Voices
from Silence
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A 'first Friday of the month' series, from October 2024.
Personal stories of engaging in silence by practitioners from the Global Majority Heritage (GMH) community.* |
A quarter of the way into the new millennium the reality for many people from this community is that their lives and stories are sidelined. Their voices are silenced.
So, although people from the GMH may have a spiritual practice of silence, authors in these communities tend to write more about silencing than silence-based prayer.
This new series is a way to bring some voices from the GMH community into the conversations and resources about silence on the Seeds of Silence website.
So, although people from the GMH may have a spiritual practice of silence, authors in these communities tend to write more about silencing than silence-based prayer.
This new series is a way to bring some voices from the GMH community into the conversations and resources about silence on the Seeds of Silence website.
May 2025:
Shawn Ellison, 'Loved into Silence'
Image: generated by ChatGPT
Shawn Ellison,
Oakland, USA |
Listen to Shawn reading 'Loved into Silence'
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Loved into Silence
As a mystic belonging to the Catholic Carmelite Tradition, I have a very nuanced, contemplative understanding of silence. Throughout my two decades of Christian mystical experience, I’ve never sought silence. Rather, I was loved and drawn into silence. The great Carmelite reformer and mystic, St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), in describing the onset of her fourth dwelling place of supernatural prayer, asserted that “love must be already awakened” before the mind can enter into silence.[1] Without a sincere love of God beyond self-interest, silence, as a spiritual goal and idealized state for its own sake, is simply one of the myriad manifestations of the egoic drive for self-fulfilment. Yet, how many aspiring contemplatives fall unwittingly into this cunning, self-satisfying trap in the pursuit of a spiritual life? A spiritual life without love of God as its essential, animating principle is a spiritual life that is destined to conflate mental silence, thoughtlessness, inertia of the personality, or energetic inactivity for contemplative progress.
When the soul comes upon true silence, it is a graced imposition beyond our personal striving, diligence, and determination. For the Carmelite, silence is not acquired, pursued, or realized. Rather, silence is the interior posture of the soul that emerges when love absorbs the totality of attention. With an inexplicable subtlety, God draws the soul into Himself by the power of His own love to gradually induce in the soul a contemplative state of silence that is its mystical participation in the dynamic flow of love within the Heart of the Trinity. St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), a mystical exemplar and Teresa’s spiritual collaborator in her Carmelite Order reform, defines contemplation as “nothing else than a secret, peaceful and loving infusion from God, which, if it be permitted, enkindles the soul with the spirit of love.”[2] Thus, divine love proliferates the soul and immobilizes its faculties into silence—intellect, memory, and will—in order to transformatively fix the soul’s inner eye upon the beatific vision of the Triune One.
As a byproduct of absorptive love—a consuming love, whereby the soul ultimately forgets itself—the eye of the soul is mystically buttressed by a silence that enables it to sustain a single act of pure contemplation. The soul here enters into a mysterious revelation, namely, silence is a servant of love. Hence, without love that culminates in a profound self-forgetfulness in the soul’s vigorous staring upon the Naked Divine in love, silence is merely a sterile divestiture of mental energy. Perhaps the greatest ruse in the human condition is the misappropriation of a fruitless and non-substantive silence of the mind as an authentic, spiritual existence. To love God, and maybe, most importantly, to let ourselves be loved by God, is the most difficult of human attainments.[3] We are loved into the silence of contemplation by embracing the wholeness of our humanity; we are not ushered into it by looking away from ourselves.
Loved into Silence
As a mystic belonging to the Catholic Carmelite Tradition, I have a very nuanced, contemplative understanding of silence. Throughout my two decades of Christian mystical experience, I’ve never sought silence. Rather, I was loved and drawn into silence. The great Carmelite reformer and mystic, St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), in describing the onset of her fourth dwelling place of supernatural prayer, asserted that “love must be already awakened” before the mind can enter into silence.[1] Without a sincere love of God beyond self-interest, silence, as a spiritual goal and idealized state for its own sake, is simply one of the myriad manifestations of the egoic drive for self-fulfilment. Yet, how many aspiring contemplatives fall unwittingly into this cunning, self-satisfying trap in the pursuit of a spiritual life? A spiritual life without love of God as its essential, animating principle is a spiritual life that is destined to conflate mental silence, thoughtlessness, inertia of the personality, or energetic inactivity for contemplative progress.
When the soul comes upon true silence, it is a graced imposition beyond our personal striving, diligence, and determination. For the Carmelite, silence is not acquired, pursued, or realized. Rather, silence is the interior posture of the soul that emerges when love absorbs the totality of attention. With an inexplicable subtlety, God draws the soul into Himself by the power of His own love to gradually induce in the soul a contemplative state of silence that is its mystical participation in the dynamic flow of love within the Heart of the Trinity. St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), a mystical exemplar and Teresa’s spiritual collaborator in her Carmelite Order reform, defines contemplation as “nothing else than a secret, peaceful and loving infusion from God, which, if it be permitted, enkindles the soul with the spirit of love.”[2] Thus, divine love proliferates the soul and immobilizes its faculties into silence—intellect, memory, and will—in order to transformatively fix the soul’s inner eye upon the beatific vision of the Triune One.
As a byproduct of absorptive love—a consuming love, whereby the soul ultimately forgets itself—the eye of the soul is mystically buttressed by a silence that enables it to sustain a single act of pure contemplation. The soul here enters into a mysterious revelation, namely, silence is a servant of love. Hence, without love that culminates in a profound self-forgetfulness in the soul’s vigorous staring upon the Naked Divine in love, silence is merely a sterile divestiture of mental energy. Perhaps the greatest ruse in the human condition is the misappropriation of a fruitless and non-substantive silence of the mind as an authentic, spiritual existence. To love God, and maybe, most importantly, to let ourselves be loved by God, is the most difficult of human attainments.[3] We are loved into the silence of contemplation by embracing the wholeness of our humanity; we are not ushered into it by looking away from ourselves.
1. Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle: Study Edition, trans. K. Kavanaugh & O Rodriguez (ISC Publications, 2020), 113.
2. St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, trans. & ed. E. A. Pears (Image Books, 1959), 34.
3. Elizabeth of the Trinity,The Complete Works of Elizabeth of the Trinity, Volume 1, trans. Alethia Kane (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1984), 180.
2. St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, trans. & ed. E. A. Pears (Image Books, 1959), 34.
3. Elizabeth of the Trinity,The Complete Works of Elizabeth of the Trinity, Volume 1, trans. Alethia Kane (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1984), 180.
Shawn T. Ellison, May, 2025.
Shawn T. Ellison, MA, RN, is a Catholic mystic, contemplative writer, spiritual director, and registered nurse. He is a Religious Novice of the Secular Order of the Discalced Carmelites (OCDS), and is passionate about guiding spiritual seekers to an abiding union with God through grace. By contemplative vocation, he experientially identifies with the mystical lineage of St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and Bernadette Roberts. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and daughter. Lastly, Shawn may be contacted for spiritual direction and collaborative inquiries at [email protected]
* The term 'Global Majority Heritage' (GMH) refers to people whose backgrounds are from non-Western, non-White ethnic and cultural groups, reflecting the fact that the majority of the world’s population comes from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The term challenges the traditional framing of racial and ethnic minorities by emphasizing that these populations are, in fact, the global majority.
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