On Silence.

Written By Marta Meoli

originally published on substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-179262677

Postscript and introduction:

While I was writing the first part of this chapter for the navigation manual, the postman came to deliver a book I had bought online almost two weeks earlier and had already assumed was lost. It was the autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, “The Story of a Soul”. She has become one of my latest obsessions when it comes to canonized saints of the Church. 

As I flipped through the book, I landed on one of the last pages, a section with several Poems that Saint Thérèse had written. My eyes stopped on a particular stanza, which wasn’t even written by her, but served as a kind of confirmation—one of those synchro-mystical moments that cross our path every now and then:

“In the Beloved, I have the mountains,
The solitary, countless valleys,
Faraway islands, fountains,
The rushing rivers,
The murmur of love-laden winds.
The quiet night,
Which yields nothing to the dawn’s awakening,
The silent harmony,
The sonorous solitude,
The cell that enraptures, that inflames.”

John of the Cross (Spiritual Canticle)

Introducing John of the Cross—Juan de la Cruz—mystic, priest, and 16th-century Spanish Carmelite friar. In this poem, he writes about silence and the (practical and spiritual) need to walk through it in order to reach harmony, union, and understanding with God—you may call it the Universe, Creation, the Origin of All Things, whatever you prefer; to me, it is God—and with ourselves.

Sonorous solitude is one of the most beautiful metaphors I’ve found to describe the weight—and the beauty—of being alone with our own thoughts, and how nothing truly valuable is ever handed to us on a silver platter. St. John of the Cross wrote extensively about silence, the dark nights of the soul, and what it means to live immersed in God’s silence.

Just like silence itself (and this may be why I see and feel so many parallels between these two essences), the nature of God is to remain close and accessible, even when we cannot see or grasp Him.

God breaks silence in two ways: through action and through word. But the only language God (and Nature) truly understands is made of things we cannot speak—only feel.
God is not moved by our words or by what we offer Him; superficial acts do not bring us any closer to Him or to His essence, which is ultimately a reflection and continuation of our own.

“Without love, silence is aggressive. But with love, it becomes a presence that communicates the deepest mysteries no word could ever express.”

The postman ended up delivering me a perfectly metaphorical way into this theme. Because, ultimately, what I hope to do with this chapter of the Navigation Manual is guide whoever reads me back toward their own essence and, God willing, find a glimpse of their divine essence along the way. We need silence just as much to reach the divine as to reach into our own existential mysteries. And I’m certain there are many who have the courage to follow a path that cannot be spoken, only felt.

In rituals and ceremonies, silence has always been a sacred act of reverence and awe—the only possible reaction when the divine reveals itself before our eyes.

In the medieval era, silence was considered a sacred practice and even gained religious connotations. The Benedictine Order promoted silentium as a form of contemplation and approach to God. In Buddhism—especially in Zen traditions—it was also an essential practice, both individually and for the harmony of the community.

Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Socrates, both intellectuals and spiritual figures, saw silence as a path to enlightenment and spiritual liberation: a privileged access point to the mysteries of the world. The practice of “Socratic silence,” a form of silent resistance, encourages us to listen more than we speak.
The emperor Marcus Aurelius, the well-known Stoic, reminded us that silence is a path to inner peace and control of the mind and emotions—a form of inner discipline.

We’re only at the beginning, and I already want to introduce a book I read a few years ago: “Silence in the Age of Noise”. Erling Kagge created, in my opinion, a fascinating and varied compendium on silence—its impact, its forms, the kinds of silence he encountered during his travels and expeditions, and what that silence reflected back into his personal life.

Silence and the abyss have a lot in common.

“Not long ago, I tried to convince my daughters that the world’s secrets hide within silence. (…) They looked at me with skepticism. Surely silence is… nothing? Before I could even explain why silence can be a friend and a luxury far more valuable than any of the Louis Vuitton bags they so desire, they had already reached their own conclusion: silence is great when you’re sad. But beyond that, it’s useless.”

Erling Kagge, “Silence in the Age of Noise”

“We fill silence with our presence.”

The truth is that what we don’t say carries just as much weight as what we do say. Words are often misleading, pulling us into distorted interpretations far removed from the intention behind them.
It has an unavoidable presence we cannot escape or ignore. It forces us to interpret what isn’t being said, to search the spaces between what we feel, the subliminal energy filling the room, the person sitting before us.

Silence is like a fish out of water these days. I feel its essence has been lost somewhere along the way, and many of us can only feel discomfort and urgency to say something, anything. Being silent in moments of crisis is often interpreted not as a pause to reflect or consider but as complacency. Not saying anything is no longer neutral; it’s actually suspicious to many people. One of the many ways things are distorted and rushed today.

It’s clear and paradoxical that silence speaks.
It has a voice you can’t hear but you can feel. And, just like children who talk to the stars without knowing if they’re being heard, we can speak back to it and savor its depth.

It’s in silence that things are created, that answers to our existential questions — and even the mundane, everyday ones — can emerge. Silence is a cosmic center where anything is possible. Silence is everything we remember before we are born. And it’s to silence that it matters we return.

It holds immense potential. It contains everything left unsaid, everything that cannot be said, or everything intentionally kept hidden. The things that are not spoken hover in the realm of potential.

Silence is fluid: it can control, protect, provoke, or honor.
Those minutes of silence we share in honor of those who have passed feel as though words could never carry the same weight or measure of what cannot be said.

“Before starting the lecture, I held a minute of silence. You could hear a pin drop. Everything was still. During the next 17 minutes, I talked about the silence that surrounds us. But I also spoke about something that, to me, is even more important: the silence within us. The students remained quiet. Listening. It felt as though they had missed silence.” E.K

Another Norwegian writer and playwright, also mentioned by the author, goes just as deep when it comes to pressing on our wound around silence:

“Silence accompanies admiration, but also because it has a kind of majesty — yes, like an ocean, or an endless stretch of snow. And whoever isn’t moved by that majesty, fears it. And that is very likely the reason why so many fear silence (and why there is music everywhere, all the time).”
Jon Fosse

Something that constantly surprises me touches right on this point: the inability to live — or coexist — with silence, especially in nature.
I’ve lost count of the number of beaches I’ve visited with bars blasting music that has little or nothing to do with the environment.

To my husband’s great discomfort — he’s a musician with sensitive ears — he searches (almost desperately) for silence in nature, and sometimes it becomes a true mission impossible to find a spot that isn’t being bombarded with music.

Over the years, we’ve developed a theory that all of this is a well-crafted maneuver to keep people moving, drinks flowing — even when the environment around us is asking for pause, rest, presence.
Especially when the environment is asking us to stop and contemplate: music is that one element that changes everything and has the power to steer the vibe of any space. Clearly, contemplative suggestions don’t increase beach-bar revenue.

On the other hand, music without silence would just be a constant crescendo — nothing new, nothing interesting.

“And in the naked light, I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared 

And no one dared, disturb the sound of silence”

Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence

Silence is essential in opening and shaping songs across genres, from the classics of Beethoven and Debussy to pop and electronic music designed to be felt and heard loud and clear. Many songs build up gradually toward a “drop”—the most intense moment, with the strongest drums and kicks. After that, the cycle calms down and starts again. We pause for a second before saying something important.

The brain loves contrast: in a landscape, repetitive or monotonous elements fade away; what stands out are the new, the different, the unexpected. A pause, a moment of silence, is perfect for creating anticipation, like that deep breath just before the peak of tension in a movie scene that keeps us glued to our seats.

A History of Silences

I think of our ancestors, those who lived before television, radios, cars, and trams. How quiet and contemplative their nights must have been. By the 19th century, with industrialization in full swing, people’s relationship with silence changed dramatically. The noise of factories, bustling cities, and rapid technological advances gave rise to a new appreciation for quiet, tranquil spaces. Writers and poets like William Wordsworth (UK, 1770–1850) and Henry David Thoreau (USA, 1817–1862) found silence in nature—the real, and soon-to-be only, refuge from the chaos of modern life.

Long before that, in the earliest days of humanity, it was in silence that we observed, communicated, and learned. There was a time when only our attention, gestures, facial expressions, and sounds had meaning. Silence wasn’t the absence of anything; it was space to listen closely. It was a matter of survival.

Throughout history, silence has also revealed itself as a symbolic force of resistance, power, and expression. In ancient Rome, the Damnatio memoriae—the condemnation of memory—was a punishment that involved erasing all traces of a person who had committed particularly severe crimes: traitors and enemies of Rome. What makes this punishment especially macabre is that it was applied only after death, making it far less transparent and far more petty. If the Senate or the emperor disliked someone, their name would be erased, and their statues repurposed.

Though it was a rare and unofficial practice, tracing it today is nearly impossible: if fully applied, we wouldn’t even have an idea of how many people were erased from history and collective memory. A well-known example is Emperor Geta, son of Septimius Severus and brother of Caracalla, whose face was erased because of his brother’s crimes. The only evidence of his existence today are Roman coins that survived, showing him alongside his father and mother.

Here, silence takes on a more fluid form, where what isn’t said—or must be silenced—sends a message of power and control. The Roman Empire may have tried to dominate silence and weaponize it; yet in doing so, it revealed how memory defies concealment, which only makes it more powerful.

But silence isn’t always imposed. Mahatma Gandhi, also mentioned in a chapter of Yogananda’s book (who met him personally), in his struggle against British colonial oppression in India, used non-expression and hunger strikes—a more tangible, material form of silence, in my view—as a strategy of moral resistance. The words Gandhi didn’t speak replaced the need to lie, an act of nonconformity against the situation.

In Portugal, during Salazar’s regime, many people survived thanks to silence. Some refused to speak publicly or lie; others dressed in black, staged hunger strikes in protest, or helped others quietly behind the scenes. Silence became that universal language capable of bypassing censorship and being understood by all, with a kind of shared reverence and understanding.

The names that were erased speak as loudly, if not louder, than those that survived. A good reminder that history is always told from the perspective of the victors—much more complex and political than we often imagine.

On our journeys in search of silence, we’ve always had to juggle things to stay truly isolated, surrounded only by the natural sounds of the world—no cell towers in sight, away from speakers, main roads, and local parties. During the 2020 pandemic, which forced us to stay home, away from beaches and forests, my husband and I went one afternoon to Nazaré to see the giant waves.

Despite some police pushing us to keep distance from each other, we managed to find a good spot and were awestruck by the dark, dense walls of Nazaré’s giant waves crashing against the rocks and the lighthouse. It was my first time witnessing the waves there, and it opened up a profound silence within me. The surfers looked like tiny figures in the midst of it all. The waves seemed ready to swallow them whole. The ocean is enormous, disproportionate; taking a board out there borders on madness.

I think, deep down, these are men and women seeking to connect with the divine and with themselves in their most wild and primal form, because Nature—in all its facets—is one of the rawest and harshest expressions of life on this planet. Nature carries a majestic and intimidating presence. In its company, we feel fragile and small, while simultaneously aware of our own strength and insignificance. It’s unpredictable, uncontrollable, and it opens a space for a depth inside us—a depth we often avoid, afraid of falling into the abyss.

Surprisingly, it’s much closer to home, in the Azores, that I found a silence unlike any other. It’s so dense, profound, and ancient that it feels almost tangible, taking a form of its own. It’s a true ruler of its domain, surrounded by an equally deep ocean that reinforces its majestic essence. 

For me, silence takes the shape of a deep ocean, the color of the waters around Pico Island—dark blue, reflecting the cosmos and the universe, a hermetic principle made visible before our eyes. It’s God, both father and mother, revealing one of many facets here. And because we only find these facets in the depths of our own silence, the pursuit is always worth it, even if it requires taking boats or planes just to glimpse this essence—and our own depth.

Erling Kagge climbed Everest and crossed deserts in search of silence and inner peace that he couldn’t find in the city. Jon Fosse wrote that we fear meeting ourselves and confronting our own depth. I agree completely, because it’s a confrontation that can knock the ground from under you.

We try a thousand ways to distract ourselves and escape this puzzle. We spend hours trying to fill a void, consuming to put things inside us that really need to come out. The truth is, we weren’t made to consume constantly: something has to come out, whether through art or any other form of expression, or this finite bag of ours starts to overflow and could explode at any moment. The most spiritual things aren’t inherently spiritual: writing, dancing, painting, singing. They’re expressions of our essence, right here.

We let random stimuli enter our reality, becoming part of the circle of thoughts freely roaming in our heads. We do our best to avoid disconnecting from the outside world—a task in itself—and to be alone with the silence that has always lived inside us. There’s a heightened sense of presence when we allow silence to seep into our cells. We’re completely alone with ourselves, surrounded by our ideas, thoughts, dreams, and fears. We become more aware of our breathing, the internal hum of our organs, and how our body feels. It’s a practice of presence, recognition, and sovereignty.

This quest for silence can be seen as a path toward God (who inhabits this majestic, sometimes frightening space), always leading us through inner journeys. That’s why mystics—I mean the wise, the true gurus, who are one and the same with multiple faces—don’t seek God’s words, but a glimpse of His face, reflected in inner silence and fragmented into this plane. Words are deceptive, unsatisfying, and insufficient to describe experiences from other dimensions. They can be distorted simply by being subject to interpretation and the context of another.

The symbolic “face” of God leaves no room for mistakes—it’s possible that His presence is so imposing that there’s nowhere to hide.

“All you ever wanted
All you ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm”

Enjoy the Silence

Depeche Mode

It’s impossible to explain life in words. It has to be experienced and felt. And the truth is, life becomes so much richer and more detailed when we give space to our emotions, allow ourselves to be fully present in moments of contemplation, and surrender to both its beauty and its harshness. Silence occupies a far more important place than words. It is in silence that God speaks to us.

Silence is just a bridge in the sense that, the moment we manage to quiet both external and internal noise, the soul becomes capable of hearing the inner presence—or the divine presence—which cannot easily be perceived by the senses. Our ego stops being in control because it relies so heavily on the senses and the logical, rational work of the mind. Other parts of us, subtler and unconscious, take the reins and open doors to paths we haven’t explored within ourselves.

Mystics understand that words no longer convey anything, which is why, with eyes closed or open, they seek silence as much as possible. One of the books where I had the chance to learn this is Autobiography of a Yogi, the story of Paramahansa Yogananda and his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. 

In the book, Yogananda presents silence not merely as the absence of noise, but as “that inner state in which the mind becomes still and stops being distracted by the outside world.” In that silence, we begin to navigate toward ourselves, and in the reflection of our questions, we meet God—the presence of the Divine within us, which mirrors itself like a fractal, everywhere.

The idea is that, in the process, this encounter becomes a direct experience, not an intellectual one—because only after passing through the storms and contortions of silence can we truly experience the divine presence within. In Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda doesn’t limit himself to describing his experience of silence. Yoga is a proven science, which is why it reached the West and spread with such certainty: it passed the scrutiny of modern science and affirmed its practice as “scientifically validated.”

Encountering the face of the Divine is not a mere side effect; it complements the practical side of controlling the mind (which lies) and vital energy. Yogananda’s technique, Kriya Yoga—which he learned from his guru, tracing back to Babaji—is presented as a practical path to bring attention inward, away from the senses, to the precious, silent core of our consciousness.

We don’t need to practice yoga to reach inner silence. It’s always available, patiently waiting, no matter our practice or religion. I heard this idea: the role of science is to observe phenomena demonstrable through our senses, and it has been confirmed in many ways. For example, Kriya Yoga practices focus on controlling breath and vital energy: because breathing is directly linked to our mental state, when breath calms, thoughts and physical sensations also calm. This has been proven to help with anxiety, panic attacks, and stress. It’s not a cure-all, but it does help create stability and a sense of presence.

When the practice becomes comfortable, when silence becomes essential in daily life, we can even arrive at the same conclusion Yogananda subtly guides us toward: the experience of God is unique, personal, and not subject to or limited by external beliefs. This practice leads us to the essence of who we are, away from the eyes of the world and external beliefs, from the dogmas of religion or science. On this note, his guru Sri Yukteswar wrote a short but deeply insightful book, The Holy Science, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the metaphysics of religion and the essence of all faiths.

This is why I believe that, in an utterly noisy, stimulating, piercing, and often chaotic world, silence is a powerful weapon. I believe our world leaves very little space for quiet moments—which in turn makes inner silence even more complex and difficult. 

As I’ve written about intuition and the way systems are structured to dilute it, this state of the world is both deliberate and systemic. When values are built on consumption and speed, with no time to waste, silence promotes the exact opposite. 

It seems that nowadays, we must keep rowing against the tide to find ourselves again.

For me, writing about silence inevitably brings thoughts of God. I’ve thought about Him since I was little. I used to wonder where He lived, where He was, and it didn’t take long to realize that He was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was as if I could feel Him but never touch Him—very much like silence itself.

In my mystical experiences, I’ve encountered some of His facets. I’ve seen the face of the Mother, felt Her energy in a place so deep and majestic that the only image that comes close to describing Her presence is a mix of the dark blue of the ocean and the deepest, starriest sky—the same feeling of comfort and reverence in the face of a depth capable of swallowing me whole. Perhaps it’s because I’m Portuguese that images of the sea and its depth come so naturally to me; it has always felt like a kind of safe place. I see myself in these deep waters, my own essence navigating and losing itself here, a drop in the ocean. It’s there that I find Her, in that dark, boundless, endless place.

Beyond being a truly ethereal weapon against modern disconnection, silence is immensely practical. It’s incredibly useful for solving problems, finding new angles, seeing things from fresh perspectives, and, to paraphrase Erling Kagge, “discovering answers to the intriguing puzzle that is ourselves.” 

“Beethoven understood that when we expose ourselves to silence, our mind and thoughts expand outward. Miles Davis, the trumpeter and poet of solitude, understood the same thing.” E.K

How often do we find our best ideas while doing the simplest, most mundane tasks—washing dishes, showering, walking, or taking the dog out? For me, anything involving water (even washing dishes) is halfway to cleansing me metaphorically and letting my thoughts flow. It’s a form of active silence, a moving experience of connection. Loose ends circulating in our minds get a moment to be heard. While performing these automatic tasks, the ego is off guard and the mind is disengaged. We create space for the unconscious to speak a little louder, to show us the blind spot that remained hidden while we were actively thinking.

In his reflections on silence, Kagge also raises a fascinating point about its role in art. More than that, he highlights how silence is a natural consequence of observing a work of art. It becomes the only way to contemplate it, a symbolic mirror of our own tastes and preferences. We fall silent when confronted with a great piece of art because it’s in that silence that we find the “words” to comprehend the grandeur of what is being expressed. A picture is worth a thousand words.

In this sense, art has much in common with nature; it can make us feel small, make us question and reconsider our perspective, without exchanging a single word. They keep revealing themselves, yet so often remain incapable of conveying everything within us. A great artwork reflects the artist’s ideas, mood, questions, and fears. By simply observing it, we use its references as a mirror for what lies inside us, and its existence becomes a bridge leading to silence and all the magic that state brings.

Silence is both external and internal. We can live outside and inside it.

After these mystical (and somewhat practical) reflections on silence, I’d like to finish with some more direct thoughts, from my own ongoing experience and learning. There are no existential questions whose answers cannot be found within. Each of us is the greatest mystery of existence, and the pleasure is in uncovering layers, one by one, without wanting all the answers at once. We can turn things around however we like, but it doesn’t take much reasoning to understand the true value of silence and the simple joy of disconnecting from the world.

Gradually, with practice, we take more and more pleasure in our own company, creating a safe space within ourselves. Silence is personal and intransmissible: no one else will have the same experience, because it is a journey that each of us must take, much like the Hermit in the tarot. There are no tricks or magic formulas. The wise do not walk their path entirely in darkness, but they do not carry a light that illuminates everything at once. The lantern they carry is not meant to dispel the darkness, but to remind them that this dark place is fertile and profound, and that the light they need appears when they take the next step and dare to go a little further.

For me, it also reflects the importance of having a guide, something to maintain coherence and stability on this journey. Seeking silence for its calm and steadiness is incredibly valuable as a practice that soothes the nervous system, but personally, I believe its power lies in its ability to help us find answers to questions that can only be answered when we have the courage to face the depths. In the end, we feel stronger and more confident when we are able to discover the answers ourselves.

We can get on a plane in search of the quietest place on Earth for a fully immersive experience, or we can sit on the floor at home and give silence a chance, while trains rush by and buses accelerate. The world won’t stop; it’s just a matter of deciding where we want to begin.

Referred here:

Marta Meoli
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