Some musings on silence, and how we stop the noise!

Karen Sloan July 2023

Mindfulness, meditation and contemplation. Lots of words but what do they mean, really. And where do they come from? We will examine them just a little bit, but more than that, we will have a go at sitting in some silence, in an attempt to open a window you might enter.

Welcome. Firstly, a bit about me. Pastor for 13 years at WDUC, plus scientist my entire working life. Currently doing a spirituality course with Anglicans plus a PhD at UWA. So a mixed bag!

So I started preparing this workshop like an assignment on meditation. And prepared heaps and read heaps, but I suddenly realised, this is a workshop, and meditation is something to experience rather than analyse!! So you have been saved from endless words. And hopefully instead have a bit of fun and get a taste that you might explore further.

But to open I do want to share a few words, in the form of a couple of poems. One from my favourite poet, Mary Oliver and one from Leunig. Poetry can take us to places we might not otherwise go.

Today

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

-Mary Oliver

And the poem from Leunig (get someone else to read)

We pray this day for another way of being:
another way of knowing.

Across the difficult terrain of our existence
we have attempted to build a highway
and in so doing have lost our footpath.

God lead us to our footpath:
Lead us there where in simplicity
we may move at the speed of natural creatures
and feel the earth’s love beneath our feet.

Lead us there where step-by-step we may feel
the movement of creation in our hearts.

And lead us there where side-by-side
we may feel the embrace of the common soul.
Nothing can be loved at speed.

God lead us to the slow path; to the joyous insights
of the pilgrim; another way of knowing: another way of being.

Amen.

Both say something about the benefits of slowing down and maybe being silent. One mentions God and one doesn’t. Yet I believe God is everywhere.

Mindfulness Meditation

So let’s get started.

We are going to look at mindful meditation, or what modern society sees as these practises and then also have a look at overtly Christian practises, although I know that is not everyone’s path. What you will see is there is a continuum and they all have a common base.

We all have hectic lives, and taking time to slow down is sometimes something we don’t do! It’s of benefit whatever our faith journey has been or even if we don’t have one.

What about my own journey.

One of my defining moments was walking some of the Camino in Spain almost 10 years ago, an ancient walk done by millions of pilgrims over the years. All you do is walk, connect with nature, with other pilgrims and listen more intently. To stop, slow down, get into a rhythm and see how marvellous and wonderful it is to be alive was such a gift.

So when I returned meditation was on my radar. But initially I opened myself to the more secular modern version. Not that any of these programs, mindfulness or mindfulness meditation don’t take from a religious tradition somewhere. Mostly they are linked to Buddhism and Hinduism. Although as you will see meditation is linked to all the major religions as well, Judaism, Islam and of course Christianity.

But in modern times meditation has been promoted by Herbert Benson and more recently Jon Kabat-Zinn and focusses on stress reduction, calmness in life, gratitude, and improvements in mental health.

So what is mindfulness meditation in this context.

It’s a practise of sitting quietly, with sustained attention, such that we can to train awareness and self-knowledge and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state. There’s lots of definitions, this is just one. Meditation helps us to still our monkey mind, as the Buddhists would say, the mind that moves from one thing to another, one thought to another. The mind we realise, isn’t quiet and isn’t still. The mind is running around in circles, its agitated, like a cage full of monkeys, full of fears, desires, fantasy, memories and plans and our ego fuels it. How did we go, how are we liked, how am I going to achieve this or that? It can send us slightly crazy, all this inner talk. How do we recognise it and then still it so that we can focus on the moment we have?

That is the question to start with!

Exercises

So we are going to do a few exercises. Just to set the scene, for those who have not done any meditation or contemplation, and I will explain the difference in due course. It may feel uncomfortable and some of the techniques are used both in mindfulness training and in a Christian context. But it doesn’t matter. They are modified from a little book called Sadhana, a way to God by Anthony De Mello.

So the first exercise is to try to be silent. Tricky I know.

Exercise 1 - Silence

So I want each of you to take a comfortable posture...

Close your eyes...

In a minute I will ring a bell and I’m going to invite you to keep silent for a period of 3 minutes.

And I’m going to let you try to achieve it as best you can. But as you are sitting there, just take note of what happens and how hard it may be.

Ring bell – Silence for 3 mins

What happened, how did you go, anyone want to share anything that occurred or didn’t occur! Did you notice thinking all over the place. Did you open your eyes and peek?

Could you stop the thoughts. What things came up?

Sharing..

The experience of people who attempt this exercise is infinitely varied. Most discover, to their surprise, that silence is something they are simply not accustomed to; that no matter what they do, they cannot still the constant wandering of the mind or quieten the emotional turmoil in their heart. Others feel themselves approaching the frontiers of silence; then they panic and withdraw. Silence can be frightening.

Let go again for 2 mins – this time really take note of those wanderings as you sit there.

As the silence grows it will reveal more and more to you about yourself. Or, more accurately, silence will reveal yourself to you. That is its first revelation: yourself.

Was this time slightly more successful or less than before?

Did silence reveal something to you this time that you failed to see before?

What types of things were flitting through your mind!!!!

Maybe nothing more than the fact that your hands are clammy or that you have an urge to change your posture or that you are worried about your health or that job next week, or your kids or mother or mother in law! No matter. The important thing is that you become aware of this.

So the understanding we take from this is that Awareness can only exist where there is silence. We have to find times when we are silent. And once we start doing that, it may only be for a few minutes, we will find its pretty refreshing!!!

But what to do with the thoughts!

So another small exercise

Exercise 4 – Thoughts

Most people have difficulty with distractions during these exercises in awareness. Which I think you guys might have experienced.

So when your eyes are closed and you are observing every thought that comes into your mind, there are 2 ways of dealing with them.

One is to follow them around as a puppy in the street follows any person it comes across, no matter what direction they are moving in. The other is to observe them as a person stationed at their window watches passerbys on the street. This is the way we are going to do it.

After you have done this for a while become aware that you are thinking. And this sometimes stops the thinking. But even so let the thoughts go, as though they are passing you by. Don’t follow them as the puppy would. Look at them as an observer would and let them pass. Or try to anyway.

So let’s do this for 2 more minutes…

How did you go, could you let go of the thoughts or did they follow you.

What about sounds?

Exercise 11 – Sounds

It’s not just our inner thoughts, it might also be the external environment, like sounds. Lots of people have problems with the sounds around them, even if they are in a quiet room. No room is quiet and suddenly the ticking of the clock sounds really, really loud.

Let’s do another small exercise about sounds.

Close your eyes. Block your ears with your thumbs. Cover your eyes with the palm of your hands.

You will now hear none of the sounds around you. Listen for the sound of your breathing.

After 10 full breaths, gently bring your hands to rest on your lap. Let your eyes remain closed. Listen attentively now to all the sounds around you, to as many of them as possible, the big sounds, the small ones, the ones near, the ones that are distant.

After a while listen to these sounds without identifying them ie as footsteps, clock ticking, traffic etc. Listen to the whole world of sound around you as one whole…..

…..2 minutes

It is better to accept the sounds and become aware of them, you will find they become not a source of distraction but a way to move deeper into silence, well that the theory anyway, and it does work!!!

I just want to now do one more exercise which takes this slightly further. And then we will have a break.

Exercise 5: Stillness and Breathing sensations.

Most mindfulness meditation gets the person to focus on something, that helps us let go of the thoughts and focus our attention. Usually we start by

becoming aware of sensations in various parts of your body...(exercise 2)

So let me lead you through that…..

Take up a posture that is comfortable and restful. Close your eyes again.

I am now going to ask you to become aware of certain sensations in your body that you are feeling at this present moment, but you aren’t really aware of. Be aware of the touch of your clothes on your shoulders….Now become aware of the touch of your clothes on your back, then your back touching the back of the chair you are sitting on…. Now be aware of the feel of your hands as they touch each other or rest on your lap… Now become conscious of your thighs or your bottom pressing against your chair… Now the feel of your feet touching your shoes.. Now become aware explicitly of your sitting posture….

Once again your shoulders……your back…. Your right hand…..your left hand… your right thigh….your left thing….your right foot….your left foot…your sitting posture…

Continue the round by yourself… moving from one part of the body to another. You may dwell on parts I have not mentioned. Your head, your stomach.

Important thing is to feel the sensation of each part. Stay for a second or two then move on.

3 mins

How do you feel, relaxed!!! We get out of our head, and into the senses and therefore into the present. When you do this for things around us, like the warmth of the sun, the wind on our face, the smell of the forest, we become alive.

So let’s take it a bit further…

Close your eyes again.

This time go over the whole of your body, starting from the top of your head and ending at the tips of your toes, omitting no part...

This helps with our stillness, which is also sometimes difficult to maintain.

Now move on to the awareness of your breathing. Become aware of the air as it comes in and goes out through your nostrils...

Do not concentrate on the air as it enters your lungs. Limit your awareness to the air as it passes through your nostrils...

Make sure you don’t control your breathing. Do not deepen it. This is not an exercise in breathing but in awareness. So, if your breathing is shallow, leave it that way. Don’t interfere with it. Just observe it.

Each time you are distracted, return to your task, to your breath.

Continue the exercise for some 3 minutes.

How was that? Easier to control the thoughts you might have, or the sounds.

Mindful Meditation Continued

As Thomas Keating, and we will meet him again later, says, we can take a break from ourselves if we sit in silence, stillness and awareness. It’s about awareness of the present moment, and yes even self-knowledge as I said before, about how we are in the world. For when we can see that lots of our thoughts, are based on things that have already happened or things in the future, or only from our perspective, we can learn to control them and live more with more mindfulness and openness and more for others. Control that monkey mind.

So mindful meditation encourages and teaches us to sit in silence and drop those thoughts, to see them and to let me go, let them pass. And by practising this, we learn how to do it in our everyday, to recognise when we are not present and to recognise when our thoughts, are well, just thoughts that can take us down a rabbit hole. Try brushing or teeth mindfully or eating or walking and see how much we are preoccupied.

There are lots of apps that help us to do it, I have loved Headspace but there are plenty..

Headspace is a program and app by Andy Puddicombe, where he introduces you to meditation and mindfulness with a series of 10 min sessions (can be longer), varying from ones on technique to others on how to become a more rounded and more aware person. I love his voice and I loved the guided nature of the sessions, which focuses on the breath as a form of awareness training and are based on his 12 years as a Buddhist monk.

It has always given me a lift and helps me become aware of my activities during the day.

And the benefits are endless. As Rupert Sheldrake says in his book, “Science and Spiritual Practises”, the effect on health and well-being include a reduction in anxiety and stress, heart conditions, fatigue, mild depression and even post traumatic disorders. You sleep better and feel more positive. It has also been shown that the brain can significantly change, increasing grey matter in areas that supposedly decrease with age, and in the quality and type of brain impulses.

So meditation and mindfulness is incredibly helpful regardless of your faith persuasion.

Okay now for a break

Stand up and stretch, mindfully…

And we will have a little walk. Walking meditations are fantastic, a little book by Thick Nhat Hahn, Vietnamese monk and peace activist reveals how wonderful they are. He says we can arrive in the present moment with every step. And bring us into the world with others.

So a little walk.

Walking Meditation

Place your hands in a comfortable position, perhaps hanging at your sides or lightly clasped at your waist. Begin to walk at a slower pace than usual, paying attention to your body and particularly your feet. Notice the sensation of lifting each foot and placing it back on the floor. Feel each step fully. If your mind begins to wander, bring it gently back to the sensations in your body, the feeling of moving through space, the feeling of the soles of your feet touching and leaving the floor.

Go around the room a couple of times

Contemplative Prayer

So I want to say something about the difference between what we have just been doing and Christian meditation or the tradition of contemplative prayer.

Not there isn’t a continuum and some crossover. No matter what your journey meditation and mindfulness is very helpful.

Many people who practise meditation are surprised that meditation or contemplation, and I will explain the difference in a minute, is so much a part of the Christian story. And I know some of you aren’t not in that space, please take what you want from this, and leave the rest.

I firstly I want again to say that Christian meditation has been practised since the time of Jesus of Nazareth, who would disappear and sit in silence for hours. The desert fathers and mothers of the 4th and 5 th centuries, and the great mystics of our tradition knew it as a way of connecting to the God found in all things, as a way of living in the world while being bonded with God’s creative, loving spirit. People like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and Hildegard of Bingen, in centuries past, and Thomas Merton in the 20th century all sought this deep connection through silence. But also the Franciscan and Benedictine communities and the Jesuits have practised it since their inception.

But as Richard Rohr would say we can all be mystics, we just have to take time and listen.

But here terminology is a little different. This type of spiritual practise, one where we sit in silence, is called Contemplative prayer. Rather than meditation as the modern world speaks of it, although clearly the idea is the same.

The classical tradition understands contemplation as a loving quality of presence in which one is open to things just as they are in the present moment, In the Christian tradition contemplation included a reverence for the Divine Mystery, ‘finding God in all things,’ or ‘being open to God’s presence, however it may appear.’ When referring to prayer or other spiritual practices contemplation is classically distinguished from meditation.

My friend Nev, a minister, social justice lawyer, and peace activist, would say it’s like a painting, which is a metaphor used by James Borst. You look at a painting and you describe it, you can talk about how painter has created it, the structure, the form, you speak about it. This is the equivalent of spoken prayer. A second reaction is to think about it. This is compared to mediative prayer when the lips are silent but the mind is active. A third reaction is to try and share the artist’s vision and to let the painting impact upon us. This is the equivalent of Contemplative prayer..

Nev goes on… “Contemplative Prayer for me is about awareness: experiencing awareness, enjoying awareness and deepening the awareness of what we sometimes call ‘ultimate reality’ – that which really counts. Prayer is not a matter of earning or achieving. It is about “seeing” - and from that seeing everything else proceeds.

Contemplation is the cleansing of the lens of perception so that we can see things as they really are”.

So in contemplative prayer, we allow our normal day to day worries and responsibilities to drop away to leave space the God of the universe to remind us we are loved, we belong and we somehow are meant to be.

And here I want to say, the aim of contemplative prayer is not to stay there. The great mystics, always taught that we use contemplation to find the God who we are connected to, but then we go out into the world with that connection. So we live from inside to outside, rather than the other way around, living in the world from this contemplative stance. How can we transform the world without the presence of the one doing the transforming? As Nev so beautifully put it we need both journeys, an inward and an outward journey.

What about the differences between Christian Contemplation and Mindfulness Meditation

What about this question, which I also had, Christian contemplation or mindfulness meditation?

Christian contemplation is more than mindfulness, or an awareness of life. It is an awareness that there is something more to this life, that can be felt, or sensed or discovered in the silence. Its opening ourselves to the spirit of God that can lead us in a new direction. It is adding an extra dimension to all the benefits gained from mindfulness activities. A deep and divine dimension.

As Cynthia Bourgeault says “it’s like putting a stick in the spoke of thinking, so that the whole closed circuit gets derailed and the more subtle awareness at the depths of your being can begin to make its presence known”

The reality of course is that sometimes those with no faith background can be moved to sense a unity or a sacredness that they cannot name. If we believe the spirit is everywhere and in all people, and moves where it will, maybe the fullness of life, the connection people feel, the unity people sense when doing meditation is from a place they don’t knowledge or a place of mystery.

We are all trying not to live from our false self, or a self that is impacted by the craziness of the world but from a deeper inner self, truer self in which we will also find God, if that is how you see and sense it..

I think a bit of meditation and a bit silence is good, whatever its form. I suspect God is not all that fussy!

So enough of that, what about the techniques used in Contemplative prayer. They will help in mindful meditation as well.

Methods of Contemplative Prayer

There are many ways of engaging in contemplative prayer and many groups. The most well know is called the World Community of Christian Meditation (an unfortunate name according to Rev Michael Pennington) based on the writings of the Priest John Main and more recently Father Lawrence Freeman who brought to life the tradition after it had died out amongst Christian followers. They are both Benedictine monks.

Their practise focusses on using a mantra to concentrate the mind, the most common one used is Ma/ra/na/tha, which is the oldest Christian prayer, it means “Come Lord” and is Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. It can be used as 4 syllables Ma-Ra-Na-Tha, so 2 on the in breath and 2 on the out breath.

But other words can be used, the Jesus prayer sometimes is used or even one or two words that have sacred meaning or even the breath itself, much like our mindfulness meditation. The idea is that once settled you say the mantra over and over again, or count the breaths, so that when thoughts come you can return to the mantra increasing your presence and awareness. The mantra or breath is the touchstone for the attention, allowing us to sink deeper into the mystery of God.

Exercise

Let’s try using the mantra. Remember to keep saying it, break it into syllables and time it with your breathing. Again if you would like to use a different word than Ma – Ra-Na-Tha,. you could use love in, love out or something like that. . . You could use the breath, breath in and breath out. Return to your mantra when you recognise you have become distracted.

Let’s try it for 3 minutes

The other great contemplative tradition is called “Centering prayer”, and it goes back to a little book called “The Cloud of Unknowing”, by an unknown author in the 14th century, but also more recently to Father Thomas Keating, and Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who was arguably the twentieth century’s greatest writer on Christian spirituality,

Centering prayer is different from the mantra or breath techniques. It’s regarded as a surrender method. Here we reach silence not by repeating a mantra but by setting the intention to be open to the divine voice. If thoughts or feeling come, simply let them go and if they come often then you return to a sacred word which you will say for a time, but not all the time.

You will need to adopt a Sacred Word or Prayer Word of no more than one or two syllables to focus and carry your intention. It could be a word like ‘Spirit’, ‘love’, ‘peace’, trust, love or an attitude you might want to hold such as, ‘be open’, ‘be still’, ‘be aware’, & etc. This is not a mantra to be repeated over and over but a word to use to refocus your intention when your mind wanders. It is used to enable you to let go of whatever thought that might distract you and return to that ‘naked intent direct to God’, if that’s your understanding.

Every time a distraction comes, you are to go back to the word, or even the breath. But then once the distraction is gone you stop repeating the word. There is no active focussed attention but rather intention to sit in silence. If you catch yourself thinking, you simply let it go of the thought. And as someone said, what happens if that happens 100s of times, it means that there are 100 opportunities to return to God.

In Centering Prayer everything begins in and keeps coming back to intention.

So let’s have a go with this. So instead of repeating a mantra, pick a word, I use this technique in my own inadequate attempts at contemplative prayer and I use “trust love”. Come back to it when you get distracted…

Silence – 3 mins

Which style did you prefer?

Conclusion

So it’s important no matter what technique you choose, to not worry about success or failure. Just get on with it. But I do suggest a regular time, and maybe even a regular place helps. I know Mary Oliver in another of her poems did it under a tree, but clearly sleeping may happen more often than not if you do that!

Does it work? I sound like I might do it pretty successfully, but that is far from the truth, often I am distracted or fall asleep, although not so often now!

But by being intentional we may have more moments when the truth about life becomes slightly clearer. And we can be in the flow of the presence that has ultimately produced us. And live more fully from inside to outside, taking whatever comes. The truth about God is that there have been people who have seen through the glass window and glimpsed something that maybe we can too. But we have to look and listen and slow down.

But again, this is just me. My journey has taken a life time and I am still on it.

Hopefully it helps you. Whatever practise you start.

As Anthony de Mello begins his book, “Awareness”, by saying “Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. . .. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing we call human existence. . . All mystics are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. . .. when we become aware, we can become open to others as well as ourselves and life is more open and transparent.

To quote Anthony de Mello again: “In awareness is healing; in awareness is truth; in awareness is salvation; in awareness is spirituality; in awareness is growth; in awareness is love; in awareness is awakening.”

So a final exercise …

Exercise 6: Total practise – putting it all together – either mindful meditation or contemplation – you choose.

So we are going to have one last go at some silence. I will break it at the end with a bit of music.

As we go through remember, you can use the breath, or the mantra, like Ma-ra-na-tha, or a word like love, compassion, peace, trust, or anything meaningful to you that allows yourself to focus and let go of the distractions.

If you are more inclined to just sit like in centering prayer and use the word only to bring you back or repeat the word over and over, it doesn’t matter, whatever works.

Or even just focus on the breath. If you want that to feel more like a prayer then use the breath as a metaphor for the spirit of God. Breathing the air that is charged with the presence and love of God. In and out. Or breathing in the spirit of God, and breathing out the negative thoughts and feeling, or delivering yourself to God.

Take in life as a gift to be lived and embraced, this morning and all mornings…

Guide them…

Remember, we will start in a comfortable position, do some deep breaths first, then close your eyes.

Do a body scan, from head to toes, pausing at places that may be more sensitive.

Allow yourself initially to hear sounds, initially individually and then as a whole, and then without identifying them, just let them pass.

Then allow your focus to centre on the breath, a mantra or using your sacred word but then allowing that to stop as you sink further into the depth of silence.

Open yourselves to the wider invitation, from God, or from life, that helps you get a sense of peace and wellbeing. A sense of the present moment.

3 -5 mins

End of silence –Music - I Giorno

The End….