Aspen ski lifts.
+ I do not believe that the Goddess is trying to say something really important in the silence between bird songs, but the stupid birds keep interrupting.
+ Every apostle of wordlessness arrives lugging suitcases of words.
All true, all hilarious. Undoubtedly, you entertained Goddess and made her proud. Mil gracias!
Tracing that quote back to Keating is the best part of this, and your own field backs you harder than the essay lets on. Traditional dignity has no category for formlessness. A planet gets judged entirely by where it stands in the material world, what sign, what house, whether it can actually act from there. There is no purest position outside the wheel.
And Mercury, the planet of speech, takes his exaltation in Virgo. The god of the Word is strongest in the sign of craft and the body and the unglamorous detail. Not in the void. In the workshop.
Your descriptions of these writers is refreshing and I agree with you. Little can beat the sounds we love, look forward to, and need to hear. i can't tell you how much your Pronoia book has helped me over the decades, helping me see the world in new light, with fresh eyes. You are a gift to us.
I love this! I am a noisy person. Without even opening my mouth, my aura is whooping it up and my eyebrows are having an entire conversation. I have spent years feeling ashamed of my loudness, but the sure fire way to know something is wrong with me is when I go quiet.
Maybe it’s the sounds in the silence we are ment to listen to, to remind you there’s more than you.
If you spend all day barking, your bark is no longer an alarm, it’s an annoying noise that becomes drown out into the ether, and no matter what, no one will pay attention to the call when there’s actual danger.
So perhaps the lesson is to sit in the discomfort of the silence 🤫 and notice the difference between the sounds that of actual progress productivity vs alarm and fear.
What if we can have both? What if we can keep and know the silence of spirit - the idea of that empty space between the electrons in physics - but realize that spirit is manifest here on earth only in our messy/glorious/ Beautiful Noisy creaturely lives? Thomas Moore elaborated on this difference in Care of the Soul ( 1992). The focus of western religions has always been on the transcendent - we can call it the spirit level - but the immanent, feminine dimension has been diminished, glossed over - we can call this the soul level. It's time for the feminine. We don't want to get rid of the masculine but without a vital, active, functional feminine side in our external and internal worlds, suffering occurs.
In my essay, I said several times that sound and silence both have importance in our lives.
For example, I say: I’m not belittling silence. I treasure contemplative practice and the ability to still my mind’s constant chatter. I’ve spent my entire adult life cultivating the discipline of listening deeply rather than always broadcasting.
I love both silence and sound. Silence gives meaning to sound, and sound gives meaning to silence. They define each other.
As a lifelong Quaker, I have a deep relationship with silence. But it's not really the silence, per se, but the deep listening that the silence potentially invites and enables. There are those in Quaker circles who argue that the goal is to exist all the time in a state of deep listening, which means that you're listening in every conversation, during every song, in line at the DMV. Silence is only the training ground, it's not the goal. The goal is learning to listen.
I've also been in gospel choirs, and there is nothing more divine that I've ever personally experienced than a soloist who has the training and vocal chops to offer themselves up as a vessel. What a joyful noise! And it exemplifies the other goal of Quaker worship, which is to learn how to offer yourself as a channel for Spirit into the world.
I've never personally understood the philosophical dedication to self-erasure. Why would all of this glorious manifestation exist if not for us to attend to and participate in it?
Oh Asha, I totally agree. I'm not Quaker but I'm in the meditation world, and in particular, the Buddhist world. Often I feel like the desire to quiet the mind is translated as putting a pillow over one's experience to mute it. In the teachings, it seems like all of our experiences--our thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc.--are seen as manifestation of Truth but not Truth itself. Of course, the learned people would might say that this is a misunderstanding of the instructions (I'm not sure. I'm not a learned one). But whether this "muting" is correct or not, it's very present. As you said, it's a self-erasure.
For me, I want to roll in life's experiences. I want to taste them, breathe them, vibrate them. I can't get enough of how amazing it is to be part of this Mystery. Even my most painful experiences (and I've had a lot), are divine. I may not like them but I would never want to get rid of them. It would feel like I lost part of myself.
I'm like you. I use silence as a training ground. It's a respite so that I can be present at other times. Silence has it's own beauty but it's not the only beauty. I treasure my silent times and my noisy times equally.
This is a good observation that I haven’t heard elsewhere. I’ve thought of something similar when I hear of these young men committing violence with guns - maybe they are too alone, too much in silence and need to get out to concerts, play drums or guitars and jump around with hundreds of strangers and friends in mosh pits. Too much of anything can be unhealthy, even silence.
The ranking of silence over sound rests on a dualism I distrust, in which spirit is purer than matter and the ineffable outranks the effable. Essentially the mystical version of masculine over feminine, ascendence over on the ground or even in it or under it, mountaintop quiet over marketplace (non commercially but instead primarily meaning amongst the people) mess of human intimacy and its attendant expressions.
This speaks to my experience through the ups and downs of my living.
Love this! What’s a Selah without the surrounding sound??
I love this conversation about the dualistic view of silence over noise. I've had a similar conversations about nature. I've heard people say that they need time in nature to reset. By "nature" they often mean that they want to be in the woods, by an ocean, in the desert, or at the very least, in a garden. And it's true--those places are lovely and it's a little easier to reset there. But isn't all of the earth nature? Aren't our buildings and cars and schools and hospitals ultimately from the bounty of Mother Earth? Why is metal less "natural" than wood? If one thinks that "nature" is not touched by human hands, then where on earth will you find that??
I don't ask these questions as a theoretical debate. I ask them because I want to experience everything as nature, to live in the lush abundance of Mother Earth. I don't want to be dualistic and think that "this is nature and that is not". I know that your article was about silence and noise but I see this same dualism everywhere. Thank you for saying this out loud. I'm still trying to find my voice in my Substack and I haven't had the clarity or skill to name this out loud yet.
I'm sitting here in a café eating a homemade biscuit with my coffee. It is de-lish, but yes, white flour and probably bad fats and I could have chosen the wholegrain scone. Oh well. It reminded me of my Grandma, who was a quiet woman who made a lot of noise whenever she cooked, pans banging, keeping time with her singing, or when she killed a chicken for supper, a certain sqwak and her soft apology, then deathly silence, or when Grandpa would come home drunk. She was loudest in the latter, both remonstrations, then tears, then reassuring words to all of us. In fact, years before I was born, she made so much noise about the his drinking that he agreed to sign their farm over to her as sole owner after he was caught gambling acreage away. Today, though, with respect, Rob, I just experienced your substack as high comedy! I laughed out loud, interrupting the silent study of my fellow biscuit-eaters staring into our hand-computers, searching for meaning. I couldn't help it, because you wrote things like:
+ So the meme’s genealogy runs like this: Spanish mystic to Trappist monk to New Age poster to the imaginary mouth of Rumi. The internet borrowed a glamorous Sufi to sell a piece of austere Christian metaphysics, because “silence is purest” plays better in an ecstatic desert than in a monastery down the road from the Aspen ski lifts.
+ I do not believe that the Goddess is trying to say something really important in the silence between bird songs, but the stupid birds keep interrupting.
+ Every apostle of wordlessness arrives lugging suitcases of words.
All true, all hilarious. Undoubtedly, you entertained Goddess and made her proud. Mil gracias!
Tracing that quote back to Keating is the best part of this, and your own field backs you harder than the essay lets on. Traditional dignity has no category for formlessness. A planet gets judged entirely by where it stands in the material world, what sign, what house, whether it can actually act from there. There is no purest position outside the wheel.
And Mercury, the planet of speech, takes his exaltation in Virgo. The god of the Word is strongest in the sign of craft and the body and the unglamorous detail. Not in the void. In the workshop.
Your descriptions of these writers is refreshing and I agree with you. Little can beat the sounds we love, look forward to, and need to hear. i can't tell you how much your Pronoia book has helped me over the decades, helping me see the world in new light, with fresh eyes. You are a gift to us.
I adore your qualifications on the over-used jargon of silence. Thank you so much.
I love this! I am a noisy person. Without even opening my mouth, my aura is whooping it up and my eyebrows are having an entire conversation. I have spent years feeling ashamed of my loudness, but the sure fire way to know something is wrong with me is when I go quiet.
You are the best. I truly love how and appreciate how you challenge some of these assumed notions! Thank you.
The Sound of Silence.
The Sound of one hand.
Silence
“Silence is the language of God,” attributed to Rumi.
Soundlessness is not silence.
Silence is a deeper awareness
that sound penetrates.
Silence is a canvas,
a space where sound reverberates.
The cells open,
absorb the world,
become the sound.
Birdsong.
Waves crashing.
Rain falling.
Wind singing.
Mozart's Piano Concerto.
All are heard
when the mind is silent.
Listening—
without judgement, without fear—
the notes enter,
reverberate through the body.
No listener.
No sound separate from me.
I am the silence
embodying sound.
Maybe it’s the sounds in the silence we are ment to listen to, to remind you there’s more than you.
If you spend all day barking, your bark is no longer an alarm, it’s an annoying noise that becomes drown out into the ether, and no matter what, no one will pay attention to the call when there’s actual danger.
So perhaps the lesson is to sit in the discomfort of the silence 🤫 and notice the difference between the sounds that of actual progress productivity vs alarm and fear.
This reminds me that we require sleep and wakefulness and dream state to thrive.
And as you know, dreams are crammed with noise and action and adventure.
What if we can have both? What if we can keep and know the silence of spirit - the idea of that empty space between the electrons in physics - but realize that spirit is manifest here on earth only in our messy/glorious/ Beautiful Noisy creaturely lives? Thomas Moore elaborated on this difference in Care of the Soul ( 1992). The focus of western religions has always been on the transcendent - we can call it the spirit level - but the immanent, feminine dimension has been diminished, glossed over - we can call this the soul level. It's time for the feminine. We don't want to get rid of the masculine but without a vital, active, functional feminine side in our external and internal worlds, suffering occurs.
In my essay, I said several times that sound and silence both have importance in our lives.
For example, I say: I’m not belittling silence. I treasure contemplative practice and the ability to still my mind’s constant chatter. I’ve spent my entire adult life cultivating the discipline of listening deeply rather than always broadcasting.
I love both silence and sound. Silence gives meaning to sound, and sound gives meaning to silence. They define each other.