Porete's Silencing of Reason

Faithfully reconstructed from the Mirror‘s dramaturgy:

1. Settle and name the three voices. Sit quietly. Notice that within you there is a Reason (the analyzer: questioning, doubting, defending, calculating), and a deeper Love (a wordless, warm knowing). The Soul is you, listening between them.
2. Let Reason have its say — then notice its limits. Allow the questioning mind to speak: its objections, its “prove it,” its anxieties. Porete doesn’t despise Reason; she shows it is necessary but limited — useful for the early way, but unable to reach what Love knows. See that it keeps you circling in concepts.
3. Bid Reason be still — let it “die.” Gently dismiss the analyzer. Not by arguing it down (that is more Reason), but by declining to follow it: each time a question, justification, or commentary arises, let it pass unanswered. Porete dramatises this as Reason finally falling silent and dying — the discursive mind stepping aside.
4. Let Love speak. In the quiet Reason leaves behind, attend to the deeper, non-conceptual sense — the loving knowing that needs no proof and makes no argument. Rest your attention there. This is contemplation rather than meditation-on-a-topic: less figuring out, more being with.
5. Stay wordless; don’t grab it back into concepts. When Reason tries to re-enter (“what does this mean? am I doing it right?”), notice and release, returning to the wordless loving attention. The whole skill is keeping the analyzer set down a little longer each time.
6. Let it overflow into ordinary awareness. Porete’s annihilated soul carries this Love-led, Reason-quieted simplicity into life — a less argumentative, less self-justifying way of being present. (Sourcing note: the Love–Reason–Soul dialogue and the silencing/death of Reason so Love may speak are structural to the Mirror; the step-by-step contemplative protocol is a faithful practical rendering, since Porete teaches by drama rather than by drill.)

The personified dialogue and the “death of Reason” are defining features of The Mirror of Simple Souls (c. 1290–1306). → (path approximate). The move — laying intellect aside for a higher, loving unknowing — is the heart of the apophatic / negative-way tradition: Pseudo-Dionysius, The Cloud of Unknowing (love pierces the cloud where thought cannot), John of the Cross, and Eckhart’s detachment of the faculties.

It rhymes structurally with contemplative “open awareness” practices East and West that quiet discursive thought to rest in bare, non-conceptual presence.

The Cloud of Unknowing — put thought under a “cloud of forgetting” and reach toward God with a “naked intent” of love; near-identical logic.

• Pseudo-Dionysius / apophatic theology — knowing God by unknowing, beyond concepts. - Centering prayer (modern Contemplative Outreach) — gently releasing every thought to rest in God’s presence; a direct practical descendant.
• Eckhart’s detachment of the faculties — quieting intellect and will so the ground can receive.
• Open-awareness / choiceless-awareness meditation — disengaging discursive thought, resting in bare awareness.

Fighting the thoughts. Arguing Reason into silence is just more Reason. Let questions arise and pass unanswered; don’t wrestle them.

• Confusing it with anti-intellectualism. Porete uses Reason throughout and honours its role in the early way. The practice quiets it temporarily, in contemplation — it is not a verdict that thinking is bad.
• Straining for “Love.” You can’t force the non-conceptual knowing; you make room for it by setting Reason down. Effort re-summons the analyzer.
• Checking “am I doing it right?” That question is Reason. Notice it, smile, release.
• Skipping the early ground. Porete presents Reason’s silencing as a later stage; beginners may need ordinary focused practice first.