A post throughout each week of the month, offering quotes and resources linked to one contemporary author who writes about silence and its role as a spiritual discipline.
In this series, some posts use short quotations but offer links to associated resources in the text below the image-backed quote. In other weeks, the short, image-backed quote are taken from a more extensive quotation from the month's author, given below the image. And in the last week of the month there are questions to encourage reflection on the month's quotations.

Quotes for each week of October will appear below in ascending date order.

Robert Sardello, our author for October, lives in the USA. A former Head of the Psychology department and the Institute of Philosophical Studies at the University of Dallas, Texas and with more than 35 years of research in the field of spiritual psychology, he is well-known as a writer of academic texts and popular books on this subject.
Monday 3rd October, 2022
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​Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness ​(North Atlantic Books, 2008), 1.
Image: Joshua Earle, UK, unsplash.com/@huper

This short image-backed quote is from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Meaning (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 1. You can read more about this book by clicking here. 

Robert Sardello has been a respected academic and writer in the area of psychology - particularly spiritual psychology - and a Jungian psychotherapist for more than four decades. The former Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Dalla, Texas, and co-founder of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, (see here) he is author of six books and more than 200 articles about psychology and spirituality in both scholarly and cultural publications. His book, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness, from which October's quotes will be taken, has been described by Christopher Bamford, founder of Lindisfarne Books (now part of Steiner Books, see here) as 'a breakthrough' that 'modestly, elegantly - and magisterially - brings thirty years of work in phenomenological, soul-based spiritual psychology to a new level' in which 'what was implicit before now becomes explicit'. 

Now in his 80s, Robert Sardello co-founded The School of Spiritual Psychology with his wife Cheryl Sanders-Sardello in 1992. This seems to have evolved into The Heartful-Soul Network, here. Sardello continues to be a sought-after retreat leader and lecturer in this field across the Americas, Europe and the Antipodes.

Other well-loved books by Sardello include Love and the Soul: Creating a Future for Earth (HarperCollins, 1995 - see here) and Heartfulness (Goldenstone Press, 2015 - see here). For those of you who might like to explore Sardello's writings a little more, see here for an essay by Lee Irwin that reviews his work. If you prefer seeing and hearing someone speak, see here for a one hour youtube video, 'Heart Awareness', in the 'Spiritual Conversations' series with Monsignor Don Fischer, presented by the Pastoral Reflections Institute (it gets to the subject of heart awareness, which is central to a spiritual discipline of silence, at around the 10 minute mark). You can find more about the Institute here. 
Monday 10th October, 2022
​Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness ​(North Atlantic Books, 2008), 8.
Image: Jonatan Pie, Iceland, unsplash.com/@r3dmax

The short image-backed quote, above, is an extract from a longer quotation, below, taken from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 7-8. You can read more about this book by clicking here.

'We go away from Silence into the world of noise as if into a vast buzzing of insects, pushed to exist within the permanent irritation of dissonance. Our choosing to live in the noise of our thoughts and emotions — within the incessant clamour around us — happens almost without our recognition. But we are uncomfortable with the Silence. Moments of quiet remind us that we have neglected the core of our being, and we cannot face the implications of this neglect. Anxiety enters. It’s better to keep running away from it.
 
What are we running from? We have a strong tendency to image Silence as the absence of sound. This imagination deprives Silence of being anything in itself and makes it an emptiness, a void in what should be the norm. But Silence was here before anything else, and it envelops everything else. It is the most primary phenomenon of existence, both palpably something and seemingly nothing. Silence is prior to sound and not the cessation of sound. It is already present. If we drop into quietness for just a moment, we feel the presence of Silence as an invitation. … Here we discover the power of re-creation. Here everything comes alive again as if for the first time. This secret and this mystery are so revolutionary that all who aspire to commercialize the world conspire to bury this secret in the noise of the world. And the intimation of the strength of this mystery causes us to run to that noise, though we are not conscious that we are doing so.'
Monday 17th October, 2022
Robert Sardello, Silence:  The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 23.
Image: Gor Davtyan, München, Germany, unsplash.com/@gor918 

​​The short image-backed quote, above, is an extract from a longer quotation, below, taken from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 23 & 25. You can read more about this book by clicking here.

'We must approach Silence in the right way and with the right attitude, which is not the attitude that says look at all the good, all the virtue, all the merit, all the deepening, all the creativity, peace, sensitivity, and ability to be more present in the world that we will get out of practicing Silence. We do not enter the realm of silence for ourselves but to honor, give attention to, care for, give homage to and acknowledge the sacredness of the realm, and to gradually come to know its terrain with a decidedly different kind of knowing. Otherwise, our interest is no more than ego inflation. Silence must be recognised and honored as a holy and autonomous realm. We can easily become interested in Silence for what we think it can give us. But, in the face of its true reality, we are continually humbled. … Silence does not take us out of the noisy world; we are still dragged around by it, but we can be amused by its tactics and its crudeness.'
Monday 24th October, 2022
Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 36-37.
Image: Oksana Manych, Ukraine, unsplash.com/@ksu_mashch

​The short image-backed quote, above, is an extract from a longer quotation, below, taken from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 36-37. You can read more about this book by clicking here.

'The most basic experience of Silence is intimacy. We feel an intimacy with the world, as if we are within everything around us rather than behind or alongside things that we are looking at. This mantle of touch brings us to the living truth of our being. We know who we are in a completely non-self-conscious way. We feel how we, in our individuality, are part of a vast and mysterious world process. And when we cultivate Silence to the point that we are consciously within it rather than imagining that it is in us, we cannot be other than we are. …

​Silence keeps us intimately bound with the truth of our being, constantly conveying to us in a bodily way that our individual and unique presence as soul, spirit, and body intermingles with the world and, at the same time, lives a free and independent existence. Illusion and ego-fantasy begin with forgetting this intimacy.'
Monday 31st October, 2022
Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 53.
Image: Liv Bruce, unsplash.com/@livvie_bruce

​The short image-backed quote, above, is taken from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (North Atlantic Books, 2008), 53. You can read more about this book by clicking here.

The last week of each month in the 'Quoting Silence: A month with ...' series offers some questions to help you reflect further on the month's quotations and images, and how they resonate with your own spiritual journey and relationship with God.

Before reflecting on this month's quotes and images, take time to re-ground yourself in your body.
Perhaps take a few slow breaths, feel your feet on the floor and be aware of how your body feels in this moment.

1) Read back over the this month's quotes and spend time looking at their associated images. As you do so, note a phrase or image that draws your attention. If this is a phrase, you might like to write this out in a journal or on a piece of paper where you will see it regularly. Consider reading aloud several times what you have written to help the words sink more deeply into your heart. If an image resonates with you, let your gaze rest lightly on it for a couple of minutes, allowing it to speak to your heart. Consider using it as a screensaver for a while, or perhaps print it out and place it somewhere that you will see it often.

2) What emerges as you sit with the phrase or image that attracted your attention? Does a new insight or a question, emotion or sensation arise? Take some time to write down and ponder on whatever you notice. 

3) Where can you see hope in the midst of what is emerging in you, for yourself, your neighbour, your community, or the planet? How might this impact your daily life and those with whom you share it? 
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4) In the days and weeks to come, how can you stay open to what you have discovered from your reflections?

Take some time to give thanks for the hope that you have found in this month's quotes and images.
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