ABSTRACT
This is the second of three chapters arguing that relationality is the women’s fundamental experience of their disciplines of silence. It uses extensive quotes from participant interviews to consider the role of their practices of silence in their relationship with ‘temporally multiple self’ – selves the women have been, are currently, are becoming, and have the potential to be. It argues that transformations in the women’s relationship with God, described in Chapter 5, are mirrored in how they relate to self. A detailed case study introduces key chapter themes of the journey from inner turmoil towards self-acceptance, increasingly secure identity and personal growth. The chapter explores silence’s enabling role for facilitating the women’s survival by offering a Sabbath-like space to be rather than do. Silence is portrayed as liberating from false identities, a site of transformation where fragmented self is re-assembled and a space within which self-knowledge and self-awareness expand as self-condemnation and self-censorship diminish. It explores how increasingly truthful self-identities and growing agency are newly articulated, enabling the women to transcend society’s narrow expectations. These developments are contrasted with metaphors portraying the women’s feared diminishment of identity, were they to abandon silence, and differentiated from the relinquishment of egoic selfhood that is intrinsic to the contemplative journey.
