Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Solitude & Silence
To deliberately seek solitude and interior silence so the inner noise settles and one can recover one’s center and hear the deeper voice beneath words.
Merton’s solitude & silence in 5 moves: (1) Deliberately seek exterior silence — quiet place, no noise or screens.
(2) Let interior silence follow; let thoughts and wants settle.
(3) Meet your own aloneness rather than fleeing it.
(4) Drop the anxiety to be heard.
(5) Recover your center, then carry the quiet back into life. ~15-20 minutes daily; longer retreats when possible.
What it is
Merton treats solitude and silence not as withdrawal from life but as a way of recovering the center from which to live it. Exterior silence (absence of noise) is sought so that interior silence — the stilling of thoughts, desires, and judgments — can open.
In that quiet the deeper self and, for Merton, the presence of God become audible beneath the chatter. “Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being.” This is an embodiment/state practice: deliberately arranging conditions of quiet so a different inner state can arise.
It operationalizes stillness (The Inner Creates the Outer), the present moment (Everything Happens in the Now), and contact with the deeper Self (All Is One).
The Method
Faithfully drawn from Thoughts in Solitude and New Seeds of Contemplation:
- Deliberately seek exterior silence. Carve out a quiet place and time, free of speech, screens, and noise. Merton sees exterior silence as the doorway to the interior kind.
- Let interior silence follow. Allow thoughts, wants, and judgments to settle rather than chasing them. This is the harder, real silence — the “silence of our own being.”
- Notice that solitude is inward, not just outward. “A man becomes a solitary at the moment when. he is suddenly aware of his own inalienable solitude.” The aim is to meet, not flee, your own aloneness — and Merton’s promise: “As soon as you are really alone you are with God.”
- Resist the anxiety to be heard. “It is not speaking that breaks our silence, but the anxiety to be heard.” Let go of the inner pressure to perform, explain, or react.
- Return to the center, then re-enter life. Solitude is medicinal, not an escape; carry the recovered quiet back into relationship and work. Dose: a daily period of deliberate silence (even 15-20 minutes), with longer solitary retreats periodically as life allows. (Sourcing note: quotations are short and attributed; the steps are a faithful summary of Merton’s writing, not a reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
Thomas Merton (1915-1968), a Trappist whose order observes strict silence, wrote Thoughts in Solitude (1958) and threaded the theme through New Seeds of Contemplation (1961).
His roots are the Desert Fathers (who fled to the desert for exactly this), John of the Cross, and the eremitic monastic tradition; in later life he drew explicit parallels with Zen silence.
Common refinements
Mistaking mere quiet for the practice. Exterior silence is only the doorway; the work is letting interior noise settle.
- Using solitude to escape. Merton warns against flight; solitude is meant to return you to life, not out of it.
- Filling the silence with input. Podcasts, scrolling, and background media defeat the purpose — guard the emptiness.
- Forcing it too long, too soon. Build tolerance gradually; unaccustomed deep solitude can be disorienting.
- Performing solitude. The “anxiety to be heard” can follow you in; let even the urge to report on your silence go.