Your Brain as a Highway (Silence VI)

Think of your brain as a series of roads that you travel every day. This is actually what your brain is like on a physical level: a series of ruts—like paths or highways—that your thoughts travel over and over again. Have you ever noticed how you often have the same thought, as though your brain is on repeat? “I’m so stupid” or “Why can’t I get things right?” This is why our internal monologue can be such a nightmare. Your brain gets used to “driving the same route;” the more times it follows a particular path, the more likely it is to go the same way the next time. On a physical level, in the brain, the neural highways get coated with a fatty substance called myelin, re-enforcing them.[1] Familiar thoughts are marked out on your brain and easy to find because you have already traveled them so many times, like a trail through a forest.

The brain loves the familiarity of this established path even if you hate it. We need stability and familiarity, even if it makes us miserable. But these brain patterns aren’t who you are. The conversation in your mind is not your true self. And our thoughts certainly don’t always represent or reflect the story of “new creation” available in God. A friend of mine has a placard on his desk that reads: “Don’t believe everything you think.” That’s it exactly! We must learn to doubt and supplant what we think is true if it doesn’t align with God’s greater truth. We have to disassociate from the negative thoughts and emotions—whether they’re about God or about ourselves—with which we have over-identified. We have to cease believing that they’re true.

In silence, then, there’s the possibility of a new road being built in our minds. Silence becomes a gateway by which the Spirit of God is able to over-write our normal thinking, freed from the self-deception of our own thoughts. In silence and solitude, in prayer and in Scripture, a new highway appears, and an entry ramp with it. We become free to make a choice to enter this new highway rather than just getting back onto the worn-out old one. To believe the new story of our adoption in God, for example—even if for just a moment. And the more you make this choice and travel this new highway, the bigger it becomes. Indeed, the more the new highway is used, the more it becomes a freeway that’s readily found and traveled.[2]

In silence, we can receive a new God-image, to steadily supplant all the false views of God we have built up over the years. Such views are almost always initially based on our parents and how disciplined or permissive they were, how distant or how loving, or on trauma that we endured growing up. But such impressions are never adequate to fill out a transformative image of God.

What tired story about yourself—perhaps paved by some failure or mistake, or by some way that you were abused or betrayed—needs to be intersected by the new story of “new creation” in Jesus? What tired stories about God (that He's distant or uncaring or angry) need to be supplanted by a transforming image of God? Every one of us need to fall into the story of adoption that Jesus tells, seeing who God is in a way that re-wires us. And we need silence to open our minds to these realities.  

As a way of engaging silence, consider this practice: In silence, practice breathing deeply, to calm your body. Then simply say, "I receive your nearness, God," and remain in the silence. Every few moments, repeat this prayer. Such practices train our souls to become open, and it's in openness before God that we are transformed. See how long you can stay in the tension of this prayer, and of silence itself.
 

[1] Merriam-Websiter: Myelin: a soft white material that forms a thick layer around the axons of some neurons and is composed chiefly of lipids (such as cerebroside and cholesterol), water, and smaller amounts of protein

[2]Thus the Scripture speaks of “the renewal of the mind” and the “casting down of every obstacle that keeps people from knowing God,” including “rebellious thoughts. See Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 10:5.

Oriented by the Whisper of God (Silence V)

Each of us draws our identity—our sense of who we are—from somewhere. Often, this “somewhere” is the accomplishments or successes we think can make us good or worthy of love (this is the whole stratagem of The Human Paradigm). Other times, the “somewhere” is our failures, which can make us doubt that we are worthy. But the message of Jesus’ baptism is that Jesus isn’t going to play either of these games, at all. Instead, he’s going to draw his identity from what the Father says about him. He’s going to cling to the whisper of God’s Spirit, which interrupts every other voice, external or internal. Jesus trusts that his Father’s declaration is enough, and this empowers him for a life of love and purpose. This is why Jesus so often withdrew from the crowds and the noise of life. Finding space “away from it all” recharged Jesus’ spiritual center, taking him back to the Jordan River and the transforming reality of God’s loving declaration over him.

As that pattern was true for Jesus, so must it become true for us. Our work is to come to believe in the goodness of God, and this only happens by coming to hear His voice.[1] This work, in the midst of a dark world, is challenging, especially if we confuse the pain and struggle of life with an experience of God’s will. God does not cause suffering. And becoming grounded in the whisper of God's Spirit can help us weather suffering well.  

The point of silence as a spiritual practice is that in the absence of external noise, there is space for God to break through our internal voice—as he continually did with Jesus—to free us to live from our adoption, becoming grounded in God. However, it takes a habitual commitment to silence to make space for this transforming whisper.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t often wake up with an immediate awareness of the loving whisper of God’s mercy. I often wake up tired and still wrestling with the failures of the previous day, or with a mental list of the things I need to get accomplished in the next twenty-four hours. Living in the past or the future comes more naturally than living in the present now of God’s love. It takes commitment to create space to be intersected and changed by the voice of God rather than simply treating the thoughts in my head as reality. It takes commitment to breathe slowly and prayerfully open myself to God and the whisper of His Spirit.

But I can literally feel the shift in my brain and body as I do it. And then, alongside my fears and doubts and self-focus, there’s the possibility of becoming grounded in God once again. This is basically what people mean when they talk about contemplation or silence and solitude. It’s the place where God’s reality overshadows and outshines the limited truths of our merely human minds. It’s where the truth of God supplants our limited truths. In solitude and silence, we allow the reality of God’s words to us to become the reality in our own minds and hearts. In this way, we begin to experience the “renewal of our minds.”[2]

We drift away from this reality, of course. It’s for this reason that our practice of silence must become a habit. In the same way my wife and I don't tell each other “I love you” only once a year, we need to be reminded continually of the grounding love of God. When we establish silence as a habit, our brains can literally be rewired by God’s Spirit.

[1] John 6:29

[2] Romans 12:2

The Voices We Listen To (Silence IV)

Just as seeing who God is transforms us, hearing God’s voice is what brings us into reality and freedom.[1] The problem is that we’re surrounded by competing noise and competing voices, all vying for our attention. This includes the voices in our own head.

We all have, after all, an internal monologue that’s always running. It’s at work while you read this chapter, agreeing or disagreeing, questioning, perhaps resonating with what you’re reading. Our internal monologue reveals what we think is real and true. Often, that self-monologue is full of all sorts of beliefs which are quite real, even if they aren’t actually true. And these beliefs are often quite loud. If you were abused as a child, you may believe that something in you will always be broken. If you were abandoned, you may believe that no relationship will ever be safe. The beliefs in your monologue may not actually be true, but they can still be real; after all, the things you believe are true create your reality.[2]

Our noise problem, then, does not just come from cars and freeways and jackhammers in the external world outside us. The real battle comes from the internal noise of our own minds, a confrontation of competing voices, all vying to be heard.[3]

Jesus knew this battle of competing voices. He was beset by them, just like we are. Beset by the external voices of his friends and neighbors, or of the crowds who doubted or accused him. Beset by the voices of religious leaders who were jealous of him and hated him. But also, like us, beset by the inner voice of his own heart and mind. Jesus, too, struggled with his humanity. Jesus, too, wondered where his Father was.[4]

How was Jesus able to navigate all these voices? Very simply, he knew how to find the voice of his Father’s whisper, interrupting all other voices. This whisper, in fact, was the foundation of Jesus’ entire ministry: In Matthew 3, we read the story of Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan River, where God his Father said to him, “This is my beloved son.”[5] This whisper of God’s Spirit—this voice saying “You’re mine and you’re in”—was the starting point of Jesus’ ministry. It was this voice that broke through Jesus’ mere humanity into the reality that Jesus was the beloved child of God.

The scandal of grace and of adoption is that God does the same thing for us. “To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”[6] We are, as Paul says, “joint heirs with Christ.”[7] The whisper of God’s Spirit confirms us in our adoption as God’s children and empowers us, as it did Jesus, for a life of love and compassion for others. “[God’s] Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children.”[8] Jesus drew his identity and his strength from the voice of his good and generous Father, and we are meant to follow the same path. We are meant to trust in our adoption, just as Jesus trusted in his own belovedness in God.

We, too, are “accepted in the beloved.”[9]

[1] 2 Corinthians 3:18.

[2] No wonder the Scripture speaks of “being renewed in our mind” (Romans 12:2) and “casting down strongholds” (2 Corinthians 2:4)! See also ‘The Thomas Theorem’ within sociology.

[3] Paul, for example, describes the battle between flesh and spirit as a war in the mind. See Romans 7:14-25.

[4] Matthew 27:46.

[5] Matthew 3:17.

[6] John 1:12.

[7] Romans 8:17.

[8] Romans 8:16.

[9] Ephesians 1:6.