Doing nothing part ix: enjoy the silence

Digital devices, arrested development, and going the way your blood beats

To find earlier posts in my Do Nothing series, here are parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

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We’re surrounded by noise, and increasingly moreso. Twenty-five years ago, the Internet did not exist. Today, we spend over eight hours a day on digital devices. I wrote in part 1 of this series about meeting two Amish boys in 2003, who I still remember to this day because of the quality of their presence. In contrast, our attention is disembodied and literally pre-occupied.¹ We live distracted from ourselves. The digital world’s capture (theft, really) of our attention means we’ve lost the deep intimacy with the truth in ourselves (and in the present) that only arises from silence.

My friend, former pro skater and Esalen meditation teacher, Teddi Dean recently wrote:

i’ve learned a secret. it was shared to me by a modern mystic. he was a very old poet and a junkie.

he told me we all have a poetic voice within us which carries a mystical undercurrent of stillness and silence. he said that it’s only in stillness and silence where we can access and expand an intimacy with the unexplainable dimensions of life…

go inward. do it everywhere and tell me about it.

Finding meaning in the silence

Silence is a big topic that many people have written about, so I’ll just tell you my own story.

When I was 28, I was a tech lawyer in San Francisco.² I worked for one of most prestigious SF law firms in an office on the 36th floor overlooking the Bay, a wonderful secretary, and a $150k a year salary (in the year 2000, so easily twice that amount in 2024 dollars). From any external circumstance, I had made it, I was “successful.” And yet I was miserable.³

So when I was fired (I was a bad lawyer), I felt mostly shame and fear. I felt the terror of being cut away from everything I was told would make me happy (money, prestige, achievement). without anything else to grab onto. At the same time, I knew deep down that the life I was living wasn’t right.

That’s when I discovered Quakerism. I had been thinking about going to business school, which would have simply put me back on the same path, but sitting in the silences of Meeting for Worship, I could finally hear my own Inner Voice. Instead of going to business school and making $200k a year, I became a Quaker schoolteacher and made $35k a year. People alway remark what a “courageous” decision it was, but honestly, when you hear your Inner Truth, how could you not follow it? If you heard a deep conviction within you, what would you do?

You were meant to live a meaningful life.

But you have to choose it.

“Why do we spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if only we knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?”— Thomas Merton

“You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.” — James Baldwin.

God is in the silence

Achieving, consuming, displaying are the status goals of our capitalism game. I’m actually not against it; it’s normal, and healthy, human development to learn what to want through society and every society has its status games. Jung described that this stage of adolescent socialization as a “necessary condition” of human development. But at what point is it enough? At what point do you grow out of this stage? To spend our entire lives following what culture (i.e. others) told us to do is arrested development.

Quakers call it the “still, small voice,” what others describe as our inner conscience. Without silence, we’re just following the dictates of a pathoadolescent culture, and thinking it’s “success.”⁴ But as Joseph Campbell wrote, there is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.⁵ Jungian therapist James Hollis wrote how we finally, really grow up is “we experience the unavoidable conflict between the natural Self and the acquired ‘sense of self’” and choose authenticity.

The natural Self is the closest we are to God. In fact, the Christian mystics believed that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. As Catherine of Genoa wrote:

“My deepest me is God."

When we sit in silence and hear our deepest desires, we hear God. That’s why the mystical tradition of every religion: the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Hindus, begin with stillness.

“Silence is the first language of God.” — Thomas Keating

“Last night, I begged the Wise One to tell me the secret of the world. Gently, gently, he whispered, “Be quiet, the secret cannot be spoken,”It is wrapped in silence.” — Rumi

“All the wonders of life are already here. They’re calling you. If you can listen to them, you will be able to stop running. What you need, what we all need, is silence. Stop the noise in your mind in order for the wondrous sounds of life to be heard. Then you can begin to live your life authentically and deeply.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh

“How else express glory in the presence of eternity, if not by the silence of abstaining from noisy acts?” — Abraham Heschel

“The whole truth of religion and spiritual life is in the one word: silence. Only in silence can the truth of God be known.” — Swami Prabhavananda

And in today’s world, we’ve lost silence. The noise prevents us from hearing our Inner Voice, and increasingly moreso. So we follow the crowd, and increasingly moreso.

But an unexamined life is so boring and such a waste. What is it that you actually want? Do you make time for silence?

Do you make a habit of it?

Time and silence is the only place to meet yourself, meet God, and meet the Present. All words for the same thing.

You were meant to live a meaningful life.

“When I do not know who I am, I serve You and when I do know who I am, You and I are One.” — Hanuman

“The noblest work of all is that which proceeds from a bare mind….A bare mind can do all things. What is a bare mind?… A bare mind dwells in the now.” — Matthew Fox

I consider myself really lucky: I was a bad lawyer. If I had been a good lawyer, I’d probably still be a lawyer today, still miserably climbing the wrong ladder on the wrong wall. Most of my law school friends are still good, miserable lawyers. My failure was a gift, a type of dark grace.⁶

This happened before the Internet. When I failed, I didn’t have digital devices to distract me from the shame and fear. Today we can void ourselves from the shame and fear so easily. Today we spend eight hours a day on our devices, I don’t doubt much of it so we don’t have to feel what is inside.

When there is a problem, we try to solve things by adding, when in all likelihood, the real answer is taking things away. Life, always busy, always getting busier. Every wisdom traditions says the same thing. Simplify. Look within. I think us moderns are afraid of that;⁷ we want every answer to be on the outside because looking inside is frightening. But as Joseph Campbell says, the dark cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

In there, we find ourselves and we find God. And when we find the God within, we find God everywhere.

God is everywhere, in the eternal Now. Those two Amish boys, fully present. When you get there, you and God will be One.

John Cage told us: the Silence, like grace, everywhere, all the time.

Go inward. Do it everywhere and tell me about it.

Classes in October

I’m teaching Financial Freedom 1 again October-November. Right now I only have one student, so this is likely the last time I’ll teach it (sniff, after eight years). My friend and mentor Vicki Robin was on the Catching Up to FI podcast and said “I don’t think Financial Independence is the ultimate thing, it’s sort of a self defense in a system that doesn’t value you your life energy.” She was talking about people taking control of their financial lives so they can get on with their authentic selves. When I talked about making the decision to leaving a $150k legal career for a $35k teaching career, this was possible because I only spent $25k a year. Again, simplify. Look within. Voluntary simplicity gave me the freedom to follow my conscience. Without taking care of the money piece, it’s really hard to use your life energy the way your soul is calling. You were meant to go the way your blood beats. Getting your personal finances straight is part of that.

If this resonates with you, consider taking it this last cohort.

For those of you who have your personal finances down but want to talk specifically about meaning as we experience it in our capitalist system, Money and Meaning: The Course begins September 29. If you want to talk 1-1 with others about enoughness, not-enoughness, rest, grief, and the real meaning of our lives, sign up soon.

1. Ironic, I know, because you’re reading this! My friend Dawn Robertson made the observation that, when we’re on our devices, we stop breathing. Take a deep breath right now.

2. Referenced in an earlier post here.

3. Lawyering ranks in bottom 10% of career satisfaction. I could say a lot more about this but the easiest way to put it: because I went to law school, I have a lot of lawyer friends and not a single one wants their kids to become lawyers.

4. ’You were within me Lord, but I was outside myself’ — Augustine.

5. I believe that that’s the point we getting to in society as a whole.

6. A further gift: as any of my friends can tell you, I’m relatively unafraid of failure. It just doesn’t bother me.

7. “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" — Blaise Pascal