Silence, Solitude, Stillness: The Spiritual Disciplines We Need in a Noisy World

The Art of Manliness

The episode explores the spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude through guest John Mark Comer's book Into the Quiet. Comer argues that pervasive digital noise fragments our

Key takeaways

• John Mark Comer describes a 21-day solitude retreat where he experienced profound exhaustion as his nervous system finally released accumulated stress.
• He distinguishes loneliness (unchosen ache for love) from solitude (chosen withdrawal to be alone with oneself and God).

Main topics

• Digital noise and soundless inputs
• Loneliness vs. solitude

Notable quotes

We live as the first generation in human history for whom it is now possible to go through your entire life and never actually be alone.

Conclusion

The episode offers a compelling blend of spiritual tradition and psychol

Transcript preview

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They've got thousands of products across every style and budget, whether you're replacing one worn out wreath or redoing the whole house for the holidays. And you can use filters, customer photos, and more than 20 million verified five-star reviews to figure out if a piece is going to look like the picture and hold up in real life. If you got some ratty decorations of your own, I use Wayfair and I think you should too. Find pieces made for real life and even get more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5 % back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's wayfair.com. That's spelled W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair.com. Speaker 1 (2:13) Brett Speaker 3 (2:13) McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed. Also be sure to explore our articles on artofmanlis.com. Read the deeper dives we do in our sub stack newsletter at dyingbreed.net and turn our content into real world action by joining the Strainless Life program at strainlesslife.com. Now on to the show. Speaker 3 (2:50) We live in a world of pervasive noise. Even when we're alone and our surroundings are quiet, our devices bombard us with an endless stream of inputs, messages, news, opinions, entertainment, and we feel constantly connected. My guest argues that this lack of both silence and solitude isn't just generating stress and fragmenting our attention, but doing real damage to our souls. His name is John Mark Comer, and he's a pastor and the author of Into the Quiet. Today on the show, we discuss what noise is doing to the deepest parts of us and how engaging in silence and solitude can help us cultivate inner stillness. We explore the monastic tradition behind these spiritual disciplines, why engaging in them can sometimes feel like a negative experience, and what happens when all our usual distractions disappear. We also get into simple ways to bring more quiet into everyday life. After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash silence. Speaker 3 (3:46) All right, John Mark Comer, welcome to the show. Speaker 2 (3:49) Very happy to be back with you, Brad. Thank you. Speaker 3 (3:51) So we had you on the show about two years ago to talk about the idea of spiritual disciplines, which you explored this in your book, Practicing the Way. And two of the spiritual disciplines we briefly discussed were solitude and silence. Well, you got a new book out where you just go deep into these two spiritual disciplines. It's called Into the Quiet. What prompted you? to really dig into solitude and silence. Speaker 2 (4:17) Brad, I spend a fair bit of time in the quiet corners of my noisy and busy life as a dad and worker and all that kind of stuff, sneaking away to quiet places to just come to peace and find stillness, and in my case, to pray. And one of the places I go a lot is this monastery up in Big Sur. I actually just got back from there. I go at the end of every summer for a long solitude retreat just by myself. And this place is wild. I mean, Big Sur itself is wild and gorgeous. And this is like in the most remote part of Big Sur. You lose cell phone reception like an hour and a half before you get to the turnoff. Then it's like this. wild two and a half miles switchback road up to about 1500 feet up this cliff. And you get there and then there are signs all over the property saying just silence, not like, hey, keep it down or please be mindful, just silence. And you don't stay in like dormitory style. It's not that kind of a monastery. You stay in these little hermitages or they actually call them cells, like prison cells. And these little kind of, you know, 10 by 10 cabins, and you take all of your meals totally alone in silence back in your room. The only sound you hear is three times a day. There's like a 30 minute moment of prayer with the monks that you can sit in on. So I would always go to evening prayer, which is at like five. And after evening prayer, they do this 30 minute silent meditation where you just kind of sit there. They have this gorgeous old octagon kind of chapel. just natural light as the sun is going down and it's this beautiful blissfully quiet kind of zone and they just do totally silent 30-minute meditation. So I'm sitting in on this and you know naturally it's hard to pay attention to anything for 30 minutes straight without your mind wandering. So my mind wanders like it does for all people or maybe a little bit more than the average Joe. And at some point I like realized that I've, you know, gone off thinking about this, that or the other. And I kind of opened my eyes to like refocus on my breath or whatever. And I noticed this like blue glow out of the left hand corner of my eye. And I look over and I'm not making this up. The monk that is leading this 30 minute meditation. And this is like straight up. hardcore Catholic. He's wearing full head to toe white robes. There is like Latin and candles and like all the monk stuff. He is over sitting against the wall, leaning back against it with his iPhone out, scrolling on his phone, doing God knows what. And that's the blue glow that I see. And in that moment, I just realized the world is doomed. Like if you can't. escape it here. I mean, this is about as far off the map as you can get in a car. Then man, and so as I write in the book, we're not the first people to live and attempt to have a soul. But we live as the first generation in human history for whom it is now possible to go through your entire life and never actually be alone. Because anytime we may be the only person in a room, or we may shut up and not talk for 30 minutes. we're never really alone anymore because our devices keep us tethered to the world of noise. And that in many ways was an inciting incident to go deeper into this subject. Speaker 3 (7:46) You start off the book talking about how a lot of people have this desire for silence and solitude because we do live in a world of noise. And I like how you define noise because I think when most people think of it and... even how scientists define it, it's like unwanted sound. So, you know, car horns and sirens, things like that. But you say there can also be soundless noise. What is soundless noise? Speaker 2 (8:11) So, okay. So Cal Newport has a beautiful book on digital minimalism and he has a chapter in there on solitude. Now he's not writing about it as a spiritual discipline as I am, but more, you know, through the perspective of deep work. But still, he has a wonderful working definition of solitude as a place that is free from other inputs. And I like that definition. And by that definition, you know, one form of input is auditory. So if you're in an open plan office and people are talking to you constantly, it's hard to kind of clear your brain to open it up to work or creativity or self-reflection. But there's a whole other, like inputs do not require volume anymore. They can come through our web browser or through our phones. And this is where, you know, to extrapolate out of like physical noise, there is now a digital noise that we are assaulted by constantly. The noise of... constant news alerts, the noise of constant predictions of doom for everything from the environment to politics to AI to et cetera, et cetera, the next pandemic, the noise of just trivia and drivel and brain rot and distraction on TikTok or whatever, the noise of constant opinion and anger and outrage and anxiety. This noise, even if it is technically silent, assaults us through our phones and our laptops and our web browsers. Anytime that we're actually alone, as long as we have a device, we're still receiving input from other places. And that's where the world now is noisier than it has ever been before. Speaker 3 (9:52) There's been lots of research about the negative effects noise with sound can have on our bodies. So, you know, it spikes your cortisol, it's linked to anxiety, Alzheimer's, dementia. But you're focused on what noise, including soundless noise, all the inputs we're bombarded with, has on the soul. What do you think noise is doing to us spiritually? Speaker 2 (10:13) Yeah, well, I think at the end of the day, it blocks or it sabotages or it at least diminishes our capacity for love. which in my paradigm is what life is all about, receiving love from God and others, and then giving that love back to God and others and becoming a loving person. I think that is the meaning and purpose of life, not moving the needle up to the right, not money, sex, and power, not whatever image management, but becoming people that are deeply pervaded by love and by joy and by peace. And I come at that as a avid Christian, but I think There's a common desire for that across the spectrum of the world. And I don't think I have to convince you that the noisier our environment, the more stressed our body, the less loving we are likely going to be. So this is an embarrassing analogy, and I'm not going to come out looking good in this one. But my wife and I were laughing because we just read about this new couples fad called a airport divorce. which made us actually feel better. We have a lot of tension when we try to travel together. We kind of move through the universe very differently. And so just the stress of an airport, even if you're there early, which is rare, but even if you're there and you're not in a hurry, still just that level of people and noise and stimulation and chaos, it's hard to like just be loving and present and relax with each other. So this new trend is basically. You get to the airport and you get dropped off by your Uber or your park or whatever. And then you're just like, honey, I'll see you either on the plane or I'll see you at our destination. And you just have an airport divorce and you go through security separately and you do your stuff separately and you get on the plane and you travel and then you meet there just to minimize conflict. And so I'm aware that does not speak flattering of me, but we are playfully giving it a try. And I think the reality is just in an environment like that, it's hard to be. a loving person. It's hard to be present to another. It's hard to have compassion for another. It's hard to listen deeply. It's hard to even notice your own anxiety and the way your own internal anxiety and the systems of anxiety you inherited from your family of origin may be discoloring a conversation and causing you to behave in ways that are controlling or domineering or passive or withdrawing. In short, it blocks our ability to love people. Speaker 3 (12:39) Yeah, I agree. I'm with you on traveling just makes me terrible. My family jokes, I turn into nervous travel dad whenever we travel, especially when we're flying. So I'm Speaker 2 (12:49) like, Speaker 3 (12:49) we got to make the plane. Speaker 2 (12:50) Okay, so Speaker 3 (12:50) I'm not alone. Yeah. And I just get angry. I'll just yell randomly. And it's because it's all the noise. It's just that you're thinking about that. You're checking your phone. Okay, has the flight changed? Does everyone have their papers? Everyone have their license? Yeah, it's the noise. It makes it really hard to be loving. Yeah, and you mentioned that silence is connected. to solitude. Our lack of solitude today contributes to the amount of noise because as you said, we're just connected all the time via our devices. But what's interesting is people have been talking a lot about this loneliness crisis. People feel alone. Yes. So, I mean, how is it that we can feel alone, but we're still not experiencing solitude like we think we should? Yes. Speaker 2 (13:32) Yeah, well, first off, I think it's really important to clarify that loneliness is not the same thing as solitude. One of the primary differences is loneliness is unchosen. Solitude has to be chosen. Like what we call solitary confinement is one of the worst punishments known to mankind short of death because it's an unchosen form of solitude, i.e. it's extreme loneliness. Loneliness is when your ache for not just people or a social interaction, but your ache for love and acceptance, to know and to be known, for belonging, is not sated or satisfied by your relational experience. That's why you can be sitting in a crowd of people and