Many of the world's religions believe there is one simple path that leads us towards God.
It's been at the core of the Catholic mystical tradition for centuries.
But outside religious settings, it's almost disappeared.
It's called silence.
My name is Father Christopher Jamieson and I'm a Benedictine monk.
Daunting as it may be, we all need silence.
When we enter regularly into silence, we start to see things with greater clarity.
And especially, I come to know myself, and I come in touch with that part of myself,
which is the deepest part, my soul.
Many people's lives are so full of busyness and so full of noise
that they're in danger of this really important part of their lives dying away.
Silence is something that people today avoid, or even fear.
Contemporary life is lived at high speed.
Our busy culture prevents us being still,
so we don't look deep inside ourselves.
Life would be transformed for the better if we could embrace silence.
Last year, I took on a challenge to take five people and convince them that their lives could be changed by silence.
I knew little about the volunteers, except that all of them were hoping that silence might provide answers to some big questions in their lives.
Hey, you look so smart in your kit.
Carrie is 29 and works in advertising.
She's the only member of the group who started out this experiment as a firm believer in God.
I don't want to turn round when I'm 65 and go all I did was have nice cars and party.
For me, the meaning of life is about what God wants us to do, not about what I want me to do.
And it's trying to find the answers to that every day.
Trish is 40 and lives with her family in Coventry.
I'm a busy Malick mom. I've got two children. I'm a part-time teacher, part-time radio DJ,
Jack of all trades, master of learn. Yeah, I just, I'm busy, busy, busy.
Trish wants to make up her mind about God.
I've had a special faith for 36 years and now I don't know what faith is.
Helen is single and 50.
In the recession she lost a high-powered job as a human resources director
It's very important that I take stock now.
I've been on this planet for 50 years
and I intend to be on it for another at least 50 years
and I want to make sure that I'm living a good life
and getting the most out of myself and the stuff around me.
John is 54 and twice divorced. His life revolves around his two successful
businesses, a luxury car hire firm and a consultancy for technology companies.
But material success hasn't made John happy.
I want to find Rebecca Tenement.
that has eluded me. I've travelled all over the world, I've opened businesses and run
businesses in Japan and America and I've looked for it all out there in the big wide world
and it's not there.
David, who's 30, works in a restaurant in Glasgow
and lives with his fiancée and his one-year-old daughter.
Oh, you don't want to press that big one.
Oh! There's your baby.
And I do believe in the soul, and I do believe that there's more to this life than meets the eye.
It's now an opportunity for me to stop.
You know, to find out the logistics of...
The centre of their journey would be eight full days spent in silence at a specialist
retreat centre.
But I began by inviting the group to spend a weekend in my own monastery,
worth Abbey in Sussex.
I live here with 20 other monks and I wanted the group to learn what silence means to us.
Day to day, we have silence built in at a very practical level.
We have periods of half an hour each morning and each evening,
set aside for silent personal meditation.
And at night, from nine o'clock at night to eight o'clock in the morning,
we have the greater silence, as it's called.
The Christian mystical tradition has always seen silence as a vital way into the depths of the human person.
And that if you want to be deeply connected with yourself and deeply connected with God, you must spend time in silence.
I'm a bit Christopher and I'm delighted to meet you and you are I'm John Tranall
Lovely to meet you.
And you are?
Carrie.
Carrie, nice to meet you, Carrie.
Pleased to meet you. I'm Helen.
Helen, nice to meet you, Helen.
This is Father Luke.
Hi, lovely to meet you.
Good to meet you, Father.
Thank you.
Joel?
I should have put it down the other side.
David, the fourth member of the group, had told us he wouldn't arrive until Sunday morning.
He couldn't get time off work.
As we gather at this table to eat this meal, we ask you to bless our nourishment and to bring us one day to love's eternal feast in your kingdom, through Christ our Lord.
Not long after they arrived, we took them into supper.
A meal in silence is quite natural for us, but not for our guests.
It was like walking into Planet of the Monks.
I had a preconception of kind of weird geeky men, sort of librarian types,
walking around churches and praying.
And when I walked into Worth, it was pretty much that.
Having a meal with monks is not something you do every day of your life.
It was a bit surreal. The whole thing was a bit surreal.
You just think to yourself, hang on a minute, I'm now sat down in a monastery with monks, breaking bread.
We did.
I could do with a man like you.
Well, no, I mean cooking.
Sorry.
We do have signs.
Later on that first evening, I gathered the group together.
This was my first chance to find out about their religious beliefs.
I am not religious, I am anti-religion,
because I believe religion has caused more problems in this world than it has solved.
I've heard people say that.
say, I've seen the light, and I've looked for the light,
and I've never seen any light.
And I'm interested in why people like you have seen
something or have heard something that I can't get in
touch with.
That's me. Thank you.
So I'm a challenge.
I don't know if I believe in anything, to be honest with you.
I was confirmed, I went to Sunday school, I did all that sort of thing.
My belief is in myself.
I have to believe in myself, otherwise everything else falls to bits around me.
I am a Christian, and my relationship with God ebbs and flows.
I guess that's probably similar to most of us, but...
I was an atheist for a couple of years, about three years ago,
and I didn't feel like my prayer and my meditation was working at that point.
I didn't feel like I was getting anything back.
And I guess it hounded me, the whole idea of what we're all about.
I was brought up as strict Catholic, a very strict Catholic,
Hail Marys and our fathers.
You know, I lost my father and that's when my faith went with it.
So, you know, a kind of, you know, I do believe in God, but I've just, my relationship is
just disintegrated because he sort of died really suddenly.
I just, you know, I just don't know why my dad had to suffer.
you know and he believed in God and we went to church together and you know I
just I'm just angry not angry hang you know I can control it I'm gonna pinch
you I just I just everything you know I've lived by a code all my life and
then all of a sudden you know it doesn't make sense anymore it's not didn't seem
relevant
Thank you. Thank you for being so very open and honest about it.
I'm all right, I'm all right, seriously, I'm together.
What we're trying to achieve is not to create the sense that this is a sort of steeple chase,
but rather gradually that the silence is something to welcome and to embrace.
If you're ready to be silent, and to embrace the silence at a deeper level, then that's the right moment for you.
The very simple outline of the project is, silence is a gateway to the soul.
and the soul is the gateway to God, and that's the beginning, the middle and the end of it, really.
But having said that very simple statement, it's a lifetime's work to arrive at the silence
that leads into the soul, that leads to hearing the voice of God.
But you can make, you can make, you know, in all seriousness, we find that people even
coming here on a 48 hour retreat can make an amazing start on that to an extent that
they would not have dreamt possible. So don't feel you've got to put anything off.
For the whole of the next day, I asked the group to follow the daily monastic timetable
centred around silent meditation and prayer.
Thanks for watching!
Our first community prayers are at 6.20 in the morning.
Go within these gates giving thanks, enter these talks with songs of praise.
This is followed by a period of silent meditation.
Second community prayers are at 7.30.
I've done more praying in the morning than I've done in the rest of my life.
I didn't know what prayer really was.
I didn't know who I was supposed to be talking to.
And a part of you thinks, I want out. This is not who I am.
Watching these grown men chant quite slowly and very repetitively was incredibly difficult to get my head around.
I was getting quite anxious myself because I was thinking, this is so alien to me, I've never experienced anything like it.
Then finally, it's time for breakfast.
It was important for the group to understand why entering silence can be painful and can lead to unexpected places
when people
into silence, they often think this is going to be wonderfully refreshing and a bit of
a spiritual bath and a tonic. But the reality is very different. What we meet if we spend
times in silence is eventually we bump into our deepest selves and we find that in us
there are very mixed motives. We do not always do the right thing for the right reasons.
So the monastic tradition says the goal of the silence is to achieve purity of heart.
And that means recognising the mixed motives and starting to address them.
And then we can make progress towards purity of heart.
How many of you are scared as to what you'll find at the end?
Because I'm a little bit nervous about being too silent.
Because you just don't know what's going on.
The still stuff that's coming in from all sorts of directions,
from my past, from yesterday, from last week, just all sorts of stuff.
There isn't a sort of yellow state of stillness in my mind.
And I don't know whether... I don't know what that would be.
The word, perhaps, it's worth introducing,
a word which relates to what Helen's saying,
is that in the Catholic monastic tradition,
the purpose of all this,
both the purpose and the means, is purity of heart.
And that what we discover, and this maybe is what Tricia's afraid of,
is to discover that I do not have a pure heart.
Yeah, it is, because the business of purity of heart is profoundly connected to seeing God.
Namely, if you ain't got a pure heart, you can't see God.
And that sounds very, very challenging, because when am I ever going to have a pure heart?
What do you think? When you realise that, then you've got some very, very basic decisions to make.
But do I actually want to have a pure heart?
That's the first thing. Do I actually truly want to have a pure heart?
For the rest of the day, I invited the group to immerse themselves
in periods of complete silence.
It would be their first experience of what I hoped
would become part of their daily lives.
You might be aware of noise around you or distraction.
You actually look at those noises or distractions or thoughts.
And you look at them and you say, right, there they are, now put them to one side.
So it's like a preparation of this work of preparing yourself to hear God speak, they're
trying to sit in that deep silence in the soul where God is speaking to you, staying
there for as long as you can, a bit like holding your breath underwater, how long can I stay
there in this...
There's a shift in you. You feel something is going on.
You don't know what it is, but what is initially uncomfortable
then starts to become slightly familiar.
Through that chatter of thought and through that kind of haze,
you start to get glimpses of peace, if you like, nice, peaceful spots.
And you think, well, this isn't too bad, actually. I can understand this.
First time I went into silence, it was a very bizarre experience for me, to not have any stimulus as such, to the degree that we have all just come from, to go into absolute silence.
My ears found it hard to adjust to.
As the day progressed and we had small bursts of silence,
I realised, wow, there might be something in this.
You start off thinking, oh, you know, council bills,
oh, yeah, the kids' school, they're all like,
these ideas that thoughts are coming into your head and then you get to a level
where you you're completely still and that is a very very strange place to be.
By the time the sixth and final prayers of the day came around, at nine in the evening,
being in the monastery was making an impression on non-believer Helen, too.
The whole experience of being in the church for me has been a revelation.
I can't tell you why. I can't tell you that I was thinking of anything in particular,
but it was highly emotional for me.
It moved me in a way that, I don't know, according to the question, why was I moved in that way?
It's the silence, it's different quality to it. It's a wholly different feel and mood.
And I felt great after it.
And I've never experienced anything like that before.
So, yeah, that's quite good for day one, really.
Up in Glasgow, David was still hours away from finishing his shift at the
restaurant.
I'm getting hot.
Yeah, I am.
I'm getting hot.
While the rest of the group had been meditating,
David had been working flat-out.
You have to work days on your own where you're the only manager.
And that's hard because you're constantly on the go.
And at that point, you're talking, you're doing 15, 16, 17 hours.
Straight through where you're not even sitting down,
eat your dinner, you're grabbing something in you.
The following goes, it's getting to you,
you're not seeing it take me an hour,
eating a bowl of pasta.
The next morning, he set off on the 400 mile journey to Wirth, even though he'd have to
return to Glasgow that same night.
Hello, my friend.
You're David.
I am.
David, lovely to see you here.
You've made such an effort to get well done.
come in please you're very welcome well we've been we've been we've been
anxiously waiting for your arrival this is Helen this is David
I think it could see you.
And this is part of the Lukas at work.
Thank you.
It's very nice to be enjoyed.
David did have just enough time to experience something of the silence in the monastery.
And I discovered what had prompted him to start this journey.
OK, it's quite a big thing for me to do this, you know, so far out of my comfort zone.
I mean, there was a few years ago the death of my mother, my best friend, it was a really bad year, and it was very, very hard to...
Be able to see anything positive to be, I mean it was a faith was ever tasted.
You had the death of your mother and then the birth of a child and that's death and life
have really posed really fundamental questions for you.
That's really, it's really shaken in the heart of us.
And you hope that the time of silence will help you do that.
Yeah, I mean, it really is, I mean, I think.
I still don't know at this stage what to believe.
I'm a very motivated person, very driven,
and even in exceptional heart circumstance,
he's always seen me with almost every voice,
whispering to me, you know, you can do this.
You can do this, you know?
Who's to say that's not God?
In memory of his death and resurrection,
we offer you, Father, this life-giving bread,
this saving cup.
May all of us who share in the body and blood of Christ
be brought together in unity by the Holy Spirit.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
I wanted to find out what their first impressions of monastic silence had been.
Oh, it's just been incredibly...
mentally draining but not sort of depressing so it's it's it's there's a lot of things going
from my head a lot of thoughts a lot of feelings a lot of emotions I didn't think I'd be sort of
asking this many questions so quickly so you know yeah it's I'm sort of I'm in a bit of a
difficult place I'm normally very in control I don't have any control at the moment
I guess I'm really admiring the monks at the moment for not just their peace and serenity
and their dedication to God, but more about the strength that's sort of excused for me.
And I quite admire that, and I want a bit of that myself, I guess.
I mean, there's all sorts of things happening, but I think the thing that's coming into
me has, well, where shall I start?
It's the only faith.
I feel totally faithless, but I wasn't expecting to be sort of challenged in that way.
What I see from where I'm sitting, I'm taking to myself.
The God of surprises is going to give you some wonderful surprises.
You've already had one by finding yourself in a monastery, but we follow a truly surprising God
Okay, I'll take your word for it.
Truly surprising God.
seeing your ritual, I might not agree with everything that you believe in, and I might not be religious.
But one can't help being moved by spiritually, by just being here, I think.
And I think this morning I had a bit of a moment where
So I know there's something in me and I know that I'd like to let it out and for it to
manifest itself in a way that's going to be positive to my life, quite how I manage that.
It's going to, it's where I struggle.
If you will allow your life to be rearranged,
then your real self comes out more.
You don't need the masks, and that's the great paradox
of really the religious journey.
It's going to be really interesting
to see how this plays out.
The first stage of their journey was nearly over.
The next step was to think about how they could take some silence back home with them.
You might like to consider taking a period of each day for the next week,
a period like, for example, an hour,
and saying you will turn off your mobile phone, computer,
radio, television, everything that is a piece of technological kit that generates
outside interference, that you might just consider picking a period of the day
when you switch it all off just to get used to the idea.
The heart of this process is not about what the group could experience when they're inside
a monastery, but whether silence could change their day-to-day lives in the world outside.
I never thought we caught a hole in that hole.
Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
A parallel would be if a doctor diagnosed that you had an illness that required you to
build 20 minutes of therapy into your day, every day without fail, or you're going to die.
I think most of us have managed it.
Well, the question is, can we believe that about the life of the soul?
That actually our souls are going to die if we don't give them some breathing space every day.
Soon, they would be leaving for a total immersion silent retreat, but now the volunteers had
one week to give finding silence within everyday life a dry run.
Bye. Bye. Bye.
Oh, give us a big group hug.
Big group hug. Bye.
Take care, mate.
What's cool is that?
Oh, Tyler Kennedy.
No, it's never really... I've never researched it.
Take care, mate.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
It's a sauce you have, baby, so you can help, yeah?
It's Aliano Program. It's a great place on onion rings.
But even monks know that when the pressures of daily life take hold,
it's not that easy to stop being busy.
The culture keeps sending all these messages that, you know,
the people who know how to live properly are always doing something.
You know, the great question, what are you doing this weekend?
Keeps coming up.
Plus, right?
I think everybody likes it as well.
they talk to us about lives where everything is so busy that I don't seem to have time to think.
I'm so busy, I never have time for myself. I'm so busy, I'm exhausted. And this word busy, busy,
busy comes up time and again so that it starts to sound almost not just like an illness but like
an epidemic, an epidemic.
Epidemic of busyness
Okay. Oh, I'm gonna make the decision then. It's crunching at cornflakes, okay?
Trish returned home to a pressured life.
I've got 10 minutes if I get out of having to eat my breakfast yet.
It's a...it's all rush, first thing in the morning.
Trying to get Trish.
There's got to be out on time. The kids have got to be in school all the time.
Okay, good case.
Thanks for your breakfast.
Are you guys making it?
Give me a kiss, give me a kiss.
It's an easy day, I don't think. Look, I've had my, finished my tea.
Okay, good morning into media.
Good morning.
Alright, so let's get you started. Who earns the most cash in radio?
She found no time for silence during the day and no time during the evening either.
This is the only chance I get to de-stress. So an hour of a neck ball every week I make sure I make time for this.
Three days after getting back from the monastery, Trish had failed to find even one period of silence.
I can't cut up feeding the kids and checking my emails and ironing their clothes and getting them showered and
sorting out my net book, my PTA meetings.
I mean...
They're all parts, they're all bits of my life that I need to survive.
When the weekend came along, Trish was busy again, presenting a local radio programme.
But first, let's start as we mean to go on Shania Twain kicking us off as we head towards
a very packed show.
She was beginning to wonder whether she really wanted to change at all.
I love this show. I love talking. This type of job suits me, but I mean you
couldn't do a radio show in silence and so it's going to be very difficult. I'm
nervous about coming back to this after the retreat because I'm used to living
this fast.
sort of in pace of life and I think I hope I don't change too much so I want to be able
to do my job so hopefully I do I hope I don't wind down too much that I can't twiddle and
fade up me knobs so to speak.
But let me remind you about Trisha's breakfast club.
You have automatic membership just for being you.
In his first days back home, John didn't find any time for silence either.
You revert back to type and revert back to your old routine.
I don't think there's anything I have done as a result of that
that's at this moment in time on this journey that has changed anything.
It's touched me somewhere. It's made me think a lot, and it's made me reflect.
But the minute you get back into the noise of the real world,
it dilutes it, and it dilutes it massively, and it does it powerfully and quickly.
That's the reality.
That's my reality.
The others, they might have different ideas, but different views.
I just need to check whether this is the right plane.
Would Carrie, the one firm believer in the group, fare any better?
Father Christopher will be very disappointed right now.
diet silence no it doesn't feel right I'll have a piece of cake today and then
we'll start with salads tomorrow it's exactly what it's like with silence
I look for an hour, let alone a day or a week, because you are able to talk so much, you
must have a sort of strange brain that you can text someone with one hand, speak on the
landline with another, do watching television and holding a conversation with me at the same
No, multitasker.
Is that what it's called?
Oh, I thought it was confusion.
She's not one for silence at all, really.
I don't know whether she's afraid of it,
but she has been searching, definitely, for something.
And I hope that she finds it.
I hope she finds that piece of silence.
Carrie is one of three members of the group who have experienced the death of a parent in recent years.
Even though intellectually we might have asked the question a hundred times, what's the purpose of life?
When somebody dies, it becomes very profound, soulful question for me.
And so it's not surprising that people who've experienced bereavement recently should want to undertake this journey.
Well, Dad died when I was 23.
Breathement is such a final emotion that you...
And it's... You're now questioning something that you don't understand
because you've never gone through it and you won't until that moment comes.
Um, so...
The way that the grief kind of relates into my busy schedule is the fact that I feel at the moment I'm silent or I stop,
that's when I question everything, and that's when I start thinking about dance, and I don't want to,
because I know that it starts opening up a gate, and I might start going through that gate, and then I start, you know,
and then I might start climbing the walls and never come down again.
So I think there's an element of me that wants to...
be still in myself and be able to be silent.
I've not been able to be still for six years, for that reason.
So I busy myself up.
I think we try and hide behind things.
I know from my own experience of being widowed
that you put the television on because it's company,
but it's not really company, it's just there and it's noise.
And sometimes we try and cover the need for silence
with just any noise, not necessarily noise that speaks
to us all that we want to listen to.
Back home, Helen found herself in skeptical mood.
what point do you have to get to to actually go yeah I believe in this thing
it's all going to be all right I believe in this you know God Almighty
You speak to the monks, they will take the view that what's happened to me over the last five months
is somehow all part of God's plan for me, or have you.
It's not, it's just, you know, it happens and good things happen, so that's life.
But I must be great to have it.
It must be fantastic to have it.
But I'm still, I'm in awe of it, but I don't get it.
I really don't get it.
But doubting Helen was the one member of the group who did take up my suggestion to turn off the gadgets.
Radial is my love. Well usually it's just on in the background. My dates always
starts with the today programme which I sort of don't listen to in terms of
but it's there and I pick up on it but it was it was funny yesterday.
when I didn't put the radio on at all, and that was my first day back from the monastery, so
that was quite weird actually, and I have a friend staying and I think they noticed it, but yeah,
so very strange it's starting to happen, speaking.
As a group, their efforts to find periods of genuine silence back at home were a dismal failure.
But they were all aware that a very big dose of silence was just a few short days away.
Boys, stop it please, I don't care.
That's not for you. No.
You'll hear ten sound bites.
We want the title of the song, and it's called Entitled in the Kitchen.
The next stage of their journey was to be eight full days of silent reflection.
They would be spent at a Jesuit retreat centre called St. Byno's in North Wales.
I chose it because people come here from all over the world to experience the most intense possible encounter with silence.
Aside from one daily discussion with an experienced spiritual guide,
everybody on retreat here is invited to remain in complete silence 24 hours a day.
Everybody who's had even a small encounter with a time of silence, such as on a weekend retreat,
will know that eight full days of silence is going to be very significant.
And they will have to get used to the idea of living in silence in this very open space.
They have nobody to meet except themselves and for some people is so intense that they collapse under the strain
As the day of departure neared, each member of the group was thinking ahead.
Do you want the good news or bad news?
What's the good news?
Good news is dinner was lovely, thank you.
What's the bad news?
My mum was moving in once I'm at the retreat.
When I made combat from this retreat, being a really huge big Christian, what would you
do if that happened?
Well, that would mean that you're born again Christian then.
How would you fail?
No, I'm feeling aware about it.
You know, if that's what you believe in, that's what you believe in.
probably will probably I will
You said it now. It's official.
You don't believe in God, do ya?
I believe in something, I don't know if I would put it down to a particular person.
before it was really ill you'd pray.
Yeah, if one of the guitars was broke, then I'd be asking him a book for a hell of a hell of a hell.
So yeah, I believe in something if you want to take that.
I'm very happy mine. I've got a very happy life. I've got a happy daughter. I've got a happy few answer, you know?
We're having a happy home.
But I saw a bag, bag, question mark.
I hope it brings David more peace and I just think like a lot of things has happened in his life
that's born and he will give you the charge to certain things.
That's why it's gone today.
Do you?
believe in God. How do you know? And there's going to be all these questions.
And I want to be able to go to education, to educate her,
to be my parents, to be my parents.
gave me all the knowledge I needed,
and then let me make more choices.
I've never been able to stop for long enough.
to explore this, and even if I could stop.
You know, I wouldn't know exactly if we had to start.
I think that's what they'll be able to give me.
The opportunity to ask a question, you know, a diet, a diet, het.
So I'm waiting to find the answers I'm working for.
I'll set my hope, but I don't know.
Silence has eluded John in the days since he left the monastery, but he has been thinking about what a long period in silence will unearth.
a huge barrier around myself with a moat, with sharks in it,
and I don't know whether I ever really let the drawbridge down
to let people in.
I've been accused of being quite cold and being...
or I'd only let people in so far,
only let the barriers down so far.
Because I was afraid of being hurt.
My teenage years were turbulent.
I was thrown out, expelled from the house, chucked down.
That put me out onto the streets where I quite literally
answered, sort of, still to stay alive, really.
I'd had so much hurt in my teenage years and with my first marriage, breaking up.
You know, I came home from work one day and my first wife had gone with the child.
Ironically, the real me is a very warm, open, giving person.
And I used to get really frustrated that I thought to myself,
I've got all this love inside and I don't know where to give it.
John understood that silence might open up the space to explore the most
discomforting questions about his life.
I'm both massively excited and I'm very scared.
I'd use expletives if it wasn't going out in the PBC, but I am terrified.
But excited. I'm excited about it. I want to be here, of course, and excited.
It was a terrifying aspect to it, isn't it?
If you lie there on your own, in silence, on your own,
and you know the door's there, and you walk through it,
oops!
and you walk through it what's the other side.
What if a little more dragons and demons than I can deal with?
Ready or not, the group now had to leave for the silent retreat.
I love you, baby.
I'll see you soon, all of you.
You take care right and I'll see you when you get back
The group will be guided by priests, nuns and lay people who follow the Jesuit tradition.
Jesuits don't live in monasteries and over many centuries have developed spiritual exercises
for people living in the midst of the world.
Like my own Benedictine order, the Jesuit tradition believes that silence lies at the very heart of our Christian faith.
The tradition of silence, of course, goes back to the life of Jesus himself when he went
out into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. That's an awful lot of silence. And it was
central to creating the context in which he discovered his personal mission and what
shaped that mission would take.
And of course, when he was there, he had to struggle with the demons who wanted to distort
the mission. So the silence was the essential setting for Jesus discovering his great mission.
The volunteers were welcomed by the spiritual guides, who would be helping them along their journey into silence.
Thank you, that's lovely.
They spent the afternoon settling in.
Each was given their own simple room.
It's lots of space in this way, so you can ship it to the farther you are in this corridor.
So you can keep this contained.
On the same floor is the dining room where they would eat their meals.
Breakfast time is between the quarter to eight and nine o'clock.
These big legs are big.
Oh yes, that's what I wanted to point out to you.
and just a little further down the corridor is a small chapel for personal
meditation
Upstairs, there's a larger chapel where Mass is celebrated each day.
That night, their spiritual guides invited them together
to mark the formal beginning of their period in silence.
My name's Tom McInnes. I'm a Jesuit priest.
I'm looking forward to this week, and I hope as much as you are yourselves.
We won't be what you might call inflicting a certain kind of spirituality on you,
because it's already there inside yourself. There's a very simple exercise about listening.
And what we might do now is just try the first part of it.
Be aware of sounds around you, outside and inside the room.
What can you hear outside the room?
It's very quiet out there.
Listen, you can hear the silence.
If you listen hard, you can hear the stars.
and then listen to the sounds coming like that just from inside the room.
And it's a way of listening where in the end nothing surprises you.
Just the old movement of a bit of paper or somebody moving a little bit.
You can hear the candle flame.
And finally, come to rest, at that point which you feel is at the very centre of yourself.
That's where the gold is to be found.
That was a strange feeling, because I've never stopped and listened.
And I felt like you could hear it, that was weird, no weird.
I was struggling reaching the stars, I could never stop.
No, the stars needed it.
And I was struggling with the flame, but I got the sign and the foot.
So now here comes the challenging bit.
We invite you to move away now into the quiet, not just of tonight, but into the quiet of
the whole of these retreat days.
And we know that they'll be wonderful.
The group woke up knowing that now, if they were to follow the rules, they would be in silence for real.
As the hours ticked by, they began to realize what a shock it is to cut off communication with the outside world.
Here, there is no radio, no TV, no internet.
And people are told they shouldn't make any phone calls or send any text messages.
The rules of silence meant they couldn't be interviewed for television, but they were allowed to record their experiences themselves.
I didn't sleep a wink last night and so I'm really touchy. I've had breakfast, I've gone
for a short walk and now I'm bored.
Really, listen, but all around, I feel inspired.
I've only been here a day, I'm living away.
I left just at the moment.
I'm thinking what they do and how they feel and they messin' me here.
How did they sleep?
It's hard to know something like that, do you?
I've got nobody to talk to.
Nobody to say how you feel.
Nobody to say you okay.
Nobody that you can't talk.
I can only talk to you.
And you're no freaking good because you can't talk back.
I'm still not there. I'm still really fidgety. I'm still really uncomfortable.
It's just boredom. I want to get the pub. I'm bored of my tits.
John, if you can sit here, let me.
Their one daily conversation would be with their spiritual guide.
Today, they met them one-to-one for the first time.
The curtain gives us a bit more quiet from people walking past our side.
I feel strange talking all of a sudden now.
After all that silence, it's still over there.
It's not talking.
The task of the guides would be to help the volunteers chart a course through the undiscovered personal territory that they were about to explore.
It's been really funny because in the stillness,
I found, you know, my goodness, you know, this is me.
It's just me now, I feel kind of stripped bare.
I can't, the only way I can describe it is,
I feel techy, I feel every time it gets really quiet,
I'm out of control.
What you're listening for in yourself is those movements, the things that actually open you
up to yourself, the desires to, you know, to have the silence, or at least to come to
some clarity and some peace.
Then, they were back on their own.
During the afternoon, each member of the group was left to explore the silent forms of recreation on offer here.
or the meditation exercise of walking the labyrinth.
John was told about a small chapel on the hill that overlooks the main building.
How go?
The rock chapel.
What am I supposed to do now?
The fool says in his heart there is no God.
They are false corrupt and vile and there is not one good man left.
God created clean heart in me.
put into me a new and constant spirit.
My sacrifice is this broken spirit.
It was the end of their first full day at St. Byno's.
With all the stillness, I really could look at myself, I don't know whether you can,
whether that's ever happened to you, where you've actually looked in the mirror and you
can kind of see past the eyes and it's like meeting a new person.
Right now, right this minute.
This is the loneliest I've felt since I was.
I feel like I'm on the edge of a cliff and someone's asking me to jump off it and the person that's going to catch you is God.
I just don't know if he's going to be there to catch me.
In next week's program all five volunteers go on an intense journey into
silence from frustration
We were their entire life to spend two weeks doing this.
No, I'm having problems with faith, but religion hang on every minute.
I'm losing myself just now.
I ain't, you know, you know, I feel like I'm...
Now you know what I mean.
To grief.
And the most horrible dream.
It was hit with such a profound sense of wonder or well-being.
I said to myself, oh, I feel really alone.
And then this voice came into my head.
It said, but you're not alone.
It's a repeated experience that when people do step back and enter.
courageously into the silence that they meet God, it just works like that, it appears to
be one of the laws of the universe.
So don't forget to leave me alone,
You