“Lay down your ideas as to what solitude and silence are supposed to accomplish in your spiritual growth. You will discover incredibly good things. One is that you have a soul. Another, that God is near and the universe is brimming with goodness. Another, that others aren’t as bad as you often think. But don’t try to discover these, or you won’t. You’ll just be busy and find more of your own doings. The cure for too-much-to-do is solitude and silence, for there you find you are safely more than what you do. And the cure of loneliness is solitude and silence, for there you discover in how many ways you are never alone. When you go into solitude and silence … you will need to stay there long enough for the inner being to become different. Muddy water becomes clear if you only let it be still for a while.

“You will know this finding of soul and God is happening by an increased sense of who you are and a lessening of the feeling that you have to do this, that, and the other thing…. That harassing, hovering feeling of ‘have to’ largely comes from the vacuum in your soul, where you ought to be at home with your Father in his kingdom. As the vacuum is rightly filled, you will increasingly know that you do not have to do many of those things – not even those you want to do. Liberation from your own desires is one of the greatest gifts of solitude and silence. When this all begins to happen, you will know you are arriving where you ought to be. Old bondages to wrongdoing will begin to drop off as you see them for what they are. And the possibility of really loving people will dawn upon you. Soon you will enter into the experience of what it is to live by grace, rather than just talk about it.” Dallas Willard

“He leads me beside quiet waters.” Psalm 23:2

Moving From Head to Heart

• Have you truly given “solitude and silence” a try? If so, how does your experience match up?
• Have you tasted what is it to “live by grace, rather than just talk about it?”
• What change could you make to allow for more solitude and silence in your life?

Abba, meet in the quiet.

For More: The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard