“Contemplation happens when silence morphs into presence.” Thomas Keating

The Nature of Silence as Presence

“Silence is the sign of real contact with the spiritual world and this contact, in turn, always engenders the influx of forces. This is the foundation of all mysticism, all gnosis, all magic and all practical esotericism in general.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p11.

“The final poem in this trio of wonderful teachings is number VII: Stillness, about how we come back. Our true nature is stillness, the source from which we come. It manifests within us as a rising tide of silence, a flowing stream of peacefulness, a limitless ocean of calm, or just sheer stillness. The deep listening of pure contemplation is the path to stillness. All words disappear to it, and all creation awakens to the delight of just being.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 42:55 Mon pm teaching.

Silence as Encounter, Not Transaction

“Explore in your own self how your own relationship with silence is probably more transactional than it absolutely needs to be. And open to yourself to the possibility that it could come at you as an encounter, as a friend, as a fullness that you’ve never let it be before.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 1:06:25 Friday am teaching.

“When silence morphs into presence, what happens? What’s the takeaway? What do we know that we didn’t know before? Well, here is one of my all-time favorites of Thomas Keating’s teaching. Again, it flows directly out of where people ask him, well, what is this presence like? What does it tell you? What does it give you? He says, this presence, once established in our inmost being, might be called spaciousness. There is nothing in it but a certain vibrancy and aliveness. You’re awake, but awake to what? You don’t know. You’re awake to something that you can’t describe and which is absolutely marvelous, totally generous, and which manifests itself with increasing tenderness, sweetness, and intimacy. So you get it? It has no content.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 23:08 Friday am teaching.

“Thomas Keating’s testimony in his life, not in his teaching so much, is that this changed relationship with silence changes everything.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 14:00 Thurs eve teaching.

The Practice of Centering Prayer

“In Centering Prayer the goal is the surrender. The goal is the letting go itself, understood as a pure act. And the fruit of this is a deep inner stillness that can express itself. Whether you’re sitting on your cushion meditating or moving out into the hubbub, the stillness still remains. So it’s a slight difference, but I want to not lose this touchstone on the surrender itself. The letting go as the pure act, the real goal, which then allows us to go into the world with the stillness, rather than it as a means to achieve a stillness. And then when you get out into the real world, the stillness doesn’t work anymore. Because if you’ve associated that stillness with a space you go to in meditation, as soon as you get into the hubbub, you’re out of that space.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Boehme for Beginners, 2:51 01 Track 1-1.

“Centering Prayer directly tills the ground for unity consciousness, or non-duality if you want to call it, and the capacity to meet silence directly as a presence, not as a condition in which something else happens.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 3:00 Friday pm teaching.

“It is not necessary to tell me or anyone what the quite definite thing is that you have observed in yourself and are working on. It is best to keep it in stillness, in silence. I mean, it is best not to talk in yourself about it, and so not to let your life-‘I’s know about it and start arguing, but to let only your Work-‘I’s know what it is. For then the Work itself will reward you secretly. This is what is meant by verses 3 and 4 in Matthew vi: “But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p1537

Integrating Silence and the World

“If you can begin to learn to hold the seat of your attention sort of quietly but firmly in your solar plexus, and then expand your radius of awareness out from that, you can begin to hold a lot in that circle of awareness. It’s not exactly what’s meant by objectless awareness, but it’s in the neighborhood. And when you can do that, the world and silence stop being opposites, and the world no more interrupts your silence than a dragonfly would flying across.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 1:00 Mon pm teaching.

“[This time of 2025] is a wake-up call to bring forth a grittier breed of contemplative. A contemplative that can be in the world without having their fragile psyche disrupted, whose relationship to silence is so deep and so profound, whose validation of the inner wellspring is deep enough that you can ride even these huge perturbations that we’re going to see without being completely undone.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 7:05 Tues am teaching.

“The courage to turn into silence, risk the stripping away of your old devices, coping mechanisms, and defense mechanisms, the willingness to allow yourself to become utterly exposed and vulnerable in the sight of ultimate reality, is an act of courage. And you can emerge from this unshakable.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 10:30 Tues am teaching.

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VII. STILLNESS

Our true nature is stillness,
The Source from which we come.

It manifests itself within us
As a rising tide of silence,

A flowing stream of peacefulness,
A limitless ocean of calm, 
Or just sheer stillness.

The deep listening of pure contemplation
Is the path to stillness.

All words disappear into It,
And all creation awakens to the delight of
Just Being.

Thomas Keating, Secret Embrace

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Logion 90	
Yeshua says...
Come to me
for justice is my yoke,
and gentleness my rule,
and you will discover the state of rest.

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Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise. 

Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.