For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10)

In earlier posts I have written quite a bit about surrender and I have meant to convey that a surrender to silence is also a surrender to God. Since God is something and someone beyond your thoughts and feelings, and someone spiritually living deep within you, a surrender to silence is a way to tune into and “listen” to the life of God in you.

It may sound so easy, but as many of you know, being silent is for most people very difficult. Not only is it difficult to actually sit down, stop doing anything and stop talking to become just quiet. It is also difficult to really experience true silence since our minds chatter non stop.

So, in order to tune into God’s life and the walk he has planned for us, we need to get serious about surrender and serious about silence. My opinion is that through an experience of non-action and silence outside and also within we may be able to connect to our deeper ground of being, which actually is God’s Spirit within us (or you might say, God’s image in us).

Through my novice experience surrender to complete silence is not so much about stopping your thoughts, something very few people are able to do for any significant time, but it is really more about how you deal with or live with your chattering mind. It is about truly accepting, but not dwelling on, the thoughts.

I actually believe Christians can learn something from mindfulness practitioners here, when it comes to how to tackle the monkey mind. One example is to acknowledge thoughts as they appear, but then visualize them as leaves floating away upon a creek, one bye one, then disappearing. I believe that by doing this until it almost becomes a routine, thoughts become less powerful and as a result the mind also becomes quieter.

This choice of silence is not a war on thoughts, but actually an acceptance of thoughts, and at the same time it is a choosing to give less power to them. If you want more information with a Christian perspective on how to become at peace with your thoughts and praying contemplatively you may read books by Thomas Keating (ex. The Way of Christian Contemplation).

Later I will write about a book I am now only mentioning. This is a book, that can be read no matter your spiritual or religious beliefs, that truly changed my life by altering the way I related to my mind. The book is called “The Unthethered Soul” and written by Michael A. Singer. More about this in a later post.

For now the message is: By choosing and practicing silence we may be able to connect deeper. By connecting deeper and getting in touch with the often very quiet or soft-speaking Spirit in our innermost being we will able to live from the inside out. We will be walking into the world coming from a different place so to speak, we become more and more able to walk a walk already divinely prepared. Our lives become a response to God’s life in us!

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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB®, and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.