At the core of the Christian tradition of contemplation is silence.
Silence is the gateway to knowing God and truly to knowing oneself.
I'm on a mission to help people find silence in their everyday lives, because I believe
we all need silence.
When we enter regularly into silence, we start to see things with greater clarity 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.
Last year, I began a three-month experiment to persuade five volunteers to put silence
at the centre of their lives.
It would sometimes be a daunting journey for them, and it would challenge my understanding
of how people today relate to the faith that I profess.
My volunteers taking on this spiritual search were from all walks of life.
Trish is a mum of two and a part-time teacher and radio presenter.
29 year old Carrie works in advertising.
David is a restaurant manager and lives in Glasgow with his fiance and two-year-old daughter.
Helen is a human resources director who lost her job in the recession.
And John is a successful entrepreneur.
Last week, we saw the group begin the experiment at Worth Abbey in Sussex.
I invited them to spend a weekend experiencing silence in my own monastery,
where I live with 20 other Benedictine monks.
It was like walking into Planet of the Monks.
To go into absolute silence, my ears found it hard to adjust.
Part of you thinks I want out.
Back home, the volunteers made a first stab at trying to find silence in their everyday lives.
The minute you get back into the noise of the real world, it dilutes it, and it dilutes it massively.
It's like a diet, Silas.
I'll have a piece of cake today and then we'll start with salads tomorrow.
I can't cut out feeding the kids and checking my emails and sorting out my netball.
They're all bits of my life that I need to survive.
Then, the journey got serious.
I sent them to a Jesuit retreat centre in North Wales for a total immersion in silence.
The only people they were allowed to speak to once a day were their spiritual guides.
They were told not to use their phones, not to send texts and not to use the internet.
But they were allowed to record their experiences.
I'm extremely bored. I don't know what I'm to do with my time.
I caught nobody to talk to.
By the end of their first day, some of the group found the discipline of keeping silent too much to handle.
I was going up my main tower a lot, so long way.
I'll have to end this week and I'll leave soon.
It's a kitchen.
Now it's the group's second full day.
After their uncertain start,
the question is whether they'll now begin to move into a truly silent space,
which, for all its potential rewards, can have a disturbing effect.
It's no longer worth nothing, and who in their mind would work their entire life to spend two weeks doing this?
Thank you for watching!
John is not the only one.
Later that morning, Helen meets her spiritual guide, Father Brendan.
I got up this morning and I was really grumpy.
Eyes were hurting me, there was something in my eyes,
and I jumped out of bed and my knee I realised wasn't better,
you know, and, oh, God, here we go,
and I'm not a grumpy person, really.
And now I went into breakfast and everyone looked so grumpy.
I thought, oh, for God's sake, you know, crack a smile, you know, chill out.
I really, I just really felt quite, oh, God, the walls coming in on me this morning.
What's going on in the silence is that, you know, stuff is coming up to the surface or getting near the surface that I'm not normally paying attention to and so I can get sort of ambushed.
Trish is worried she might be tempted into talking by John and David,
and tries evasive action.
I took the decision to self-impose the silence on myself
and I wrote a little note to all the others
to say that if I blank you, it's not me being rude,
it's just that I'm going to take the silence on.
Carrie has not managed to conquer her attachment to her mobile phone and calls her boyfriend.
I'm really struggling with it. It's hard not to talk to people.
But I think we're all finding it quite a struggle.
Some people have completely got into it, but it's a night that I really...
struggle with. So it's a lot harder than I thought it would be.
And I just miss you and mum and the friends so much.
It's good self-discipline.
I'll send them all my love and I miss you like crazy.
I broke. I ended up talking to a couple of people.
I didn't.
Yeah. So that's my confession of the day.
And I was so used to picking out the phone.
and calling people.
I feel naughty now, I feel like I was the rebellious person that I should have done.
Trish was brought up a Catholic and her journey into silence was prompted by a double loss.
Her father died and she lost her faith.
Lately, I've been pretending to have faith in God.
I haven't even told my mum. I'm a nan.
I mean, they're going to be horrified when they watch this.
Because, you know, I pray with them and it's...
It's not false, but I'm not feeling the words like I used to,
and that's why I'm here on the retreat,
because I think I've got to stop pretending now
and really find out who I am and what my faith is.
Because I think it's, you know, when my 8-year-old son said to me, you know,
where's my granddad gone? And I just stopped and I couldn't actually answer it.
So that was the turning point. I just thought, well, if I don't know my faith,
how can I actually direct my children?
Yeah. Do you know what I mean? And that's what it is.
The other thing, then, is to spend some time in prayer or in reflection.
Now, if I say,
Gosh, yeah, prayer is daunting at the moment.
So, I'll give you a one-piece scripture, you've got a Bible in your room.
Yes, yes.
Psalm 139.
It starts with, Lord, you examine me and you know me.
Because what it's saying is, it's kind of an act of faith.
It's saying, OK, you know me, you know me.
John decides to go on a very long walk.
You don't want to play. You don't want to play, don't you?
You did wonders for my anger.
Right.
And I had some anger this morning.
Might as well still here.
I started off with the food, which I think you really do need to deal with, and then
the water, I couldn't get any water this morning, hot water, so that pissed me off, and dealing
with this whole thing is just harder than I thought it would be.
Right, right.
I thought I'd slip into the silence quite nicely, but it's hard work.
It's relentless. It's mind-numbingly, bone-crushingly relentless.
It's almost oppressive. That's what I'm going through now.
Everyone around is in silence, some people are finding it more difficult than others
and clearly for you it's very difficult at the moment.
You were mentioning being prepared to let go and not try and do it all oneself.
You've got to learn to let go.
I don't know other than going on that hill lying naked in a starfish saying come on Lord Jesus
take me into your life or heart or God come in now or I don't know what else to do.
No, no, I don't want it.
at the moment, the weather isn't too tight,
I'm just nervous, you can say.
The first few days of moving into silence can be quite difficult
and you can really see people struggling with it
and people really just have to stay with it and be prepared to stay with it.
Straight after her meeting with Ruth, Trish takes up her suggestion of reading Psalm 139.
I went down to the chapel to just basically have a bit of peace before me, just a bit
of calm really. Anyway, I go to the back of the chapel and at the bottom there's a Bible.
So I go and pick up the Bible to take it back to my seat and I sit on my seat and I say,
right, Psalm 139, and as I turn the pages there's a bookmark.
Early on in the day, I said to God in my mind, look.
Yeah, I want to believe.
And you'd said it to God.
For some, it's the absence of distracting noise and busyness that is frightening.
Since her father's death, Carrie has been fearful of being alone.
I think my biggest fear at the moment is being totally bored.
um
having nothing to say not having a structure not having like a very full
diary then I'm just thinking okay what else can I do and that's where I start
to get a bit scared
because I realize we're purposefully not given lots to do.
To not have any music or I can't even hear anyone talk.
I'm normally texting and phoning people. I've got nothing
In the initial day, first couple of days for a retreat like this often it's experienced
as people almost climbing the walls because everything that's pouring into their mind
is unfamiliar, have no communication with the outside world.
They feel as if they're almost missing a limb and I think that sense of encountering
something new is scary.
by day three and four, never mind day eight and nine.
The night before he meets his spiritual guide Tom, David does some reading.
Not even as we work here.
You know, there's a lot of 25 tough questions on the Catholic faith.
I didn't have any faith, you know.
And I'm the first one.
The first question.
Why would a good God allow so much suffering in the world?
Good creation. One of my big creations about God, and see what this picture's basically saying?
It's, in order to be able to enjoy the good, you need to bat.
That's the biggest pilot I've ever read in my life, man.
Tom's going to have to pull one out of that.
No, he pulled me around because I could just as easily walk away from this right now, man.
You better have a good answer for me tomorrow.
A big question for me has always been how can there be so much suffering in the world
and still be an almighty God, you know?
I've had a really hard night, I got quite angry about it, you know,
and I think that's the best way for me to describe it, is I feel angry.
But I'm going to throw that same question back to you.
There's a real summit wrong going on in the world in a big way.
You know, greed, selfishness, power.
How do you think you can make any difference in that, in yourself?
Don't try and work it all out for now.
You carry it away. Keep working with it.
To open a pathway to the soul, a person must observe unbroken silence.
Helen is the only one following this advice.
For David and John, breaking off for a chat is becoming a habit.
I don't think science is the way forward for me.
I see its place and I see during the day times of science.
It's important.
I'm not sitting here for 23 hours being quiet, man, I'm sorry.
You know, I mean, that's not going to be my way in.
Yeah, some people it works for.
Yeah, I just I can't see me spending the whole day
An absolute silence, you know what I mean? I don't even want to.
Then we shouldn't feel guilty about that.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, when we walk back, we go back into the song.
We'll go to the pub tonight and make it feel a wee bit more real now.
John and David then try to persuade Carrie and Trish to make a break for the pub.
No, I didn't, I didn't sign up, I couldn't.
You kept the key to the fire of the Gondro.
You bet I'll do it.
You got you don't think I'm a good
I didn't think I'd be like this, I thought I'd be the moment, but it's...
You don't have to justify yourself to us or anybody, just enjoy it.
and I'm going that way and I'm going this way so have a good evening.
Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, bye.
After Trish rejects the suggestion of a trip to the pub,
the rebellion falls apart and the mood changes.
Only Carrie is left craving a night out.
I was trying to start a rebellion.
I, you know, wanted to go to the pub.
But no one was up for it tonight.
The collapse of their attempt to avoid the silence prompts a sudden change of heart.
John spends the evening in his room and so does David.
That, for me, really, really do this.
I think, from tomorrow morning, afternoon, I'll meet my home.
That's going to be it. I'm not going to see you at work.
The next morning, Trish decides on a highly visible way to communicate her anxiety about
having any further chats.
She even decides to cancel talking to her spiritual guide.
Do you want to respond to that, too?
So I put this on thinking, Ruth, I've got to do something
so that people don't keep interrupting me,
because I really want to try and do it.
My instinct is, from my experience of this, is come to the session, we'll look at your
days, we would do normally, but then we'll talk very specifically about what's going
to help you, take hold of your own silence in the light of everything else that's going
on, certain strategies and talking about.
So forget notes.
I just thought that would be the best way, you know, to basically say to people.
Go away. Go away. I'm fine, but go away.
It's a wave. It's a wave.
It's a wave, and not the best way.
I think we can do it from within you.
How was that room?
Okay, no more notes, but I think we can find those, we need to do it from there.
Yeah.
So that you're not having to keep telling people that.
Because in a way that's kind of, that's inviting communication.
Do you know what I mean even in the sense of people looking?
Because I did.
Oh, I just immediately smiled at you.
Are you?
But so I thought, well, I know what you're trying to do and I don't want to go.
That's funny.
Now that David has been silent for one whole day,
he finds unsettling feelings about the past coming to the surface.
Like many young men growing up in his neighborhood, David was often involved in territorial street fights.
The glass goes a change in place, but it's a hard time to play sometimes, man.
When I was growing up,
I was talking about violence is very much a part of my life.
Although I've never felt like I was the bad guy.
But to protect me and mine, I've fought fiercely.
Can you do bad things?
Totally do the right thing.
I don't know, I'm struggling and I'll be back today.
I feel lost.
I feel like I'm out to see.
At the time of her father's death Carrie felt some of her friends were insensitive to her grief
Today I walked up to Rock Chapel.
Yesterday I wrote letters to just a few people talking about forgiveness.
I sat down not for very long because I had these letters in my hand and I just really wanted to get rid of them
That's the whole reason why I kind of went up there
I can't forgive him one day but I did want to do some kind of landmarks and
something to be the beginning of the end of my unforgiveness.
went outside and burned these letters one by one.
And then there was one letter to me,
a little letter to myself to forgive me
for the things that I've done wrong.
I do feel like I'm now at the beginning of the journey to end that unforgiveness.
The learning goal was a great relief.
David and John both go out on separate walks but when they meet they just can't resist the chance to talk
David's going nuts. I'm going nuts. You feel really isolated in silence. You feel really
You feel like you've got no where you can't talk
I don't know, we're not supposed to be talking, but we had to.
We had to, we had to talk.
I'm losing myself just now.
No, you know, you know, you know.
I feel like I'm...
No, you know, you know, you know.
I know I feel like I'm getting further away from one.
I'm trying to achieve that.
It's a tough thing you're doing.
It's too tough for them.
I even imagined it could be.
I'm getting something out of it just by being in the frame of wondering,
are you getting something?
out of it. Did you know to me?
Seriously, because it's making you feel things, it's making you realize emotions, face emotions, experience emotions.
One of the big things I don't want is a cup of tea.
So how have things been that last there since we met up?
I went to the aid of Davey, because Davey was having a bit of a crisis.
He wanted somebody there for him, so I went and...
because he was on a teaching on the brink of...
Right. Now, you're not going to like what I'm saying next, right?
I know. I know.
But counter-intuitively, that really doesn't help.
And, you know, that it's coming from a...
I really, you know, I want to be of help to this guy who's struggling and then, you know, finding it painful.
And I say, counterintuitively, the best way to put that into practice is to step back.
We can't do that.
Well, I'm asking you to, as part of the process, not just for you, but for everybody involved.
Because, plus me, the wisdom of this place over the years.
So what I did, I'm now jeopardizing the whole process.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
You acted out of kindness and generosity,
and that's never something that's inappropriate,
but it would have been more appropriate,
but much more difficult, just to step back
and be there for him,
but not by talking with him and sharing things with him.
So along with being kind to David, I was the rest of the day.
I don't remember.
I can't, I can't.
I've got too many emotions going on in me now to respond to that.
Sure.
Because of what you've just said.
It's totally alien to me not to help another human being.
I understand what you're saying, I will respect the silence and I'll step back.
What I'm saying is you'll help it more.
OK.
By doing that.
Oh, well, you have the experience.
At this point, the spiritual guides compare notes.
There was something I wanted to bring up and it's how to maybe get across to them that
actually really giving the silence ago where they're not breaking out and coming back and
breaking out and coming back.
Can offer them something quite special and I think that's how we communicate that because
It's that thing on a retreat of one person wants to break it and the other one doesn't
but feels they should because this person wants to talk and they want to support them
and it gets into that kind of loop of trying to support each other and actually just getting
in the way.
But in the meantime, if they're going to get the maximum amount of what's available in this sort of retreat,
then holding the silence and helping each other hold the silence
and protecting each other, preserving each other's silence is actually worthwhile.
Halfway through their time at the retreat, the last barriers to real silence come down.
I'm very wise first and tell me to hand over my mobile phone and it's really, it really affected me.
It started my evening, off to be a sort of downward spiral of worrying, fear and um...
I slept really badly, so yeah, I cried myself to sleep, and I am...
And the most horrible dream.
I witnessed my dad die again.
He looked at me sort of one last time
to see me watch him die and it was.
It was such a vivid dream that it feels like I'm still in it.
That nightmare could you see perhaps in terms of the grief and the agony you have carried and somehow it feels your dream has...
And maybe I was just giving that dream in order to face it, to realise my grief is opposed to hide it away.
Helen has put aside the religious context of the retreat, but is enjoying the benefit nevertheless.
I will stay quite a long time after I've finished eating just to be with the music
and I find that very, very calming.
But also I listen to it in a different way.
At this stage, with silence taking hold, the retreat guides decide to introduce an important spiritual exercise.
They invite the volunteers to read a scene from the Bible and to make an imaginative effort to place themselves within it.
So you're using imagination to kind of get a sense of what's going on for the person.
For some people it's about coming to get to know Jesus differently.
For other people it's coming to get to know themselves, they come to get to know some
of their anxieties or some of their hopes by entering into this imaginatively.
Well, you could consider done bad things to protect my flock.
Yeah.
But I was doing it for the right reason.
Yeah, sure.
Now, this will sound very familiar.
It's the story of the shepherd's up on the hillside.
But maybe what you could try and do
is step into that place where these guys are.
You know, like as if it's literally on a hillside
and under the stars.
It says, in that region, there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.
Then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone
around them and they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, do not be afraid.
But I pictured myself there in a big open space knowing the shape of being in the world on this.
You know, protect on the flock and stuff, you know.
I could hear the voice, you know, not to be afraid.
You know what, watching the sun slow the track on the way around the mountains.
In the recent years, we saw all the repentance of the bad times of time.
What does it mean to be a good man?
Ultimately, I've done the right thing, and I know that I go to my bed every single night
with a clear conscience, you know. Confined by anything, you know, so then, wake about.
At some point or another, something will happen, like you could almost call it a quantum leap,
where someone really allows themselves to, if you like, fall through the layers of silence,
where in the end the silence isn't a burden, but something freeing.
As the group enters more deeply into silence, the natural surroundings begin to play an increasingly important role.
Being in nature, being immersed in in nature,
that's often a first experience of really just being aware of myself here and now in the present.
And that's what opens up the possibility, not just to listen to the sounds outside,
but to be able to listen to these shifts inside as well.
I can't believe that I've never stopped to listen to birds in the morning.
It's just a beautiful piece, tranquility.
You know, sort of, wow.
Just me and, you know, the silence out there.
I honestly think I'm kind of hit mad.
If I said to people what's going on in my head, they're gonna think I'm pretty mad.
So on my walk today, this is going to sound really weird, right?
Oh, no, it's okay.
I asked Jesus to come with me.
Now that was really, really, quite, um...
When people say, in this context, this is going to sound really weird,
it's normally touching on something that's actually very important and very central to them.
I'm not sure I even know.
know what's going on, Brendan.
And it was fine, that's fine, that's great.
I was completely closed. I don't know why it felt significant and why I picked up.
I just saw it and it felt like...
It meant something, and it seems like every day I'm looking at this.
It's opening up more and more, and I feel a wee bit like this.
You know, I mean that I might go a wee bit and I'm opening up a wee bit.
You know, and every day there's something else.
Some days it's a wee bit more than others, you know.
I took myself off and walked up on the hill, I had this real deep, deep experience up there
and literally I was walking round and I just looked across and the sun over the mountains
over there was just extraordinary, it was exquisite.
And I was hit with such a profound sense of wonder or well-being.
I'm lost for words to describe it, but everything was so clear.
Everything was in technicolor, I mean the sun, the sky was blue, it was incredible,
you know even the sheep looked like it all being washed and it was like oh this is
amazing and it just took my breath away.
There was part of me that went, what's this, what's this, what's going on, and a little bit of resistance,
but I quickly sort of got through that and just sat with it.
It was a clarity like I have never experienced, and I just thought it's all going to be okay.
You know, you've been allowing a lot of the sort of barriers and stuff that are around
just to move away or step back from them.
God comes in because he opened up and made it possible.
With the group now moving towards the last phase of their time in silence,
John has managed to keep resolutely silent for two whole days.
Today on the hill was amazing.
started thinking about my nan, my lovely lovely nan.
who was a massive inspiration in my life.
an unconditional love that I so desperately miss.
She was the person I trusted she was the one who never sat in judgment of me
It was just the most moving moment I've had in my life for a long time.
I didn't hear a voice. There was no bolt of lightning or anything.
But it awoke emotions in me.
and barriers in me came down and maybe they were emotions that have been suppressed for a long time.
of moving into this stage of the silence is that real openness to what's there.
It's a sort of positive vulnerability if you like.
There's a measure of moving on from the known and the comfortable into the unknown
and that's always scary and that always calls for courage.
They're a self-selecting group of people, they're looking for God.
So you might say, well of course they're going to find something because that's what they're looking for.
For me it's the manner in which God turns up or the manner in which they have their experience that's always interesting
because it's often not what they expect or not what they came looking for.
I'm trying not to look and analyse, I'm trying to be more feeling about things and
I think I'm going to be ok with God stuff.
I think I've got over myself with that.
I feel an exception for me, and certainly for me there's an acceptance of what's going on here.
There's a huge sense of relief.
I think I just felt an overwhelming sense of...
I felt a bit more like myself again.
I said to myself, oh I feel really alone and then this voice came into my head, it was a female voice, it wasn't mine
It said, but you're not alone
And that was it. I thought, wow.
It's difficult to try and explain when I talk about voices, because I'm not schizophrenic or anything, I'm not hearing loads of different voices.
It's like you say something or you think something, and then something comes back to you.
Well, there's hearing voices and hearing voices, but in the context of imaginative prayer and
soul, and this deep silence that people are in, what they're reflecting on sort of finds
shape in words in their head, in that sense it's hearing voices.
A moment of silence that really is one of encounter with something that is more than us.
To share silence with others is, I find very important to trust that the silence of another person near me can actually carry me.
If you're sitting in a room with her, her presence and aura is really quite something else.
It feels incredibly holy.
And just sitting next to her, I really sense that it kind of guided me to be still.
I then had this instinct to turn my hands over and I felt like someone was holding them
I kept opening my eyes to make sure it wasn't new or familiar.
But I really felt like someone was holding my hands for about 10 minutes.
I just got this instinct to turn them.
Isn't that wonderful?
I think there's something wonderful about this experience.
Does it say something also about doing this with pain and suffering?
Or to do that?
Yeah, that's interesting. It's the letting go.
Carrie and Trish have both been aware throughout the retreat that in silence they
have shared the experience of resolving their grief for their fathers.
Sorry to ever apologize for crying.
There it be.
It's such a bad place, and we are here.
This is where you are, like.
Each member of the group now seems to have arrived at a sense of peace.
And for the first time, they all join the rest of the community during silent prayer in the chapel.
And as I was holding that wee panko and feeling that I was opening myself up, you know, and
I'm sitting there in my room full of people I don't know on.
I started seeing more of, you know, like that silent prayer.
And I felt like I was opening up even more as we were sitting in there.
I still find it difficult to put my faith in this thing called Jesus, formal God, whatever,
but I cannot deny that there is something that I can somehow access, a sense of well-being
that it's going to be okay.
Think about silence.
It's not as scary as you think.
Because the fear is inside of you.
This is about inviting the imagination, our souls, our spirits, to get in touch with us.
It's incredibly hard to try and describe what it's like to feel a love from
everybody and yet nobody's talking. It's a really incredible thing.
On their final day at the retreat, I decided it was time to pay them a visit.
My hope is that some of them have discovered that silence really is the gateway to the soul
and that in that experience of finding their soul in a new way,
they have discovered things that are of immense immeasurable value for them to take back into their ordinary life.
I know everybody has said hello to accept Trish, lovely to see you and lovely to see
What strikes me is how
different you all are you just appear to be in a very calm place so that when you
come out of the silence it's not like letting you out of prison I mean I don't
know about you guys but I mean I feel
Quite early on in this, that there was something bigger than us all here, you know what I mean?
And I truly felt that, you know, in the five years, in this place, and I felt like there
was something bigger than us all.
I had a very, very profound experience that if I talk about it, I expect when I go home to my friend
and still think, God, she's lost it. She's lost it.
One of the difficulties that people have nowadays...
is exactly what you're saying.
How can I tell anybody else about the reality of this experience,
which is a real experience?
And yet, our culture won't allow me to say it's real.
It's exactly my issue with it.
I did the walking visualization.
But was Jesus walking with you?
That was a good question.
Yeah, it was, yeah.
Yeah, it was.
And we were having this conversation.
And I'm really going to say stuff like that because I have to go back into a world that
is going to think I've gone stark, raving mad.
It's a repeated experience that when people do step back and enter
courageously into the silence, that they meet God, something bigger than me, a presence, transcendence.
They might not be using the word God, but that's certainly the reality they're describing.
And I think when they go home, the challenge will be how do they stay in touch with that depth of reality
without the tremendous discipline of silence they have in the retreat center.
By the end of the retreat, each member of the group had had an extraordinary revelation
of what silence can bring, but the most important part of this experiment happens back at home.
How do you take us back to life?
I'm nervous about coming out of this.
I know what's going to be when I get back.
I just hope when I get on the outside world that I can interact with God and hear him and provide space to hear him.
I'm looking forward to going home, I'll be honest, because I kind of want to put this all to the test now.
In the weeks and months ahead, I was to discover whether, back in the so-called real world,
the volunteers could hold on to what they'd learned.
Could their journeys into silence take them even further into undiscovered territories?
Do you believe me when I say I found God you don't have to believe me
I'm not a crosshose in my life and I don't know what to do, man.
My heart's telling me one thing and my better judge wants to tell me I'm not a lot.
The strength and the new understanding of life that you received is what God is.
This isn't a joke, this is, you know, I don't know.
It has caught me on the wares, it's caught me completely on the wares.
Carrie, I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.