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An Excerpt from The Silence of God

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Chapter 1: The holy silence is a gift of God

The world of pursuits of silence and stillness have traditionally been associated with practices of sitting and watching the breath or following mantras. These ideas have been widely presented from paths such as Buddhism or Hinduism, and explicitly documented in historical spiritual guides like the sutras of India. For generations, there have been endless human efforts to organize a mechanical process to calm the mind, cataloging steps, frequencies, and postures to engineer peace.

This is absolutely not what the Silence of God and the gift and grace of silent holiness is about.

The holy silence is not a mental state achieved through rigorous human discipline or psychological formatting. While Eastern traditions and secular mindfulness philosophies approach stillness as a mountain to be climbed via meditation techniques, divine silence is entirely distinct. It is not an achievement of human willpower, nor is it a baseline reached by shutting off the senses through sheer concentration.

Even with all of the efforts that human beings have made to slow down their thoughts to experience mindfulness and enter practices of daily meditation, if you look closely you’ll discover that very few people manage to stick with these processes. They may have a season of their life where they sit and meditate more. They may experience slower lifestyles and mindfulness, but usually, in most cases, it does not last. Ask someone who has pursued meditation and mindfulness—ask them over the course of a five or ten-year period if it stayed, if they’re really living a more deeply committed way of life in this regard. They will almost always tell you that life, its busyness, and its demands won them over in the end. They’ll speak of a time when they may have experienced some of those practices, but if they’re honest, they’ll tell you it didn’t last.

Why? Now let’s be clear: most people don’t even do that. But the answer for those that tried is that it did not last because it required too much effort. It was a battle against a state of mind that has no interest in grace, and against a lifestyle that truly surrenders. When our efforts are born from within a mind of gain and loss—a mind that is continually driving for states that are temporary stillness—it never truly arrives there. It cannot. It is operating within an operating system that is fundamentally always about gain or loss in some way.

The mind’s hunger for stimulation is relentless. But this mind is not the way of God. This is the antithesis; it is the way away from God. You see, when we stay within the operating system of a mind that is operating under the fuel and pursuit of constant stimulation, of course we want peace. But we’re trying to achieve that piece from within the very operating system that opposes it. It is a dream of separation—a dream that will throw ideas of peace at you until restlessness eventually overrides it. So yes, some people have slowed down. They have learned to sit quietly. But if you look closely, they’re still operating within the storytelling mind whose ultimate fuel is gain and loss, driven entirely by ideas that are fueled by stimulation.

So many of you, if not all of you, would say, “I can’t slow my thoughts down; it never ends. I am always thinking and I have no idea how to get out from under it.” This realization is actually an honest gift. Recognizing your own helplessness under the crushing weight of the mind is the first fracture in the ego’s armor. Grace is never something that we force or push into our lives. Rather, grace is the result of a sincerity in how we are living one day at a time.

If you take two people who were completely overwhelmed by endless thinking and they were essentially identical—and one would try to enter the Silence of God without deeply living a life for goodness and purity, and a state of non-ownership, giving their life sincerely to God, while the other made genuine, heartfelt efforts to cultivate such things—you must know intuitively which one would enter the Silence of God with a natural unfolding, just as the other would find it almost entirely impossible. Is this not such a fair blessing? Somehow, in the creation of God, what we sow truly we reap.

But why—why is this gift, the Silence of God, so rarely accessed by the people of this world? If you look into the various religions and spiritual traditions, you’ll rarely, if ever, see any discussion about entering this silent holiness, a gift that comes solely from the grace of God. We are taught how to petition, how to perform rituals, and how to speak, but we are rarely taught how to dissolve into the quietude of the Maker.

Yet, the blueprints have been left for us. Consider the following scriptures. Ponder deeply why they exist, and see how they call us away from human striving and into the absolute passivity of holy grace:

To mistake the Silence of God for a humanly manufactured calm is to mistake a creation for the Creator. Human effort creates a closed loop where the mind attempts to quiet the mind—an internal exercise that begins and ends with the self. True holy silence, however, is a direct downward movement of divine presence. It is a heavenly substance that enters the soul not because a procedure was executed correctly, but because God has sovereignly chosen to bestow His rest. It is a gift unearned, a grace unmanufactured, and a spiritual reality that requires the complete cessation of religious labor.

An Excerpt from The Silence of God

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Chapter 2: This is not a meditation practice rather this is pure grace

This is not a meditation practice as most people would historically think it. You are not sitting down to force or impose something on your thinking mind. This is not about keeping your spine rigidly straight, setting a mental strategy, or putting some type of methodical practice in order. And honestly, this reality should really upset those people who try to run these highly organized, mechanical meditation processes—because what is offered here is so much simpler. In fact, it is a complete blessing of Grace. The only process that is really going to happen here is that you will sit quietly and invoke the Silence of God.

To jump ahead, imagine this clearly: picture a man or a woman sincerely living to give their life to God, striving to cultivate goodness and purity one day at a time, with their real-world actions genuinely supporting this devotion. Now imagine that a new day has arrived, and they find a quiet place to sit down—inside or outside, it makes no difference. They might be surrounded by nature, or sitting on a simple park bench along a busy roadway. They might be in their kitchen, or resting at the edge of their bed looking out a window. The physical setting matters not at all, but the intention to enter the Silence of God is absolute and clear.

This individual has deliberately carved out the intention to enter the Silence of God for ten minutes or more. In order to take genuine effect, this needs to become a daily occurrence. If we continue to make time for this by ourselves, it remains a beautifully simple act of surrendering ourselves to God and invoking something very similar to the prayer we share here:

“Dear God, the purpose of my life is to lay my life down, to not pretend to own life in any way, and to pursue goodness and purity one day at a time. Right now, it is on my heart to enter the holiness of your silence, and I ask from a sincere heart that I may enter the Silence of God, your blessing. I will do my part to surrender all effort that I may dwell in your silence and in your stillness. In the grace of your blessing, without making any effort for words and thoughts, I will breathe this intention gently. I make no effort but to enter the holiness of your silence, and I thank you with all my heart for this grace of silence. I will return each new day to spend time here. Thank you.”

Once this invocation is made, the mind is no longer asked to perform. You simply sit, having handed the heavy lifting over to the Divine, allowing the stillness to unfold naturally without the weight of human technique or strategy.

We jumped ahead just so that you could get a sense of what this process of entering the Silence of God may look and feel like. But let us take a big jump back now and talk about slowing down and simplicity.

We often think about a state of quiet as an isolated moment. If I were a fisherman, I might think about being out on the boat where I have taken care of every possible situation to get me out here, and now I cast out my net or my lure. But that is not really the process of fishing, now is it? The process started way back when you first set the intention to go fishing. It started when you began arranging all the different tasks, gathering the resources, and preparing everything you would eventually need. When you finally got to casting your net or your lure, that was just one single step in the entire process of fishing, wasn’t it?

Well, as it relates to entering the Silence of God, it is exactly the same. It is a life devoted to God, to non-ownership, and to the cultivation of goodness and purity. The Silence of God is not just something we casually jump into out of nowhere. We must deeply consider the significance of slowing down our lives and creating a simpler lifestyle that may very well live in the Silence of God all day long—not just at some isolated moment in the day when we suddenly decide we are going to dive into it. It turns out that when we do take those specific moments to dive more deeply, those moments can be significantly deeper expressions of that silence and that stillness—a true gift from the holiness of God, a profound grace.

But ask yourself this: if you have two identical adults, and one of them has a lifestyle that is incredibly busy—they have a massive to-do list, a relentless flurry of phone calls, activities, and endless places to be, constantly pushing against time as they live a frantic day. Now consider the second person, who has intentionally created a lifestyle where they are still pursuing their basic needs, but maybe they need less. They need less material possessions, less complexity, and more presence in their walk with God. They move through their day being fully accountable to what needs to be done, but they are walking, not running. They have fewer appointments, more quality, more breath, and far more ease. Yet, both of these people will tell you that God is what matters most to them. Even though they say the same words, their actions are completely different.

Therefore, I would suggest to you now that entering the Silence of God and entering His peace is first and foremost about how we set up our lives. It is about how we live one day at a time in a slower, simpler, far more peaceful manner. It should not surprise you that even if we never sat down for those specific moments of deep stillness and presence, if we actually created our life and our daily lifestyle to be a peaceful journey—filled with breath, an awareness of God, an awareness of our non-ownership, and the active pursuit of goodness and purity—we would already be inhabiting His rest.

I would like you to consider driving a car and looking down at the dashboard, which indicates your miles per hour. If I told you that driving 10 miles an hour you would have a much better chance of living in peace than if you drove 30 miles an hour—and likewise, that 60 miles an hour would bring even more unrest—you would understand this intuitively. It is simple common sense.

It is just like eating. Consider a meal that you could eat over the span of 20 minutes: slowly, intentionally, tasting the food, and physically setting your silverware down between every single bite. Compare that to a meal you wolf down in half that time, or maybe even rush through in just 5 minutes. Learning to design your life so that you are driving slowly, eating slowly, talking slowly, and listening more than ever would bring peace to absolutely anyone—even if their goal was not to glorify God, and even if their goal was not to cultivate goodness and purity as an absolute priority.

However, it is our goal to honor God and reach our potential for living in a state of non-ownership, giving our lives entirely to Him, trusting Him, and cultivating goodness and purity.

To illustrate this, consider a community of believers somewhere in the world. They all lived together and practiced their faith on a very significant, active basis. They ate their meals together, they went to church together, and they shared scripture at every single turn. However, the leadership that formed within this community became convinced that they needed to work hard and work smart with their time. Even though they remained deeply committed to their faith—which was supposed to be, far and away, the ultimate purpose of their lives—they believed they should also be highly productive with their work efforts.

Over time, this mindset shifted the environment. It slowly became a strict culture of hard work, where being very busy in their labor was the standard. Now, it should not surprise you to find out that this constant hard work eventually caused them to lose their actual connection to what they claimed to be living for. They became so completely overwhelmed by busyness that selfishness started creeping into the community. Judgment arose about who was doing what, and whispers circulated that perhaps certain individuals were not doing enough. The environment devolved into a frantic culture of who was moving the fastest and who was getting the most done.

In this frantic space, a sense of personal ownership crept back in. Spiritual and moral corners were quietly cut, and everything they had originally gathered to live for was systematically sacrificed to the idol of productivity.

One day, a man walked into their community. At first, he saw their external beauty—how they lived together, ate together, worked together, and how they shared their faith so intimately. But it was not long before his eyes were opened, and he realized they were entirely lost in busyness.

He sat down with one of the elders of the community and spoke directly: “The speed at which one travels in a day—in any given day—should be seriously considered. We should never lose our alignment and our core purpose to God. If ever we begin to lose that alignment, we must immediately slow down our day and our activities. What I am trying to say to you is that I see your community losing touch with God, losing touch with non-ownership, with goodness, with purity, and with the Silence of God. You are losing it because you are living and driving far too fast through your daily activities and chores. Each person needs to find the exact right speed to live their day—a speed that first and foremost ensures they are staying aligned to the absolute purpose of their life: to glorify God.”

Upon hearing this profound truth, the leader of this community blinked, looked at his watch, and explained that he needed to go because he had to deal with a significant amount of pressing activities. He then turned to the man and asked if they were done yet.

Let us talk honestly about television, the internet, and the endless streaming opportunities that surround us. Is this a problem for our peace and our opportunity to enter the Silence of God? Of course it is. In fact, it is far more than a mere problem—it is an absolute war waged against our peace, our presence with God, and the breathtaking wonder of silent holiness. It actively tears us away from that deep stillness and sacred oneness with the Creator and all of His creation.

Consider what actually happens when someone sits down to watch television. They settle into a relaxed position, remote control in hand, and immediately hand over their consciousness to an automated experience of storytelling. Instead of actively engaging our own minds or creating meaning through our own real-world actions, we sit back and absorb a highly dramatic, pre-fabricated narrative. We flip through channels, moving mindlessly from the chaotic global news, to a sporting event, to a drama, a horror movie, or a comedy.

For a moment, let us set aside the content itself—even though that content exerts a massive, conditioning effect on our souls. Look simply at the act itself. What have we done? What are we placing ourselves in the presence of? The exact same trap exists on the internet, amplified by infinite possibilities. We feed on digital screens through our phones, our computers, and our televisions. This digital pattern does not consume just a tiny fraction of our lives; for most people, it consumes more of their time than almost anything else.

Consider how different life was just fifty or sixty years ago before these devices existed. What would we be doing instead? Surely, we would spend more time immersed in the natural world, actively engaging in hands-on hobbies, and living much more vibrantly involved in our own lives. Yet here we sit, paralyzed in one place, controlled by a digital interface. How much of God, of non-ownership, of goodness, or of purity can truly be found in this digital environment? We are diving deeper and deeper into an artificial mind that automates our thoughts so we do not have to think deeply at all, allowing ourselves to be passively streamed along.

Beyond the baseline hypnotic state, look at the capitalist engine driving it. Every screen is flooded with commercials designed by forces that actively weaponize our attention to turn us into aggressive consumers. Consider the pharmaceutical industry, possessing unimaginable wealth and budgets, spending billions to master psychological marketing. They deliberately train us to believe in sickness and disease, programming our imaginations to seek salvation in their endless pills and drugs. Today, we are even constantly bombarded with commercials detailing how to achieve better sex through a prescription pill. To make matters worse, we sit frozen in front of these stories, mindlessly plunging our hands into a bucket or a bag, eating literal garbage while our attention is completely hijacked.

And what about the content we skipped past? Is there a spiritual consequence when we willingly consume horror, violence, and killing? We expose our souls to endless sexual suggestions and perversions that naturally accelerate a drive toward easily accessible pornography. Make no mistake: modern digital pornography is not an innocent expression of love between a man and a woman getting naked and being intimate. It has mutated into unimaginable landscapes of violence and profound perversion.

Tragically, this digital poison is now accessible from cradle to grave. Do not fool yourself into believing a five-year-old will never see it; all of this content is wide open to any child with a device. We introduce babies to highly vivid, addictive video games centered on slaughter, and horror films that terrify them to the core of their being, leaving them with nightmares that can scar their souls for life. Then there is the news—a system run on manufactured fear, deliberate twists, and absolute lies.

People often point fingers at external enemies—blaming the government, political figures, or the hidden minds behind war. But do not kid yourself. You are not just a passive pawn of a capitalistic machine driving for material pleasure and fleeting experiences; you are actively fueling it. You are your own king of capitalism every time you choose to consume it.

The real question is: will you stand up and reclaim your life from this digital machine? Will you set clear boundaries and unyielding, integral intentions regarding your exposure to what is essentially a horrific cancer on the human race? Think of it like a non-smoker who must navigate a smoke-filled world to meet their basic daily needs. The secondhand smoke of the digital world is inevitable, but you must be intensely conscious of it and execute a brilliant, powerful plan to insulate your soul from it.

What you must fundamentally understand about the Silence of God is that it is not just an isolated moment of quiet that you experience for a few minutes a day. It is an entire lifestyle. Your whole life must become a mission to glorify God, fulfilling the one true thing you were placed on this earth to do: to completely surrender your existence to His love through a continuous, unyielding act of non-ownership.

What do you take from this? Is it not a living simplicity, a living in slower motion, and a living presence with God, goodness, and purity that constitutes living the Silence of God throughout the entirety of the day?

It is absolutely imperative that you understand that slowing down and simplifying life is essential to our walk toward glorifying God. In doing so, we begin to live in a peace that the people of this world simply do not know. We are walking through the world, but we are fundamentally not of it, because our lifestyle, our simplicity, and our presence with God is being actively lived one day at a time. And if, from that foundation, we should decide to sit quietly and go even deeper into the holiness of silence—into the beautiful blessing of the Silence of God—then we will descend much deeper into something that may very well bring tears to our eyes and into our hearts. We will touch a love and a peace that is an unimaginable, breathtaking grace.