Yet, the purposeful tension involved by our tasks and concerns is not the only great obstacle to recollection. Another is the attitude of peripheral diversion.

Therefore, in order to recollect ourselves, we must shun everything that appeals to our craving for sensation. We must guard against yielding to our idle curiosity, against cramming our mind with wanton things. We must keep out of situations that pander to our appetite for the sensational. We should also leave books unread which, devoid of artistic value, are meant to captivate our interest by their exciting contents or technique—“thrillers,” for instance. For all these things are apt to drag us into the peripheral sphere and to hinder us from recollection, be it only for the reason that they encumber and dissipate our imagination.

Likewise, we should avoid meaningless conversations and irrelevant social gatherings as far as it can be done without offending charity. It has been pointed out on an earlier occasion that these trivial things enclose a danger to us, inasmuch as they hamper us in attaining true simplicity. It is not without good reason that we have that hollow feeling—that we feel washed out, as it were—after a long run of empty and superficial conversations. It is because we have strayed far from reality proper and the sphere of valid meaning; from God; and, by the same token, from our own true selves.

We must cultivate silence and inner stillness

Nay, prolonged talks as such, be they even of a less irrelevant nature, tend to interfere with our concentration. Silence is of great help in recollecting ourselves; that is why it plays such an eminent part in monastic life. Conversation (in the sense of mere chatter) obviously allures us towards the ephemeral; but even if it is devoted to more important topics, it implies a certain exhaustion, a tendency to dispersion. It is, therefore, a form of activity which needs to be compensated by not too rare intervals of silence. Silence fulfills an important function in mental regeneration. It is only in the passivity of silence that the things which have deeply impressed us may resound and grow in our soul, and strike root in our being. Silence alone evokes that inward calm which is a prerequisite of recollection.

To be sure, by silence we do not mean here a mere outward abstaining from speech, coupled with its mental continuance. We must also cultivate an inward stillness. At any rate, however, outward silence is a condition for recollection.