Teresa of Ávila spoke of the mansions of the soul. In my personal practice, I’ve found (at least one) inner room that I didn’t used to pay very much attention to. It’s not a room of beauty or productivity; it’s not a space where progress and optimization and status count for anything. Instead, it's a quiet, empty space.
This inner room, this sanctuary, feels fully outside of time and all doing, all rushing around, all happenings.
I didn’t know much about this room for a long time; I’d only ever found it by accident, and there are so many other rooms to explore. Sometimes necessity or social programming or other interests kept me occupied busily in other rooms or hallways, but I remembered those accidental visits to this room, and when life was loud, busy, stressful, or just too full, I would try to find my way back there.
Many people may try (with varying degrees of success) to show you the way to that room. However, there are rooms that seem like this one, but are subtly painted in shiny gold that leaves you feeling quite satisfied with yourself for having been there. Those rooms populate pretty much everyone’s inner castle, and can be a dangerous distraction, precisely because the ego finds them so satisfying.
This room is not that one. This room is simple and humble and has nothing to say, especially to anyone else. (This room will only really show itself to you when you’re ready, anyway.) So I hope you can forgive the irony of trying to write about it; it’s an apophatic space.
When I'm in that room, it can take a while to let the quiet become really quiet. I realize how much noise I bring, how many racing thoughts, how much busy energy. After a while, that all settles down, absorbed into the bottomless well of loving silence in this room.
Once I get quiet enough to really listen to that silence, I’m able to notice the sacred pulsing all around. This presence is powerful, deeply alive, and feels primal and prior to any thoughts, sensations, or ideas.
In this room, in that presence, my deepest being can truly catch a breath. I notice how essential it is to take time out of time, to spend a moment in the eternal, to simply be and let nothing be done, to let nothing happen, to be the non-doer of no-thing.
In this room, in this non-doing, I let the presence of God take over without me interfering. When I drop all doing, I feel the expansiveness, openness, permeability, and stillness of everything. I am then able to notice the aliveness of everything around me: when I release my agency, then the agency of all else—everything that is, whether in actuality or potentiality—is much more evident. This moment of de-centering my “self” is powerfully nourishing. When “I” step back, the silence and presence of pure Being rushes in.
“Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.” — Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (1947)
This room is a full emptiness, and it somehow seems like a beautiful abyss. The feeling might be like the silent understanding in the eyes of a good friend. This is not a void; it’s a welcoming womb: a sacred, still space where God gives shape to the darkness. I come to be reborn, renewed, and restored.
In making space for silence, in finding the place of peace, I often find myself face-to-face with something I’ve been running from; and I meet what I’m most longing for. This is one of the paradoxes of human life.
This quiet presence won’t clamor for your attention in the midst of a million distractions. Yet this silence and peace is always there, waiting with patience and inexhaustible love, whenever you come to be with it.
The door is open; the question is, will you step through it?
Invitation to Practice:
Find a few minutes today to sit in stillness, with no goal, no need to do anything, no need to meditate or pray in any way. Just sit, and see if you find yourself in that room. Let go of expectations, and let the silence hold you. Any restlessness, fidgeting, distracting thoughts, etc, are all welcome, just as they are. There’s space for all of it in that room.
Let me know how it goes for you.
Prayer, in case you want it later:
Holy God of holy quiet,
Welcome me into that room
Where all is accepted
And where time and silence merge.
Help me feel the pulsing presence in stillness
And know that, for a few moments,
The quiet is all the noise I need.
After reflecting on what Jane wrote and talking about the concept a bit with some friends, I began to get images of myself lying on the grass outside and gazing up into a cloudy sky or a sky filled with stars…just enjoying the spaciousness and freedom to BE. Thanks for sharing,
Gaylene