Why Your Soul Needs Quiet in a Noisy World with John Mark Comer
Episode Notes
What happens when we finally get quiet enough to encounter ourselves, God, and what’s underneath all the noise?
In this episode, Dr. Alison Cook is joined by former pastor and New York Times bestselling author John Mark Comer to talk about his new book, Into the Quiet, and the surprisingly difficult practice of silence and solitude. They talk about what happens when we stop filling every empty space with our phones, work, entertainment, and distraction. What comes up in the quiet isn’t always what we expect.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
* Why getting quiet can be difficult but what we can discover when we finally slow down
* How silence and solitude can help us become more present to ourselves and to God
* How to recognize the difference between healthy reflection and rumination
* When we’re meeting a part of our own soul vs. the enemy of our soul
* How to start practicing quietness in small, manageable steps
As John Mark says, “The point is just to offer ourselves more deeply to God.”
About John Mark Comer:
John Mark Comer is a teacher and a writer. He has his Masters in Biblical and Theological Studies and a Teacher in Residence at Vintage Church LA. He is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books. His most recent book is Into the Quiet: Following Jesus in a World of Noise.
More Resources:
Into the Quiet: Following Jesus in a World of Noise by John Mark Comer
Other books by John Mark Comer
The Practicing the Way nonprofit
Past episode with John Mark Comer and Dr. Alison Cook on the Best of You is here.
Dr. Alison Cook with John Mark Comer on the Rule of Life Podcast
Listeners get exclusive access to the first 2 chapters of Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul.
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
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Transcript
Episode 229
John Mark Comer
Most of us have outsourced the management of our consciousness to our phones. I can't sit at a red
light without checking my phone. I've come to feel that noise is just as much of a threat to the
flow of love through our bodies as hurry is and functions in a similar, different,
but similar kind of way. What does it mean to go into the quiet? And then number two, what happens
when we do? All the great ones went into the desert and the desert teaches by taking away.
I am used to, I've been socially conditioned in the West and by the Western church to learn by
addition. But there's this whole other dimension of learning by subtraction. You begin to realize
why people left everything behind to go out into the desert. Maybe they knew something that we
don't know.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of The Best of You. And we are
going deep today. We're going into the quiet, into those moments of being alone with your own self
and with God. John Mark Comer is back on the podcast today. He's one of our favorite all-time
guests. He's here to talk about his brand new book. It's called Into the Quiet. And this
conversation is just rich and powerful, and it went a lot of places I didn't expect it to go.
In his new book, Into the Quiet, John Mark is asking a... that seems simple on the surface,
but actually is really deep. It's what happens when we finally get quiet enough to encounter the
reality of ourselves, of God, and the world? around us. And the truth is getting quiet in this way
isn't easy. It's not always peaceful at first. It's not always intuitive.
In fact, there's a lot of forces working against us getting quiet in the way John Mark is talking
about today. And it's not just our phones, although that's a big part of it. Sometimes when we
finally create those moments to get still, to get quiet with ourselves and with God,
what we find isn't always pleasant. Sometimes what we notice is exhaustion or fear or shame or
grief, or sometimes we just notice that immediate tug back to distraction,
right? This realization of how difficult it is to become fully present is a lot of what we're going
to talk about in today's episode. John Mark is really candid about the fact that he thinks
distraction may be one of the greatest threats. to our spiritual lives. And we talk about why
there's so many pulls on our attention and what we can do in practical ways to learn to get still,
to learn to be quiet, and what that actually means in our real lives, why it's more than just being
introverted, why it's something that we all need to be practicing. We talk about what
contemplatives call the unloading of the unconscious. I love this term that happens when we find
moments of stillness in our soul. starts to rise up. We talk about how to distinguish healing
reflection in the quiet from rumination, right? From just those spinning thoughts that don't help
us. And we talk about this intersection between psychology, what's happening inside of us that we
need to pay attention to and spiritual warfare that's also happening, how we need to be discerning
about what we notice when we get quiet. What I love about this conversation is it's really about
something deeper. It's about learning to become present with oneself and with God,
right? It's learning to be present with a God who is already present with us.
There's a lot of overlaps in what John Mark is saying in this book, Into the Quiet, and what I'm
trying to show you in my work with the secure soul about this idea that God's love is already
present with us. And part of this work is learning to train ourselves to become aware of God
-loving. We get really practical in this conversation about what this practice of solitude and
silence actually looks like, especially in a full life, simple ways to begin, why quiet is more
than simply being alone, and how to start small in a life that has trained us to constantly reach
for more input. This is one of those conversations I think will stay with you. There are so many
nuggets in it about this deeper work of being still. with ourselves and with God.
Please enjoy my conversation with John Mark Comer.
What a beautiful book, Into the Quiet. Thank you. I feel like I'm just getting to talk with a
little bit of a kindred spirit. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for your using your
gifts to put some of these ancient but oh so relevant ideas into words for us.
So thank you. Well, that's very kind. I feel the same about you. I think we don't know each other
very well, but we bonded in our few times together over feeling just a little bit about out of
place at times in the wider church culture said very graciously.
And I'd love to on that note of feeling because at times it's both for me when I read a book like
this. Like you've written, it's not just in the Christian culture. It's sometimes in the secular
psychology culture. Yes. Because I think there's something beautiful you're doing here that speaks
to a lot of the work I do, which is one of the people we meet in solitude is ourselves.
Yes. as you lay out but before we and it turns out ourselves is more than one one part one person
yeah there's some complexity there and there's a lot going on in there yeah i love that you laid
out that you meet yourself and you meet the enemy and the two are not necessarily the same there's
there's there's there's some Yeah, it's really powerful. I'd love to start just with kind of a high
level that one of the biggest enemies of our spiritual life is our distractedness.
It's not our doubt. It's our distractedness. What led you to arrive at that conclusion and to want
to focus on solitude? One of the key ingredients to spiritual health.
I'm not a sports guy, but sports psychology, I find interesting. And you know, the saying in sports
psychology that the best players make lousy coaches and what you,
you know, it's like the, the, the B level players generally make good coaches. Yeah.
And, uh, I think when it comes to being a Christian or just a person of love,
I'm certainly B level, if not like EDFG. why level if that makes sense so you know you work in the
field of psychology and you're well aware that personality tests are not true but uh hilariously in
pretty much any personality test if you like google my personality type and whatever movie.
Like, have you seen this? Like, Myers-Briggs is the easiest one because there's 16 personality
types. You can Google the Myers-Briggs personality types and Star Wars or Harry Potter or
whatever, and they will... up 16 characters from those movies that are those 16 types,
right? So inevitably, my type is the super villain.
So like in Star Wars, I'm not even Darth Vader, because we all kind of love him and he comes around
in the end, I'm the Emperor Palpatine. You know, in Harry Potter, I'm he who must not be named.
In Breaking Bad, I'm whatever the guy's name is. I'm always the like evil arch villain.
And I can laugh about that at least now, maybe not originally, but I think just the way I'm wired,
some people are naturally pretty relaxed and present. to the moment and the people in front of them
and love or at least kindness flows through them i think it's important to distinguish between a
loving disposition and a loving character some people have a loving disposition and they've had
four affairs and they've kind of abandoned their children and they're super warm and loving and
kind but they're not loving by character other people are loving by character but they're pretty
persnickety and you know you're like you need to work on your social skills So I am definitely not
loving by disposition. I am kind of a type A, again, Emperor Palpatine by disposition.
And so playfulness aside, you know, I often feel like I limp where others naturally walk in just
living Jesus' vision of human flourishing. Like all people, I was made to become pervaded by love.
too long of an answer to your question but what I'm trying to say Allison is that I get to some of
these things because I think they're true for all people hurry will sabotage the flow of love
through you no matter what your personality is I think I just feel it maybe in a concentrated form
because I feel like I walk with a limp And so I've come to feel that noise,
or what in the emerging scientific literature is called noise pollution, is just as much of a
threat to the flow of love through our bodies as hurry is and functions in a... similar different
but similar kind of way you know in my book on hurry i use the analogy of the airport and how if
you're late for the airport and you're trying to get you know your wife and your three kids or
whatever through security what's flowing through your body is likely not love you know and um
however many years later from that book I am. I would love to tell you that I am now just Jesus Zen
in the airport. But the reality is airports are still a bad place for me. I now get to the airport
much earlier than I used to. So I'm not in a hurry. But just that environment of noise,
stimulation, distraction, people everywhere. Man, it is really hard for me to be peaceful,
present, loving, kind. My wife and I just got back from a trip, a retreat up in Oregon.
We were laughing because, you know, we don't travel great together. There's just tension. I'm just
going to be honest here because I'm guessing there's some other couples. Our best moments are never
in an airport. We're just tense and late and we kind of travel differently by disposition.
And so we just read about this new couples fad called airport divorce. Have you heard about this?
No. It's kind of what it sounds like where these couples will.
get to the airport and they'll get out of their car they'll park the car get out of the uber and
they'll be like okay i'll just i'll meet you in atlanta i'll see you there and they split up at the
airport go through security separately go to the bathroom whatever get their water separately
sometimes even book like separate seats on the same flight and then they meet up like on the other
end of baggage claim just to minimize conflict And I would love to say that my wife and I don't
need that. But the reality is we are in a body, and we should talk about that.
I know it's a big part of your work. And where our body is and how our body is has a profound
impact on what comes through our body and whether it's love or something else.
Yeah. What is it about the noise? So here's a question for you,
for the listener. And you talk about this in the book. I think you say it really well that there's
one thing for you being by yourself is nirvana.
Right. I mean, you wish to just be alone with a stack of books. Same with me. I was just telling
you as we logged on, you know, my husband loves to fly fish. I will go with him, sit in the car,
take the dogs for a walk. We're offline and plow through a stack of books. Right. Yeah. It's love
it. Bliss. There's two things you're saying. This is not just about kind of getting by ourselves.
This is deeper, number one. And number two, it's not just optional. There's something about
unplugging. So for some people, maybe there is more of an innate, I need to get where there's
quiet. I'm extra sensitive to stimuli. I'm a highly sensitive person. All of these categories that
we have. And that's very real. But you're getting at something deeper,
what we're doing. when it's quiet, what we're doing when we finally unplug from the device,
when we finally get away from the urban, you know, the urban jungle of just noise everywhere,
of the airport, that it's not just getting too literal quiet, there's something else happening.
What do you mean by that? What's happening and why is it so important? Yeah, well, a lot is
happening, more than one thing, but I could not agree more. The great tragedy of...
western spirituality is that quiet is thought of as like an optional side discipline for
introverted readers who are into that kind of thing and don't have little children or a demanding
job and happen to be retired or empty nesters or just independently wealthy or whatever and that is
a tragedy Not just for extroverts because then they miss out on this whole dimension. It's a
tragedy for introverts too because then we delude ourselves into thinking that kind of just a
little me time to read and be alone and catch my breath is the spiritual practice of quiet.
And, you know, I just think about it like the twin, you know, in the book I call them the twin
pillars of the two legs by which we walk the way of Jesus. There's no official list of the
practices of Jesus. And so you can group them together by, it's all arbitrary,
right? One way you could just simplify the whole conversation is to say there are essentially two
practices. You could call it contemplation and community, or you could call it... and what happens
in the quiet of prayer and that would include scripture and soul work and living deeply in
relationship with other christians and people and you know i just think about it this way when i'm
speaking to extroverts i'm as introverted as they come i'm off the charts on the introvert level i
love to read i am a sensitive person And while I don't have a need to go for crowds,
I don't need to go to the mall to get some stimulation in. I don't want to make new friends with
the person I'm sitting next to on the plane. I have more than enough friends in my life. But I am
deeply relational because I'm a human being and I'm made to live a deeply relational life.
I might not have the same social appetite as an extrovert, but I have the exact same relational
need and wiring in me as the most extroverted person I know. And so I live a deeply relational life
just with a smaller, deeper circle of persons than an extrovert would. In the same way,
that's how an extrovert, I think, should think about quiet, that they might not have the same need
that I have emotionally to spend hours and hours reading and journaling and thinking all the time.
But they have a deep, inbred, latent, God-ordained,
I think God-designed need in their body and soul. to be in the quiet to be alone with god for
times alone with their own soul and to come to stillness before god and so we we can't think about
this as an introvert extrovert preference thing we have to think about this through the lens of
jesus and both were in the life of jesus and you just see him go back and forth constantly
Mean to you to practice. I love how you say in going into the quiet.
That's the title of the book. So when I was, you know, I've always been drawn to the
contemplatives, to the mystics. And I always am a human and get distracted very easily.
Right. So those things are very real. Right. They're just. Well, I don't I don't struggle with that
all at all, but I've. I hear that's a problem for mere mortals like yourself. You're just immune,
totally immune. So I remember, I don't know, years ago, I was actually living in L.A.
at the time, and a guy was doing, there was a, I don't know,
maybe it was a Catholic church down in Santa Monica, and he was doing these contemplative prayer
evenings, James Finley, where you, and you talk about, I think,
Thomas Keating in the book, some of it was based on that, where you sit in a circle. for an hour
you know he bangs a symbol and then it's quiet and you are just sitting there and and that is one
sort of structured version and i remember you know being a fairly contemplative person a bit avid
reader i can live inside my mind for hours on end you know i literally didn't have relationships
you know that's my last book i was writing about how i basically stayed you know single for years
and years because i could live inside my mind for so long so it's not like this was new to me and
It was a bizarre experience at first. Like you're just sitting there in quiet and immediately my
mind's, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to think? You know, you have all these layers
of what happens. So I guess there's a couple of questions in this question. One, what does it mean
to go into the quiet? Like, is it something we do like that that's structured or is it something we
make into our day-to-day lives, right? And then number two, we'll get to the deeper part,
what happens when we do? I love that you walk us through some of the normalizing of what can happen
when we do.
Yeah, well, let's take the questions one at a time.
Quiet is both a place, and we can't write that part off.
When Jesus would go out into the aramos, is the Greek word that's used, is translated wilderness or
desert or deserted place or solitary place or quiet place. He was actually going in his body to a
place that was literally quiet and free from stimulation other than the beauty of the world as God
made it. And that's really important. And you may not have access to a national park or a
backcountry, you know, or you may not live in a cabin in Wyoming, but you can find your version of
that. It may be just getting up in your living room before your kids are awake. and that means you
know you don't watch as much netflix at night because you need to go to bed in time it may be a
park down the street from your house it may be every saturday you go out hiking it may be there's
lots of different ways you may live somewhere where it's easily conducive to your home or whatever
but it's a place but it's also a practice And it's everything from a few minutes when you first
wake up in the morning to, I tell the story of a kind of once-in-a-lifetime 21-day retreat that
I did, silent retreat in the book. That's an extreme example. But everything in between. I mean,
and you see this in the life of Christ. You see one extreme example of 40 days in the Eremos, in
the wilderness. And every other example is measured in hours, not days. It's early in the morning.
It's an all night in prayer to God. It's a day away. There's no other example that is more than a
few hours. And so there's a whole spectrum there. And like anything, you start small where you are,
not where you feel like you should be. You don't start with some heroic like 21 day solitude
retreat. You know, you start by just, all right, how about I read a psalm in the morning to begin
my day? And I think generally. Like anything, you want to begin with some mental scaffolding to
kind of hold your brain from going crazy. And so historically,
the easiest way to do that is through Lectio Divina, which is just a fancy Latin way of saying
reading the Psalms and passages of Scripture very slowly and prayerly and meditatively.
as a form of prayer more than even of reading, certainly not left-brain analysis of the text,
but a prayerful reading of Scripture. That's historically even how most of the monks do it to this
day. Most monks pray through the Psalter every single month, 150 psalms over 30 days.
And the method that you're referring to that was popularized by Thomas Keating and a few others is
called centering prayer. It's a technique. Contemplative prayer is a much broader category.
Centering prayer is an attempt to do the same thing, but it's not, rather than meditating on
scripture, you kind of focus on your breath or on a prayer word or a prayer phrase like,
come Holy Spirit or Lord Jesus have mercy on me or Father or Jesus or something like that.
And the basic science there, not science, the basic theory there is that God is not an idea or a
feeling. He's a person. He's beyond, he's not less than an idea or a feeling, but he's beyond all
that. And so moving to a type of prayer that goes even beyond our thoughts and even beyond our
feelings into kind of a person to person, will to will communion. And,
you know, one doorway in is through centering prayer where you kind of focus on the breath and the
word. That's pretty hard to do. Hence why you go to a church and there's a guide and an hour is a
long time. An hour does not feel like an hour. As I'm sure you know, an hour of that feels like 10
hours. It's so hard. And so I think a much easier place to start would be the Psalms.
I quote St. Ramald. He was a reformer in the Benedictine order and he has a short rule of life.
In it, he writes, the path you must walk is the Psalms, never leave it. And that's just an anthem
for my life. So the scripture has, God has given us in scripture these poetic prayers that are
designed to slow us down. They can't be read quickly. They're poetry. They're not to be read.
They're to be prayed. And that, I think, is honestly the easiest starting place. If you can just
get away from your phone, get somewhere quiet. and begin to slowly pray the Psalms,
just that, as basic as it sounds, is going to be transformative, you know, for a lot of people.
There's something you're saying that I think is so interesting when we think about attachment as
really being about presence. Yes, attention. Being attuned,
right? And hearing what you're saying, that... a little bit being in the quiet is a little
different than digging into your theological exegesis, which isn't a bad thing. It's a little
different than crying. I'm not sure. Tell me if I'm it might be a little bit different than crying
out all of our emotions, although that might be part of it, that there's something about withness.
So if we're in the scriptures or even if we're journaling, it's a. it's a withness with God.
We're doing it with, we're not, we're not in our brain. We're not in our head. We're not only in
our emotional feelings. There's a place for both of those things, but it's a withness from that
attachment. Am I hearing you right? Oh yeah. I mean. You know more about attachment theory than I
do, but I love the language you used of attunement. I love the work of Dr.
Todd Hall out of Rosemead School of Psychology. And, you know, sometimes people ask, well, what's
the difference between contemplative prayer and, say, mindfulness? and because on the surface they
can kind of look pretty similar like you're sitting there you focus on the breath maybe you have a
word or a phrase you repeat if a thought comes of distraction you just gently let it go it at first
it could kind of sound like is this just christianized mindfulness and i'm i'm a fan of mindfulness
so i don't think it's a bad thing um but It's profoundly different because it is ultimately
relational. It's an experience of the attunement of God. So Todd Hall and others have done the
empirical research on this, and they have now proven in studies that contemplative prayer has a
profoundly healing effect on a person's attachment. capacities in a way that mindfulness doesn't.
So mindfulness has a profound effect on emotional regulation, and contemplative prayer has that
exact same effect, but it doesn't affect the healing of the attachment disorders. And when you are
really prayerfully, quietly experiencing the attunement of God,
not just you're attuning to him, but you realize he's already there attuning to you. You know, this
is one, my favorite definition of contemplative prayer is gazing at God. who is already gazing at
you in love. Once you begin to, Hebrews chapter 12, fix your eyes on Jesus.
Now clearly the eyes there are not like your physical eyes. And it's not just your mental eyes
because it's on the person of Jesus in Hebrews 12, not just the idea or the historical figure or
the doctrine of Jesus and the doctrine of justification. No, fix your eyes on the living person of
Christ who's alive in the heavenly tabernacle. Fix your eyes there. That's what's happening in
these forms of prayer. You're turning your inward gaze of the eyes of your heart, as Paul calls
them, onto the living person of Christ, and you're actually experiencing it. living presence by the
Spirit. Not just an idea, historical figure, doctrine, yes to all of that, but a living presence,
the living resurrected Christ who said, I am with you always by the Spirit, Matthew 28. And as you
attune to him who's already attuning to you in love, there is a deep healing. of what we could call
our attachment sensibilities or faculties, of that deep inner part of our soul that happens in
prayer. And really the only other place I know that happens is in deep relationships of attunement
with a therapist or a spouse or a best friend or many people can play that role.
You know that better than I do. Yeah. I love I love that emphasis.
Tell me now. So I feel like we've given the listener a little bit of scaffolding. I love that you
just made it simple. It can be a few moments in the morning, but it is a little different.
I know even myself, when I get out of the habit, you know, even just a few minutes, I get edgy.
I get like, yes, yes. You you so beautifully describe three different.
And we probably won't get to all of them. I wish we could because they're each so rich, but that's
what the book is for. There's three different things we encounter. We encounter ourselves, the
enemy, and God. And God. And I think it might be in that order to some degree or another,
but at least in my experience, anecdotally. And that first kind of encounter with the self to me is
a little bit of where... of the Venn diagram of spiritual formation and psychology, kind of there's
that overlap, right? It's that, for me, the distractedness,
which right now is just purely almost an addictive response because we're so used to our phones.
But then, and you go into it in the book, there can be these emotions we don't want to feel. There
can be anxiety. Talk to us a little bit about those first, when we start to practice this,
even... just for a few minutes, where we're trying to just be open to the living God.
Yes. Talk to us a little bit about these first kind of, I don't want to say, you know,
I don't want to pathologize because it's part of the process. But these first things we're going to
bump into and not to be surprised by that. Not at all. You know,
I tell the story in the book, but I... a number of years ago did this 21 day silent retreat and it
was extreme. So this is not what the book is about. It's not trying to get you to do this. Don't
worry. But, um, and it was run by this clinical psychologist and spiritual director. They basically
put you in this remote cabin on a coastline up in Puget Sound and Pacific Northwest. It was like
the worst time of year to do it. It was between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which if you know, the
Pacific Northwest sun goes down at like three o'clock. It rains every single day. Oh,
it's miserable. And so I'm up there and basically you turn in all your devices, no phone,
no laptop. You pack in all of your own food. You're not allowed to exercise, nothing to quote
discharge anxiety from your body. He just wants you to feel every angsty feeling you have.
He wants you to feel it. And no books are allowed. The Bible was,
quote, allowed. That's the word he used. But, quote, with a strong warning to, quote,
not use it as a distraction from God, which for my, you know, which I'm grateful for, deep biblical
background, that was like, you know, I was like emotionally allergic to that idea. What are you
saying? And. Honestly, I thought I would do great at it. I'm as introverted as I'm off the charts
introvert. I thought, man, this will be easy. This will be great. Just the break from my phone will
be good for my nervous system. I'll journal a lot. It was crushing.
I mean, I bear, I mean, like a couple of days in and I'm like every single day, I still have my car
keys and I'm just like, it takes every ounce of self-discipline to not bolt from my car and drive
home. And I asked the clinical psychologist a few days in, like, why no books?
I don't understand it. Books are a vital part of my spiritual life. They're like a pathway into
union with God for me, the right kind of books. Why no books? And he was quiet for a minute,
and he said, this program was designed to recreate Jesus' experience of 40 days in the wilderness,
Moses' experience, Elijah's experience, the desert. And he said, all the great ones went into the
desert. And then he was quiet for a minute. And he said, and the desert teaches by taking away.
And it hit me in that moment. That's all I said. That, oh, I am used to,
I've been socially conditioned in the West and by the Western church and no shade on it to learn by
addition, right? I'm going to read a book by Dr. I'm going to listen to this podcast.
I'm going to hear a sermon. I'm going to go do a Bible study. I'm going to study scripture. And
that's beautiful. That is a vital dimension of learning. But there's this whole other dimension of
learning by subtraction. The prime example of this would be suffering, right? People talk about how
much they learn, how much they grow through, say, bereavement or illness or cancer or loss.
It's not by reading books or hearing more sermons or getting new insights. They learn through
losing what they love. And when your health is stripped away, your loved one is stripped away,
your freedom is stripped away, your job is stripped away, your kid walking with Jesus is stripped
away. Man, you learn about God, about yourself, about what's in you,
about where you're still stuck. And so that solitude is another form, like suffering,
of learning by subtraction. And Thomas Keating used to say that the challenge with quiet forms of
prayer, contemplative prayer, solitude is the first thing that often happens. This is his language
and I love it. I quote him in the book is the unloading of the unconscious. I wrote that one down.
Dude, it's so good, huh? It's so good. And his work is just genius. But whatever is down in you,
it just comes up. And it might be great. It might be like just joy, gratitude. Oh my gosh,
I have so much to celebrate. That comes up. And you're just like full of wonder and awe and joy. Or
it's like that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke is on Dagobah, and there's that crazy
cave where he has the vision of Darth Vader, and he asks Yoda, like,
what's in the cave? And Yoda says, only what you bring with you. You know, that's kind of like
solitude. That's too scary sounding, but it's kind of like going into the cave. It's like, what's
waiting for me there? Well, whatever you're bringing with you, good, bad, and ugly. And often...
first encounter we have, yes, I frame the book through three encounters, the encounter with
ourself, the encounter with our enemy, and the encounter with our God. But often the first and most
pressing encounter we feel is with ourselves and specifically with feelings of emotional pain that
have been latent but suppressed or numb through our cultural narcotic of choice.
And as it comes up, which is what none of us want to do, what we don't realize is that then almost
like dissipates into the air and we're set free slowly but surely from it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a powerful, the 21 day story is a great heightened example.
You talk about, I appreciate how well researched the book is. You cite, I think it's Ethan Cross's
work. Yeah, his work's great.
And I was curious, because one of the things, in addition to sort of this unconscious unloading,
and I would say to my listeners, and I'd be curious, before I go into Ethan Cross's work,
you have pastorally, like if some of what is there is trauma, deep trauma,
you've never... looked at maybe don't do it alone maybe make sure there's a spiritual director or a
pastor or go slowly or if you notice in those few moments in the morning there's scary stuff in
here i'm afraid to face maybe pay attention to that maybe that's your next step is to talk to
somebody about that so i i would put that out there because it you know sometimes looking inside
allowing the space for that to to surface stuff is there that we don't want to look at alone
initially. And so I think that's part of this,
right? That's part of practicing. I love that you say it's a practice. That's part of the practice.
And especially on the front end, that can be part of the practice. And I could not agree more. I
think solitude will always push you back to community and good community will always push you into
solitude. And in the same way that if i go out to start training for a half marathon with a group
and instantly start feeling a really sharp pain in my knee i should not just like keep going with
the plan i should stop go see a doctor figure out what's wrong and then restart my training And so
you may go into solitude and feel an undiagnosed pain. There may be a wound or,
you know, in modern language, trauma that begins to surface in your mind. And that might be your
invitation. Like, oh, okay, I can't go very far here. I need to go seek healing.
And that's going to happen likely in a relational context. Solitude in that case is not like you
tried and failed. It did its job. It got through to you and you were able to face what you've been
running away from. in a beautiful way.
So there's that category. The other category, I think, when it comes to the self is this thing of
chatter. And Ethan Cross's work on rumination, this idea of how do I know when I'm staying present
to something painful in a way that is forming me? in the gaze of love versus when I'm just kind of
ruminating, spinning around and around and around. Cause I think that's the initial experience for
a lot of people, including myself is just, I'm just spinning. Yep. Which I think again,
comes back to give your brain something healthy to do. And you know,
the easiest path in is the Psalms and the praying of scripture. And then it gets more black diamond
as you move into breath prayers and holding the loving gaze of God. And this is where I think the
Christian, tradition has a unique contribution to make that secular psychology doesn't have a
metaphysic for And so, you know, what I was trying to do in utilizing the work of Dr.
Cross and Phil Stutz makes an appearance in there is say that a lot of the experts from a secular
perspective, they can't talk about negative rumination without using the language of like psychic
beasts or inner demons or, you know, they have to resort to like Christian language essentially to
make sense. Totally. And it's a subtle but key difference. in those two chapters in the book,
where some feelings of pain come up and they need to be attended to and attuned to and set before
God. But then other thoughts come up that are most often emotionally charged and emotionally
loaded. And they're not your soul needing to process something before God. In the Christian
imagination, they're actually some form of evil assault upon your mind. And this is where even
modern Christians... would be baffled if they were to go read a lot of ancient Christians,
particularly the Desert Fathers and Mothers, who almost just label any intrusive thought as that's
a demon attacking me with the demon of lust or the demon of anxiety or whatever. And we can laugh
at them, but here's what I know, Allison. I know that some thoughts I have in solitude feel like
pain that the Spirit is gently inviting me to revisit before God. Other thoughts.
that are emotionally charged. feel intrusive. They feel like they're almost from outside of myself.
I don't want them. They feel malevolent. They feel almost like they have a will to them and they
want to make me angry or they want to make me hateful or spiteful toward my wife or they want to
make me bitter about something that a co-worker said to me or they want to make me scared about
the future or anxious about my kids. It's almost like they have this malicious will that is
pressing on my... and it's not bringing resolution and peace it's spiraling me into so you can you
can secularize that and say that's just the default mode network in your brain and negative
rumination and if your brain doesn't have something to focus on it goes into the negative to keep
your body alive and that's just all exacerbated by the internet and our phones that's one
explanation and certainly that's true the other explanation is that and There may be spiritual
energies of evil that want to manipulate our dopamine addled brains to move us away from love,
joy and peace and toward the antithesis. And either way, the solution,
whether you're a fourth century Christian monk or a modern neuroscientist is essentially thought
redirection. It's you don't play those thoughts out and over and over. You redirect your mind.
to what is good and holy and beautiful and true to Christ. Yeah, I love that.
And you're almost, it's interesting in this, and there's a lot of issues with this model. It's a
separate conversation, but this internal family systems model that helped me with this
contemplative practice for, this is a little bit of a side note, but my listeners will recognize
this because with such a busy mind, I have such a busy mind. That inner parts work helps create a
scaffolding for attunement, inviting God into that. I see it as a form of contemplation.
That being said, the founder of it, who's not a Christian, Richard Schwartz, there is a protocol in
it. They call them critters. They've changed. Now they call them unattached burdens. But
essentially, it's exactly what you're saying. This is a secular model. Tell me more. Yeah.
So part, if it's a part of me. Attuning to that, in my integration of it,
and tuning to that with the Holy Spirit, with Jesus, brings compassion and curiosity and creates
that inner attachment, that reconnection with parts of us that are usually young that have felt
alone. But if there's that malevolent feeling, if that compassion and curiosity can't be received,
if there's a sense in which this... What they say in the protocol is this is not a part of you.
This is unattached. This is coming from somewhere else. And you tell that to leave. You tell it to
leave. You don't befriend it. You don't graciously welcome it. You don't treat it like your eight
-year-old self. You tell it to go. It's interesting. Everybody has to come up with a paradigm for
this. Call it a demon. Call it intrusive thoughts. And I think to your listeners, I did not know
that. I have studied IFS. I've done a version of it with two different therapists, but I was not
familiar with that. aspect of it that is fascinating to me i wish i could go back and put that in
the book uh one of many reasons i should get you as a beta reader next time but get your eyes on it
but um you know allison one i think for listeners i just want to name we have to be honest this is
hard this is not easy the world you live in has made it it's hard you know in the fourth century it
was hard to do it's A thousand X harder now. You live in a world that is like a vast conspiracy
against the inner life. You know, Cheek sent me high. Your listeners will be familiar because of
the space that you live in, who obviously incredible psychologists who coined the idea of flow.
And that was his lifelong research at Chapman here in Southern California. He's passed away. But,
you know, he called it psychic entropy, which was like the default state of the brain without
something to do. But, you know, he said something really interesting. He said essentially that the
chief task in life is what he called the management of consciousness, meaning your ability to live
consciously and not let your mind just run wild and dictate your behavior, but kind of curate it
and lead it and guide it and shepherd it in the right direction. And I think the reality is in the
digital age, that's always been hard to do. But most of us have outsourced the management of our
consciousness to our phones. So I've written books on this.
I can't sit at a red light without checking my phone. So if you train your brain to not even be
able to sit out a red light without giving your brain something else to do. then what's going to
happen when you go into solitude for a day with no phone and you're just like, God, here I am for
you. Like your brain doesn't have the capacity. You have outsourced the management of your
consciousness to your phone, to Netflix, to the news, to constantly giving it something else to
think about. And so this can all be learned. The good news is all of this can be learned and you
don't have to start with overnight retreat or 21 day. You can start with two minutes in the
morning. And that's a beautiful place to start. That's a win. But it's hard to do and it takes
time. And you're trying to relearn the management of consciousness. What Christians would call that
Roman chapter 12 is the renewal of the mind. Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, it's hard. There's so many forces. I want to just touch on, so we've got,
and you mentioned this in the book, you know, there's the flesh. The flesh, the world and the devil
kind of there's there's we've talked touched on the inner. resistances, just even just going into,
just facing ourselves. I love how Kierkegaard talks about how, you know, your ability to be nailed
to yourself, right? It's going to be the degree to which you are,
what happens when you see Jesus, you know, have I been able to see myself, you know, in the
sickness unto death? The antidote to the sickness is, can I see myself? It's hard. It's a practice.
I love that you say that. I want to touch on this enemy. Because there was something in here that
just, I loved this, and it just hit me in a way. I really needed to hear it. And the quote that you
say is something to the effect of that we are not going into the wilderness to flee, but to fight.
And I just thought, because sometimes I can feel that sort of, oh, I'm supposed to be emptying my
mind. I'm supposed to kind of being kind of that almost nirvana, even though I know better. You
know, right. I'm supposed to be just having that Nirvana bliss feeling at the end of all this, you
know, bliss of love. But but you say we're actually not escaping reality. Number one, we're
engaged, but also we're fighting the enemy. What what do you mean by that? You know,
I was really impacted by a number of years ago. I was in Ireland doing some speaking and I had my
son with me and we took a day off and we drove down to the southwestern coast.
to um saving this little you know just hole in the wall airbnb it took a boat out the next morning
to this famous place called skellig michael which is an island just off the coast of ireland you
would recognize it from uh the most recent star wars movies where it it it's the setting for luke
skywalker in exile and the lost jedi temple and if you've seen those movies they're pretty cheesy
but if you've seen them there's these like stone huts that they stay in that look kind of like
beehives. I'm sure they made fake ones for the movie to blow up and stuff. But those are real.
They're over a thousand years old. And in real life, that is not the Lost Jedi Temple. It is an
ancient Augustinian Christian monastery that was built into the side of this rock,
Skellig. And it's, you know, it's so remote. At the time, for an ancient Celt,
it was the westernmost... point of the known world to them and they went out there essentially to
do battle with satan so skellig is the gaelic word for rock and it's essentially a giant rock
sticking out of the water and michael it was named after michael the archangel in the book of
revelation because he's the one that does battle with satan so these monks went out to this
specific place they picked this place this like it's brutal out there you have 2500 miles of
atlantic wind that crosses from the eastern seaborne and then hits this rock hence it's shaped it
looks alien it's like all angular and crazy looking because of the wind they went out there planted
themselves there built a community literally stone huts into the side of this cliff in order to
fight off satan on behalf of the known world to stand in the gap the pope would write them letters
people would send food out to them they were like heroes all through the world because they saw
their journey into the quiet, certainly not as like wellness spirituality to go out and escape from
the stress of life in Dublin. They saw it as we are going out to fight.
And this is just an aspect. It's not the predominant aspect, but it is.
an aspect of what we would call the spiritual discipline of silence, solitude, and stillness that
is often totally alien to a modern Christian who maybe gets like, oh yeah,
I need to feel my feels before God. And certainly I need to encounter God and listen for his voice
and read scripture. But the idea of like, oh no, I'm going out to almost force a confrontation with
whatever the besetting evils. and demonic oppression is in my life.
I'm almost going out intentionally to pick a fight in order to get free and to win,
which is what Jesus did in the 40 days. But that dimension is almost,
it's totally normal in the Desert Fathers and Mothers and Celtic spirituality, and it's almost gone
from the modern imagination. Yeah, it's not some sort of just self-soothing exercise.
That really hit me. That's powerful. I want to just, before we lose you,
maybe I'll ask it this way, because this third encounter is God. Yes.
Yes. Ultimately, and that's the most important one, because I would imagine this is like, I
would... I would go broke and bankrupt in sales to stop my gifting in life is persuasion.
But ultimately, the reason we go into the quiet is not to encounter ourself and our feelings and
let whatever is in us come up, though that's healthy and only natural. And it's certainly not like
to encounter evil. That's like the definition of a necessary evil. Ultimately,
we go there to encounter God, just to love him and be loved by him.
to be with him because just like there are some aspects of god that we can only experience in deep
intimate relationships of vulnerability and sharing and honesty and longevity there are other
aspects of god's love that we can only experience in the quiet and there is an enfolding into the
inner life of the trinity you know jesus said in john 17 The father and I will make our home in
them. He said that we are in him and he is in the father. And,
you know, all of us as Christians, if you are a basic Orthodox Christian, you believe that
doctrinally, like in your head, that's part of our belief architecture. Absolutely. We go into the
quiet to experience that spiritually, to actually experience the father and the son making their
home in us in prayer and by the spirit. And that is an experience.
All the other stuff is almost like the price of admission, you know, and there's great stuff that
comes from encountering ourselves and encountering our demons. Lots of good stuff comes out of
that, even if it's hard work. But again, it's still it's like it's like the coverage fee,
like you got it. You pay the price to get in. But ultimately, those are almost it's not linear,
but those are like gates you pass through. And this is why I'm so sad when people avoid it or they
try it for a bit and then they go back right out of it. If you stay with it long enough,
what you experience is a dimension of joy and union with God that I simply don't think is possible
anywhere else. And I think most Christians do not realize is possible. Yeah.
And I don't mean some big emotional high or some like, you know, rah, rah. It's often incredibly
gentle. It's soft. You're not in control of it. It's not a technique. You can't force it. But there
is a gentleness.
I can say this is about you gazing at God, gazing at you in love. And that sounds nice.
And it may sound weird to you. I don't know. But once you experience that with the eyes of your
heart, you see the eyes of Christ looking at you in love, that... That is an experience that few
people realize is even possible. And I'm telling you, once you experience it, you begin to realize
why people left everything behind to go out into the desert. And we look at them like they're just
wild. What were you thinking? Maybe they knew something that we don't know.
Do you find that the more you practice,
That feeling isn't always there, that sense of that sweet presence. But do you find that it comes
more quickly? How does that work for you? Yeah.
Sometimes. Most of the time I would just say I'm more peaceful if it doesn't come.
This morning I had a kind of stressful week. I got up. I went to bed last night,
really looking forward to getting up early. Woke up before my alarm. Again, not sleeping great.
Stressful week. I thought, okay, great. At least I'll get long, leisurely time of prayer. I could
barely pay attention this morning. There was no moment where I felt enfolded in Trinitarian light
and love. It was fine. I read a psalm. I read a gospel passage. I read 1 John 3.
I said my prayers. I tried to focus. My brain was all over the place. It wasn't bad, but it was
fine. And one of the most freeing things about life and about the practice of quiet and about
prayer is that, you know what? All we're really responsible to do is to show up.
I can barely even show up. I can't even get my mind, get my body there, but I can only get my mind
there like 10% of the time. And you know what? As a mentor says to me all the time,
the human soul was not designed to carry the burden of outcomes.
That can be applied to work. It can be applied to ministry. It can be applied to parenting.
And it can be applied to quietness and to prayer. We're not responsible for the outcomes of what
even comes out of our time. We just go there and we offer it in love to God. And anything that
comes is grace. It's all gift. And you might have this incredible,
soft, gentle experience of love. And you might just... Realize how addled your brain is and have to
just share in God's gracious patience with yourself. And that's not our responsibility.
And once you can accept that, it's so freeing because then even the tiniest little graces that come
are all grace.
That's beautiful. It reminded me of that. You just gave me that image of C.S. Lewis talking about
feeling that tug. on his shoulder we don't always get that tug on his shoulder and then and then
he's kind of avoiding it all day he's kind of i think it was in a grief observed he's kind of
avoiding it and then only to kind of turn and realize oh god just wanted to show me he loved me and
it's not always like that you know sometimes we just avoid it or sometimes we but i i love the
peace in what you're you're saying it's there it's sometimes filtered through our our crazy brains
and our crazy weeks and um I just appreciate the way you're using your gifts and the talents God
has given you. Is there anything you just want to close with about the book, what your hope is for
the reader, where they can find any resources as we close today? Maybe my mind's just here because
of thinking about Skellig Michael in Ireland, but John O'Donohue has a line that I'm sure would be
at home in a therapist's heart like your own. Be exceedingly gracious with yourself.
And I think 10 years ago, I would have mocked that line as, you know,
I don't know, for spiritual sissies or something, forgive my crass language. But I think now I
realize, oh, what a Christ-like pace. You know, I read this morning the story of Mary and Martha,
and I just noticed how Jesus said Martha's name twice. Martha. Martha,
you are worried and upset about so many things. And I just thought,
oh man, I hear the tenderness in his voice. Not Martha! Martha,
Martha. And I just hear your name. Allison, Allison, John Mark,
John Mark. He has to say four names for me, but just the exceedingly graciousness of Christ.
As you go on this journey, heroism will do nothing. Just start with two or three minutes,
not two or three days or two or three weeks. Just start with the psalm, not with...
know, centering prayer, whatever. I'm for all that stuff, but just start small, start where you
are, be gracious with yourself. The point of none of this is to be good at it. The point is just to
offer ourselves more deeply to God who was already offered and is offering himself to us in Christ
and by the spirit to attempt to tune a tune to him. Who's already attuning to you.
And I'm telling you, There's lots of things in the world that we can just choose ignorance of.
The world is too big of a place to try everything, do everything, experience everything. And I'm
fine to go to my grave. I hope I get to see Boston. I've never been to Boston. But you know what?
If I don't see Boston before I die, that's fine. Don't put quiet prayer in that category.
I hope I see Italy someday. But you know what? If I go to my grave having never seen Italy, that's
just fine. Yeah. But don't go to your grave thinking, ah, this is for introverts.
Ah, I don't have time for this. Ah, it's not my stage of life. Ah, I'm too whatever. No, like this
is for you, whoever you are, whatever your personality type is, whatever stage of life you're in,
it's going to look totally different for you based on those answers to those questions. But this is
for all God's people and it's experience of love that I want for you. Beautiful.
Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us and be well. Go in peace. Be gentle with yourself.
Bless you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You.
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