Entering Silence: An Invitation and a Possibility (Regina Sara Ryan)

We intuitively know that there is a strong connection between silence, prayer, and inner wisdom. There are Hindu teachers who have maintained silence for many years, and Zen masters and Native American elders who communicated wisdom but spoke very little. Hermits and monks in religious traditions have used silence as a discipline to deepen the inner life, and Realizers have said that expansion into the great field of silence is not separate from God. There are many textures of silence such as at sunrise, sundown, and in the night sky. When the mind is busy with inner dialogue, we can take a moment to expand into the silence of the space we’re in, take a “silence bath” and let it interpenetrate our cells. Attention economy refers to forces that work on us and invite and take our attention. Social media is constructed to capture and consume attention so that we buy products, listen to programs, and have opinions influenced. We can look at what this costs us in terms of our ability to appreciate life around us. Gravity is a silent force; trees, mountains, and boulders do not make a sound. Cultivating silence can be a radical stand for uselessness in an age of productivity. The really important things in life are essentially useless. One way to build our attention economy, our personal attention account, is by consciously developing silence. Silence is a doorway to train and use attention. It allows us to sensitize to what is going on in the mind and body, but there is also a way the Divinity works on the soul that cannot be described. A lot of spiritual work is hidden and takes place in silence. Mystics have talked about entering the cave of the heart, the holy of holies, the inner temple. Regina Sara Ryan was the editor of Hohm Press for 35 years. She is a workshop leader, retreat guide, and author of The Woman Awake, Igniting the Inner Life, Praying Dangerously, Only God, and other books.