Inexplicable

This is a short reflection on some of the words I've encountered and have been sitting with as I explore what silence means for me this year. I use "sitting with" because stating I'm "learning" or "understanding" could give the impression that I have a better grasp on any of this than I actually do. The following may not seem to scream "silence," but it's there.

In a series of talks with Fr. Thomas Keating, Fr. Richard Rohr speaks of how our ego or "false self" is what causes us to define ourselves in terms of what we dislike or what we are against. This "contrariness," as Julian of Norwich terms it, closes us off from experiencing deeper levels of faith and life, "because it’s always defining itself in terms of analysis, critique, judgment, labeling, or positioning, and this game of positioning is a mind game." Rohr says this mind game is "entirely an inner system that makes [us] feel important," but actually leads us into conflict with ourselves and others. It is necessary to let go of our false self in order to be who we truly are, but he explains that letting go of how we've learned to define ourselves can be incredibly distressing:

It’s all about letting go... It’s not about controlling or achieving or promoting or attaining…  it feels like dying in the first instance, because you've spent so much time living out of this mind and this ego that you think is you.... It will feel, in the first instance, like losing and like dying…these “little dyings” that have to become an art form and that you have to go through once, twice, several significant times to know, as the poet said, “What did I ever lose by dying?”

As I'm sitting with these words and others from Keating and Merton, what I'm experiencing does seem, at the risk of sounding a bit dramatic, "like losing and like dying."

In the midst of that, however, I think I might also be just beginning to catch infinitesimal glimpses that I am someone aside from all the ways I've previously defined myself - aside from what I do or don't do, what I like or dislike, how others approve of or disapprove of me - and apart from any labels or judgement that could be applied to me by myself or others.

I don't know how else to explain or define any of this. I know that it feels quite humbling and somewhat lonely.

And yet, inexplicably, also like becoming known.