What do you think?
Rate this book
Silence: A User's Guide. Volume 1: Process
Silence is essential for the health and well-being of humans and the environment in which they live. Yet silence has almost vanished from our lives and our world. Of all the books that claim to be about silence, this is the only one that addresses silence directly. Silence: A User's Guide is just what the title says: it is a guide to silence, which is both a vast interior spaciousness, and the condition of our being in the natural world. This book exposes the processes by which silence can transfigure our lives—what Maggie Ross calls "the work of silence"; it describes how lives steeped in silence can transfigure other lives unawares. It shows how the work of silence was once understood to be the foundation of the teaching of Jesus, and how this teaching was once an intrinsic part of Western Christianity; it describes some of the methods by which the institution suppressed the work of silence, and why religious institutions are afraid of silence. Above all, this book shows that the work of silence gives us a way of being in the world that is more than we can ask for or imagine.
250 pages, Paperback
First published September 10, 2014
46 people are currently reading
226 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 21, 2019
I’ve had Ross highly recommended to me, so her books have been on my list for some time. This first volume in perhaps her best-known recent work proved more difficult than I expected, both in the sense that it is more of an academic treatise than I was led to expect by the title, and in that I found many of its assumptions challenging. This is no modern Cloud of Unknowing, but I don’t think there’s any question that Ross is on to something important; the work of silence, as she calls it, would seem to be critical to the healthy development of a contemplative spirit. The first two chapters of the book gave me many moments where I felt new connections being drawn in my brain and a honing of my instinct for the mystery she calls deep mind.
To me it is a pity, then, that the latter half of the book settles into a wearying assault on Christian orthodoxy in the name of an idiosyncratic version of faith purged of anything that smells of “institutionalism.” I am a broadly orthodox Anglican without any particular interest in defending literalism, clericalism, or other fraught developments in Western Christianity. But Ross in this part of the book seems to elevate precisely the critical ego her “work of silence” intends to counteract, casting brusque judgment on the various strands of scripture and tradition she finds distasteful, alternately relying on and rebuking a selection of celebrity scholars and historians. The result, whatever its grains of truth, is an often dubious narrative of the perennial persecution of a faith-within-a-faith by the institutionalizers.
The second volume, she informs us, digs deeper into her perspective on the work of silence in primitive Christianity, and perhaps its textual and historical arguments are more convincing (I write as someone whose formal training is in history). But my own feelings are that the reader is better served with practical exploration of silence and liminality than questionable polemic and a quixotic attempt to remake the Church in Ross’s own image, in which any kind of spiritual oversight or congealment in doctrine and practice is cast as oppression. Still, there remains much of value here, even in her survey of previous Christian thought, and perhaps on a subsequent read I'll add back a star. Ross pushes past vacuous language of experience and urges us to sit receptively by the pregnant depths of our being, there to discover another way of knowing to which a noisy and materialistic world is blind.
To me it is a pity, then, that the latter half of the book settles into a wearying assault on Christian orthodoxy in the name of an idiosyncratic version of faith purged of anything that smells of “institutionalism.” I am a broadly orthodox Anglican without any particular interest in defending literalism, clericalism, or other fraught developments in Western Christianity. But Ross in this part of the book seems to elevate precisely the critical ego her “work of silence” intends to counteract, casting brusque judgment on the various strands of scripture and tradition she finds distasteful, alternately relying on and rebuking a selection of celebrity scholars and historians. The result, whatever its grains of truth, is an often dubious narrative of the perennial persecution of a faith-within-a-faith by the institutionalizers.
The second volume, she informs us, digs deeper into her perspective on the work of silence in primitive Christianity, and perhaps its textual and historical arguments are more convincing (I write as someone whose formal training is in history). But my own feelings are that the reader is better served with practical exploration of silence and liminality than questionable polemic and a quixotic attempt to remake the Church in Ross’s own image, in which any kind of spiritual oversight or congealment in doctrine and practice is cast as oppression. Still, there remains much of value here, even in her survey of previous Christian thought, and perhaps on a subsequent read I'll add back a star. Ross pushes past vacuous language of experience and urges us to sit receptively by the pregnant depths of our being, there to discover another way of knowing to which a noisy and materialistic world is blind.
September 30, 2019
I really benefited from this book as an exploration of theological anthropology. It also was helpful in knowing how to better read mystical and monastic literature going forward. However, I had a difficult time with the Christianity that emerges from Ross' searing critiques. Despite Ross' repeated insistence that the capacity for silence is natural and available to all people, I don't see how her Christianity can keep from becoming an esoteric and elitist group of those who've touched the silence. The critiques of the degradation of modern life at times goes beyond zeal into the realm of bitterness.
For example, when she says that "those who speak or write about [silence] are often accused of elitism usually by people who are threatened by change, or unwilling to face what needs facing, or who are lazy, or can't be bothered." Yes, that definitely absolves her of the charge of elitism -- "you just think we're elitist because you're lazy." Now, in context, she is likely talking about those in power who rely on the institutional distortion of silence to maintain their control. She punches up more than down. But still, in a book that's supposed to be about silence, it often felt like thunderous wrath was being blasted in all directions.
For example, when she says that "those who speak or write about [silence] are often accused of elitism usually by people who are threatened by change, or unwilling to face what needs facing, or who are lazy, or can't be bothered." Yes, that definitely absolves her of the charge of elitism -- "you just think we're elitist because you're lazy." Now, in context, she is likely talking about those in power who rely on the institutional distortion of silence to maintain their control. She punches up more than down. But still, in a book that's supposed to be about silence, it often felt like thunderous wrath was being blasted in all directions.
October 1, 2022
This is a difficult book to review. One the one hand I am sympathetic to, and in fact am often in complete agreement with, many of the opinions and judgements expressed, both those describing what the author takes to be the central core of Christian, and indeed religious, observance (the work of silence) and those describing her frustration with the institutional church, particularly insofar as it fails to communicate about or teach contemplation. However, my sympathy with the author’s perspective and respect for her judicious and commanding grasp of the contemplative life is somewhat marred by the suspicion that many of the often stark historical claims made by the author at best mask a much more complex and nuanced reality, and at worst border on a revisionism which appears compelling principally because it helpfully undergirds the topology of her mystical-political critique of the church rather than because it represents a reasonable summary of the evidence. Unfortunately I am not a sufficiently accomplished historian to judge the veracity of the claims she makes throughout; and thus I must bow to her clearly superior, though to me nevertheless somewhat suspect, historical expertise. Having said that, I found the book lucid and compelling, displaying what I always prize most highly in an author irrespective of the validity of individual elements of their argument - judgement and insight.
November 22, 2025
Maggie Ross is an Anglican anchorite (solitary) living in Oxford. She was once spiritual director to Desmond Tutu, and her vocation is overseen by Rowan Williams. This is volume one of her two volume magnum opus on Silence, and it's been sitting on my shelves for a few years (like a great many other books) waiting to be read.
It's quite something, covering quite some territory and taking you to some unexpected places, historical, spiritual, and traversing the fringes of orthodoxy.
Overall, it was a highly interesting, informative and fascinating experience. But I'll start with some 'critiques'...
Three surprising things about the text, given its subject:
- It's combative... sometimes even 'acerbic' (as one of the book's endorsers puts it on the backcover)... especially the opening parts of the book where she paints a bleak cultural context, but also in parts where she takes on other writers. It reminded me of the tone of Matthew Fox's Original Blessing. Both books have some utterly beautiful material in them, with a seam of anger running through.
The book contains a historical narrative of an intentional suppression of the way of silence (this was another aspect that reminded me of the tone of Original Blessing). Stories of nefarious and intentional power games and agendas are quite attractive (conspiracy theories are one form of these). It's clear that deliberate ploys of power and control do appear in the world in big and small ways, at high levels, in small communities, in relationships and within ourselves. These can and do include deliberate acts of engineering. But I also think shifts can occur organically - that paradigms occur through a complex mix of historical and cultural factors. So I would want to allow for this kind of thing in the neglect of the way of silence in church history, alongside (instead of only) a story of a kind of meta-programme of suppression and control by church powers through forced and imposed orthodoxy and doctrine. If the neglect of silence can occur within ourselves as individuals merely through the conditions of life (including context and culture), then that can happen in wider contexts as well.
- It's hyper languaged... which in many ways I enjoy. But a (paradoxical) interplay between language and silence notwithstanding, the book has a lot (maybe even a surfeit) of text in layers (including long footnoted asides at the bottoms of pages), which might be considered ironic.
- It's adamant... Ross has a framework and is determined that all the great writers have the same framework and is determined to read them in that way. She seems to be claiming a definitive mode of interpretation for the reading of relevant texts.
[Having observed and noted those things, and also noticed what I believe to have been a quiet and gentle inner note of caution about some of the ideas, I was free to glean from the text and explore its concepts.]
I can almost get most of what she's talking about, apart from her distaste with the word 'experience'. So much so, that I wonder if she's using the word differently to how I understand it - and even with the definitions she offers. Human beings are experiencing creatures... I would have thought that even something like a noetic suspension would be an experience of some sort. Even if it's termed as an experience of non-experiencing - a suspension of the awareness of the usual experiencing and (then) analytical / interpretive faculties. Then I wonder if maybe I don't know what she's talking about because I haven't experienced it for myself - but then there's that word again. Maybe I'm so tied up in a culture of experience that I can't conceive of anything different.
Perhaps she just means not experiencing in terms of what she talks about a lot: a state of non-self-consciousness. And maybe it's largely a necessary and appropriate quest to put an overindulgence and hunger for experience per se in its place - a move away from seeking silence (and God) for the sake of experience. Removing experience as the telos, you might say.
It does all relate to the apophatic, I'm sure. And the extreme apophatic, the no-thing-ness, the loss of light, the loss of a feeling of presence, the negating of desire, the loss of self, always cause me to pause and give credence to the healthy unease I sense around these notions; though I also can sense some spiritual-existential reality to them, which means I sense there might be something there (and even explore them to a degree in my upcoming book (Safe Little World Monograph 7), (Un)become.)
The thing is, there's the possibility of a liminal potentiality that those states lead on to greater fulness, consummation, light, knowing even as we are fully known, and the individual fully alive. The sense of caution noted above is around telos. If the 'endgame' is negation then something is awry. But if the telos is utter completion and fulness, then those states of negation come into their own. It seems to me that might be the difference between certain Buddhist philosophies in which the telos is loss of self and absorption into the universal consciousness, and Christian spirituality in which the imago Dei finally comes alive in unique, differentiated, fully realised individuals who form part of the whole.
The liminality of the apophatic, the no-thing-ness, the loss of light, the loss of a feeling of presence, the negating of desire, the loss of self, teleologically lead to an outpouring of the cataphatic, the utter fulness and substantive, an influx of light, encompassing presence, the consummation of desire and the flourishing of love, and the true self fully alive.
Lose your life to find it. Something like that. The trick is, in some sense we need to embrace the negated, kenotic states when they come our way in order to make the journey; and here we need to reckon with what is caution born of divine wisdom, and what is understandable temerity. Telos, and intentionality (Ross is great regarding her paradoxical treatment of intentionality - "One can but intend and forget, and in the forgetting, hope" p65) related to that telos, is all here, I think, as we edge up on that leap of faith. (Ross: "a willingness to free-fall in the love of God. This is what the word faith means." p69, italics author's)
I was, by turns and degrees, open and resistant.
And one thing that's assuredly true is that I do most assuredly need a break from self-consciousness, in all senses of that term.
The journey of fostering and encountering the 'deep mind' (I prefer to figure it as 'heart space') (which is so often eclipsed by the self-conscious mind) through intention, letting go and faith, a place of wisdom and encounter with the divine where things are transfigured (and where dynamics of incarnation and resurrection can occur) is certainly a beautiful thing.
The book comes to rest in the final chapter (and also leads on to vol 2), like a sabbath from combat, hyper-language and adamancy, when it paints a picture of what a person may become through the work of silence. And thus an invitation to a way of being that I can only say carries with it a sense of deep attraction.
It's quite something, covering quite some territory and taking you to some unexpected places, historical, spiritual, and traversing the fringes of orthodoxy.
Overall, it was a highly interesting, informative and fascinating experience. But I'll start with some 'critiques'...
Three surprising things about the text, given its subject:
- It's combative... sometimes even 'acerbic' (as one of the book's endorsers puts it on the backcover)... especially the opening parts of the book where she paints a bleak cultural context, but also in parts where she takes on other writers. It reminded me of the tone of Matthew Fox's Original Blessing. Both books have some utterly beautiful material in them, with a seam of anger running through.
The book contains a historical narrative of an intentional suppression of the way of silence (this was another aspect that reminded me of the tone of Original Blessing). Stories of nefarious and intentional power games and agendas are quite attractive (conspiracy theories are one form of these). It's clear that deliberate ploys of power and control do appear in the world in big and small ways, at high levels, in small communities, in relationships and within ourselves. These can and do include deliberate acts of engineering. But I also think shifts can occur organically - that paradigms occur through a complex mix of historical and cultural factors. So I would want to allow for this kind of thing in the neglect of the way of silence in church history, alongside (instead of only) a story of a kind of meta-programme of suppression and control by church powers through forced and imposed orthodoxy and doctrine. If the neglect of silence can occur within ourselves as individuals merely through the conditions of life (including context and culture), then that can happen in wider contexts as well.
- It's hyper languaged... which in many ways I enjoy. But a (paradoxical) interplay between language and silence notwithstanding, the book has a lot (maybe even a surfeit) of text in layers (including long footnoted asides at the bottoms of pages), which might be considered ironic.
- It's adamant... Ross has a framework and is determined that all the great writers have the same framework and is determined to read them in that way. She seems to be claiming a definitive mode of interpretation for the reading of relevant texts.
[Having observed and noted those things, and also noticed what I believe to have been a quiet and gentle inner note of caution about some of the ideas, I was free to glean from the text and explore its concepts.]
I can almost get most of what she's talking about, apart from her distaste with the word 'experience'. So much so, that I wonder if she's using the word differently to how I understand it - and even with the definitions she offers. Human beings are experiencing creatures... I would have thought that even something like a noetic suspension would be an experience of some sort. Even if it's termed as an experience of non-experiencing - a suspension of the awareness of the usual experiencing and (then) analytical / interpretive faculties. Then I wonder if maybe I don't know what she's talking about because I haven't experienced it for myself - but then there's that word again. Maybe I'm so tied up in a culture of experience that I can't conceive of anything different.
Perhaps she just means not experiencing in terms of what she talks about a lot: a state of non-self-consciousness. And maybe it's largely a necessary and appropriate quest to put an overindulgence and hunger for experience per se in its place - a move away from seeking silence (and God) for the sake of experience. Removing experience as the telos, you might say.
It does all relate to the apophatic, I'm sure. And the extreme apophatic, the no-thing-ness, the loss of light, the loss of a feeling of presence, the negating of desire, the loss of self, always cause me to pause and give credence to the healthy unease I sense around these notions; though I also can sense some spiritual-existential reality to them, which means I sense there might be something there (and even explore them to a degree in my upcoming book (Safe Little World Monograph 7), (Un)become.)
The thing is, there's the possibility of a liminal potentiality that those states lead on to greater fulness, consummation, light, knowing even as we are fully known, and the individual fully alive. The sense of caution noted above is around telos. If the 'endgame' is negation then something is awry. But if the telos is utter completion and fulness, then those states of negation come into their own. It seems to me that might be the difference between certain Buddhist philosophies in which the telos is loss of self and absorption into the universal consciousness, and Christian spirituality in which the imago Dei finally comes alive in unique, differentiated, fully realised individuals who form part of the whole.
The liminality of the apophatic, the no-thing-ness, the loss of light, the loss of a feeling of presence, the negating of desire, the loss of self, teleologically lead to an outpouring of the cataphatic, the utter fulness and substantive, an influx of light, encompassing presence, the consummation of desire and the flourishing of love, and the true self fully alive.
Lose your life to find it. Something like that. The trick is, in some sense we need to embrace the negated, kenotic states when they come our way in order to make the journey; and here we need to reckon with what is caution born of divine wisdom, and what is understandable temerity. Telos, and intentionality (Ross is great regarding her paradoxical treatment of intentionality - "One can but intend and forget, and in the forgetting, hope" p65) related to that telos, is all here, I think, as we edge up on that leap of faith. (Ross: "a willingness to free-fall in the love of God. This is what the word faith means." p69, italics author's)
I was, by turns and degrees, open and resistant.
And one thing that's assuredly true is that I do most assuredly need a break from self-consciousness, in all senses of that term.
The journey of fostering and encountering the 'deep mind' (I prefer to figure it as 'heart space') (which is so often eclipsed by the self-conscious mind) through intention, letting go and faith, a place of wisdom and encounter with the divine where things are transfigured (and where dynamics of incarnation and resurrection can occur) is certainly a beautiful thing.
The book comes to rest in the final chapter (and also leads on to vol 2), like a sabbath from combat, hyper-language and adamancy, when it paints a picture of what a person may become through the work of silence. And thus an invitation to a way of being that I can only say carries with it a sense of deep attraction.
May 30, 2015
This is not an easy read - but it is a worthwhile one! Maggie Ross is an Anglican solitary who lives in Oxford, England. She delves very deeply into the place of silence in Christianity and how it has been suppressed more than encouraged in many eras. I particularly valued her explanation of the difference between "self-conscious mind and deep mind" which was a re-curring theme.
January 3, 2024
I once worked closely with a brilliant engineer on a Parochial Church Council (let's call him John) who was known by others as a bit of a grump. John was always the naysayer in the council, warning everyone of the dangers of xyz policies or implementations the church was taking on. Not a lot of people listened to him though because he did not mince his words and so could be a little mean. The priest one time had to stop the entire meeting and waited for John to apologize for what he said — that so and so was ridiculous for thinking xyz was a good idea. Since the priest had a good sense of humor and was a charming and personable guy (you may know that "pastoral energy" that I'm referring to), he usually ends up getting his way. John didn't get along with the priest and ended up leaving the council, but before I left that council myself, most of John's prophecies came true. He even told everyone afterwards, "I warned you about this!" but by then it was too late.
Ross, similarly, comes off as a bit of a crank — though a brilliant one like John. There is such richness throughout her work, i.e. "The message of the Incarnation is that nothing is wasted," "Life transfiguration, death, and resurrection — all are to be found in the work of silence...", "Obedience is licit only when it is freely asked and freely given. Only someone who is mature can give licit obedience," "The divine may be in the experience, but the experience is not the divine."
But then you get to the later chapters and she's going ham on institutional Christianity, drawing wildly uncharitable caricatures of the Catholic church: "Those who hold more simplistic views tend to try to force the others to agree with them. Interpretation at the level of the work of silence does not serve the power agendas of institutions—if indeed institutional clergy, preoccupied with status, power, and thought control, have any knowledge of the work of silence at all."
She truly believes that they are after nothing less than complete mind control. Her interpretation of Christian history as the suppression of the prophet/mystic type so the laity become ever dependent on the clergy for "magic" salvation by living in constant fear of hell will likely not be taken seriously. Still, there are grains of truth and wisdom in even the crankiest of statements. Hopefully, her advocacy of silence will allow her readers to interpret her work more charitably than she does the church's.
Ross, similarly, comes off as a bit of a crank — though a brilliant one like John. There is such richness throughout her work, i.e. "The message of the Incarnation is that nothing is wasted," "Life transfiguration, death, and resurrection — all are to be found in the work of silence...", "Obedience is licit only when it is freely asked and freely given. Only someone who is mature can give licit obedience," "The divine may be in the experience, but the experience is not the divine."
But then you get to the later chapters and she's going ham on institutional Christianity, drawing wildly uncharitable caricatures of the Catholic church: "Those who hold more simplistic views tend to try to force the others to agree with them. Interpretation at the level of the work of silence does not serve the power agendas of institutions—if indeed institutional clergy, preoccupied with status, power, and thought control, have any knowledge of the work of silence at all."
She truly believes that they are after nothing less than complete mind control. Her interpretation of Christian history as the suppression of the prophet/mystic type so the laity become ever dependent on the clergy for "magic" salvation by living in constant fear of hell will likely not be taken seriously. Still, there are grains of truth and wisdom in even the crankiest of statements. Hopefully, her advocacy of silence will allow her readers to interpret her work more charitably than she does the church's.
December 26, 2024
Maggie Ross’s silence will not be accessible or interesting to everyone. However, I personally found the flame of her heart burning bright on these pages. Other reviews on this site are uncomfortable with her critiques of the institutions of the christian faith. However, I find her insights to be extremely comforting as someone who has a very negative history with the church. If you are seeking a “pure” and “toxic positivity” version of spirituality, perhaps you will struggle with this book.
Her point is that christianity would serve the world better as a living, breathing tradition that is creative, personal, deep, changing and genuinely heart centred. Unfortunately, christianity has become rigid, cold, heirarchical and repetitive. Maggie’s vision for christianity is messy, deep, rich, open and inclusive. She pulls no punches in her assesement of the state of things.
“Instead of a communal celebration of thanksgiving for living paradise on earth, instead of manifesting an open heaven in which a diversity of interpretations could live in harmony, instead of participating in the flow of procession and return, the Eucharist became as static and remote as the Christ whose sacrifice, according to the new teaching, it endlessly repeated, locking worshippers into linear time instead of enabling them to participate in sacred time.
Instead of lifting them up to heaven, the new rite suggested that if they were very lucky, followed the rules, obeyed the clergy, and did a sufficient amount of penance, God just might condescend to come down to the level of the human to keep people from falling into the worst fires of hell.”
Other claims published on this site that she has copied the work of Iain Mcgilchrist are false. It is true that she has used his wonderful work to inform hers, but her understanding of paradox and left/right hemispheres is informed by layers of history, theology and philosophy as is evidenced throughout her book.
Maggie’s work has penetrated to deeper levels of my spiritual life and I am extremely grateful for that. Her words are extremely potent and hard hitting. I wish we could get more writing from her to address contemporary issues but I cant seem to find much of her.
I do acknowledge that some further editing could have helped with flow and structure but so what? Her message is clear for those who would like to recieve it.
Her point is that christianity would serve the world better as a living, breathing tradition that is creative, personal, deep, changing and genuinely heart centred. Unfortunately, christianity has become rigid, cold, heirarchical and repetitive. Maggie’s vision for christianity is messy, deep, rich, open and inclusive. She pulls no punches in her assesement of the state of things.
“Instead of a communal celebration of thanksgiving for living paradise on earth, instead of manifesting an open heaven in which a diversity of interpretations could live in harmony, instead of participating in the flow of procession and return, the Eucharist became as static and remote as the Christ whose sacrifice, according to the new teaching, it endlessly repeated, locking worshippers into linear time instead of enabling them to participate in sacred time.
Instead of lifting them up to heaven, the new rite suggested that if they were very lucky, followed the rules, obeyed the clergy, and did a sufficient amount of penance, God just might condescend to come down to the level of the human to keep people from falling into the worst fires of hell.”
Other claims published on this site that she has copied the work of Iain Mcgilchrist are false. It is true that she has used his wonderful work to inform hers, but her understanding of paradox and left/right hemispheres is informed by layers of history, theology and philosophy as is evidenced throughout her book.
Maggie’s work has penetrated to deeper levels of my spiritual life and I am extremely grateful for that. Her words are extremely potent and hard hitting. I wish we could get more writing from her to address contemporary issues but I cant seem to find much of her.
I do acknowledge that some further editing could have helped with flow and structure but so what? Her message is clear for those who would like to recieve it.
January 7, 2025
Maggie Ross is an Anglican solitary. I’m not sure what that means, though I imagine a life of quiet contemplation. She lives in Oxford and speaks and writes blog posts, so it doesn’t seem to mean total seclusion.
This book started as a (very good) set of blog posts that lays out her theory of dual epistemologies that is based on several medieval solitaries. But for this present work, it feels like she had to pad those ideas in order to make something book-length, and the padding is a little inconsistent.
The first chapter is a rather shrill lament about the lack of silence and contemplation in modern life. Chapters 2 thru 4 are her core ideas and follow the blog post ideas (see below). Chapters 5 thru 7 reprise these themes but add in a lot of speculative historic parallels. She attempts to add a scientific veneer to her theories by repeated references to Gödel theorem, neurology and quantum mechanics – which is a sure sign of flailing. But I learned a lot of early church history through the year 1400 via these 3 chapters on the history of silence. However the way she kept repeating her thesis over and over was a little tiresome.
Her core thesis (the original blog post) is quite compelling. Through silence we allow the deep mind to irrupt into our linear daily subconscious mind. This was a prevalent idea in the early church and desert monks she says.
Her ideas track with Buddhist ideas. She makes reference to Buddhist concepts like vajra mind, and even quotes Dogon from the Genjokoan. She is definitely ecumenical. But also says things like “Buddhism is a philosophy in search of religion”.
My questions are:
Is Deep Mind her terminology? I have not encountered that term. This is a thinking mind, she emphasizes, so not the unconscious.
Where is God in all this? Deep Mind might come from her extensive Buddhist reading. She understands losing the self-conscious linear mind whereupon the beholding of the Deep Mind ensures. But it is not clear where God sits in her theology. In Buddhism there would be no God. In Hinduism the Deep Mind could be identified with Brahman, i.e. God. But in her text the mind is just the individual’s mind. The Deep Mind appears to be a gateway to Beholding which she believes is a core early Church concept that emerged out of silent mediation.
Easy to read. Modern (written in 2014). Recommended.
This book started as a (very good) set of blog posts that lays out her theory of dual epistemologies that is based on several medieval solitaries. But for this present work, it feels like she had to pad those ideas in order to make something book-length, and the padding is a little inconsistent.
The first chapter is a rather shrill lament about the lack of silence and contemplation in modern life. Chapters 2 thru 4 are her core ideas and follow the blog post ideas (see below). Chapters 5 thru 7 reprise these themes but add in a lot of speculative historic parallels. She attempts to add a scientific veneer to her theories by repeated references to Gödel theorem, neurology and quantum mechanics – which is a sure sign of flailing. But I learned a lot of early church history through the year 1400 via these 3 chapters on the history of silence. However the way she kept repeating her thesis over and over was a little tiresome.
Her core thesis (the original blog post) is quite compelling. Through silence we allow the deep mind to irrupt into our linear daily subconscious mind. This was a prevalent idea in the early church and desert monks she says.
Her ideas track with Buddhist ideas. She makes reference to Buddhist concepts like vajra mind, and even quotes Dogon from the Genjokoan. She is definitely ecumenical. But also says things like “Buddhism is a philosophy in search of religion”.
My questions are:
Is Deep Mind her terminology? I have not encountered that term. This is a thinking mind, she emphasizes, so not the unconscious.
Where is God in all this? Deep Mind might come from her extensive Buddhist reading. She understands losing the self-conscious linear mind whereupon the beholding of the Deep Mind ensures. But it is not clear where God sits in her theology. In Buddhism there would be no God. In Hinduism the Deep Mind could be identified with Brahman, i.e. God. But in her text the mind is just the individual’s mind. The Deep Mind appears to be a gateway to Beholding which she believes is a core early Church concept that emerged out of silent mediation.
Easy to read. Modern (written in 2014). Recommended.
June 15, 2022
As an orthodox Christian I give this book 1 star. But 4 stars is more representative of how much I have learned from it, as a student of contemplation, especially the contemplative Christian tradition. The suspicion of heresy historically attached to Christian contemplatives, however, is more than a little justified by the contents of this book.
The most annoying, nigh intolerable parts of the book are the author's ceaseless attacks on what she terms Christian "institutions" (whether Roman, Anglican, Eastern or even Protestant); attacks which really boil down to a rebuke of orthodoxy. And not even an intellectually impressive one. There are substantial criticisms of Christian orthodoxy. This book does not contain any. But it pretends to, and that's an unforgivable sin in my book.
Predictably, by the work's end readers are supposed to believe that the author, and others like her, have always been the true orthodox Christians all along; the happy few to have kept to the true teaching of Jesus, perennially persecuted by the institutional church, teaching which--coincidently--concerns itself with what the author likes to do most: contemplation. Forget your creeds, your confessions of faith, what Jesus really wanted you to be, we are told, is a contemplative.
The most annoying, nigh intolerable parts of the book are the author's ceaseless attacks on what she terms Christian "institutions" (whether Roman, Anglican, Eastern or even Protestant); attacks which really boil down to a rebuke of orthodoxy. And not even an intellectually impressive one. There are substantial criticisms of Christian orthodoxy. This book does not contain any. But it pretends to, and that's an unforgivable sin in my book.
Predictably, by the work's end readers are supposed to believe that the author, and others like her, have always been the true orthodox Christians all along; the happy few to have kept to the true teaching of Jesus, perennially persecuted by the institutional church, teaching which--coincidently--concerns itself with what the author likes to do most: contemplation. Forget your creeds, your confessions of faith, what Jesus really wanted you to be, we are told, is a contemplative.
November 4, 2025
I found this both a highly illuminating and highly frustrating read. At times I thought I never thought I would be able to finish it, but I did and glad I made the effort. I found her idea of ‘deep mind’ and ‘self-conscious mind’ served as a useful anchor to the whole work, as well as the idea of “beholding” as the primary function of the deep mind. There were several luminous passages; the one that I found most striking was her description of the continually forming and re-forming spiral air currents of the display in the Smithsonian museum as a model of the self. But at times there were also pages and pages I waded through without really gaining anything much at all; in these I found her thinking seemed to be making connections and leaps that were completely obscure to me, despite reading and re-reading. But am new to much of this, and perhaps I will come back a few years and it will be clearer. It is the practice of silence that matters, and the book is a powerful stimulus to that.
May 6, 2024
Maggie Ross pulls much of her theory of silence from Iain Mcgilchrist's work; which conveniently I had already been stewing over for the past few months. That being said, I would just recommend reading what Mcgilchrist has written. This book basically assimilates the work of silence with prioritizing the right hemisphere's way of attending to the world, and this is done through one-pointed meditation practices. After the author touches on the topic of silence, she then goes on to cover topics such as church history, clergy, the eucharist, etc. which I found entirely uninteresting considering I'm not affiliated with those groups of Christian thought, and her method of critique was mostly rhetorical.
December 8, 2023
Encyclopaedic, dense and definitely not for the faint hearted- yet I found this approach to the work of silence ultimately encouraging and liberating. The author becomes tetchy at times with the violence done to the teachings of Jesus by the institutionalisation of the church - but frustration with processes that deny life is justified. This challenging work will stay with me and hopefully hone my intention towards this work and its transformative potential.
July 31, 2018
Maggie Ross knows her stuff, there's no doubt about that. However, for my purposes, this work is too pedantic. While I enjoyed her discussion of different modes of consciousness, Ross takes too much time quibbling with scholars and exploring the intricacies of historical developments.
April 6, 2024
The aspects about the psychology, philosophy, and theology of theology and mysticism were incredibly interesting and helpful.
The aspects about orthodoxy and institutionalism were at times interesting but largely just seemed to serve other purposes than the book set out to do
The aspects about orthodoxy and institutionalism were at times interesting but largely just seemed to serve other purposes than the book set out to do
December 23, 2020
Excellent! This writer knows of what she speaks. The footnotes as well are chock full of other authors you will want to discover if you have the inclination.
November 15, 2016
Fascinating text. I would call it a Western theological history rather than a user's guide. I learned a lot and feel inspired to read other texts on contemplative or silent prayer - Cynthia Bourgealt, Rowan Williams, Theresa of Avila. I couldn't help but hear, as I do in the work of more contemplatives than I wish I did, a certain judgementalism in Ross of those who are part of contemporary culture, and a defensiveness when writing about academics who see things differently. It was understandable in some cases, but often distracting.
Read
January 5, 2019An excellent read for anyone who is serious about using silence to develop their prayer life and beyond that to explore their own purpose, peace, creativity or other aspects of being human in the world. I did have to read this book slowly and I read most chapters twice. If you are looking for something devotional to support prayer and contemplation this is probably not the right book but if you need a framework that is broadly Christian to help you think through the role of silence this is an extremely useful and informative read.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews