The first problem is to find a place where the outer confusion can be shut off, where the bright lights and the telephone cannot break in, and where even religious discussion is stilled.  The purpose is not to create, or make something happen, but to allow it to happen, and where it takes place is an individual matter.  Some people find it easy to quiet down in a church where the rule of silence is observed.  For others it may be in one’s own room, or in a garden or near the water, or on a mountain top…  There is
manna in certain places that can draw a person to silence, for instance in a room which has known the silence and listening of many people.  This was the kind of power that Jacob felt when he awoke from dreaming of the ladder to heaven and cried out, “Truly, Yahweh is in this place and I never knew it!”  Then he was afraid and said, “How awe-inspiring this place is!  This is nothing less than a house of God; this is the gate of heaven!”  And he made a sacred monument of the stone on which he had lain and
poured oil on top of it, and he named the place Bethel (Genesis 28:10-19).  We, in the Western tradition, are often reluctant to admit that there is reality behind an experience like this…  Each of us can have a place like this, where stillness can take over and one becomes open to a reality beyond oneself.

                                         --From The Other Side of Silence by Morton T. Kelsey