Mother Siluana - Who am I?
We don’t know who we are, and we will not know it. We are a great mystery. We are looking for an answer, with the left hemisphere of our brain, to a question posed by our heart.
Interviewer:
Who am I?
Mother Siluana:
We don’t know who we are, and we will not know it. We are a great mystery. We are looking for an answer, with the left hemisphere of our brain, to a question posed by our heart, by the deep place inside us.
We have a need to be: I need to feel that I am in my identity and not to define my identity. And there will be a time when we will know who we are because we will truly be who we are. We don’t have an answer for this now because we are not - only God is the One Who Is. I am the one who I will become. And so I am a reality that is becoming.
We also have here a mystery that is approachable. That is to say, I am the one who was born in 1944 in a village called Valcele. I am the one in first grade. I am the one in seventh grade. I am in my first year in college. I am the one from ten years ago. I am the one at this moment. And so I am someone who says: “I am.” There is no connection left - not physical, not chemical - nothing is left from me, the one who I was when I was six months old. And yet, there is something permanent in me that makes me say about myself that I am. So we can consider this the thread we can attach to for accepting ourselves as a mystery.
And we will find out more when…now, when I ask “Who am I,” do I ask someone? Who am I for you? I can tell how old I am, but I don’t know what this means for you. Who am I for you? And here, we will find out that we are “someone” for someone else. And if we are so unhappy, if we are so confused, it is because we are not “someone” for another, but for ourselves.
I am for myself. I am I, I, I, I, I, I, I - and there is a psychological structure that is created in me that pretends it is me. And I am filled with it, but like I am filled with cancer. And what will I do then? I will push you so I can be myself. I need you only if you confirm me.
And so, to be myself, to get close to who I am, means to hear the One Who calls me “you” and Who tells me: “deny yourself” - this “yourself” that is made from several layers. The experts in the human soul of our days, the psychiatrists and the psychologists, say many intelligent and true things about the human being. Some say we have a protector “I” at the surface to cover an “I” that is wounded, and the authentic “I” is somewhere in my depths where there is a nothingness that wants to swallow me.
And the Savior comes and says: "Deny yourself," that is to say, renounce all the protections you have created and be vulnerable - this is the cross; and then "follow Me" and I will make you into a being, I will bring you to the status and dimension of a person. Because the human being has this dimension of a subject, of a "who," but this is a question, a possibility. And we can determine ourselves, we tend to define ourselves by breaking away from others and slipping into the state of an individual: what is mine is for me, and I define myself through status, job position, role, what I have, what I do. Or, we can go the other way, of being a person, where "I am" only because I am into a relationship with you, I am for you, I am with you, I am together with you and not against you. And so, think about how our life is when we live it for the other.
Interviewer:
Why do many of us try to reach a certain status, try to find out who we are by obtaining material goods, or public recognition?
Mother Siluana:
This is a good thing! Because this is how God made us. He made us to be “someone,” He made us masters of all the earth, He told us to multiply and fill the earth - but with what? With slaves? This is God’s gift and our mission in the world. It’s just that we do a poor job of it. That is all! Instead of wanting to be the master of the world, I let myself be mastered by the world, and I chase whatever the world offers me.
And the first step for me to be healed is to become master over the little that belongs to me for now. For now, my body belongs to me. And when I learn to be a master over my body: when do I give something to it, what do I give to it, how do I give it…then over my soul: my desires, my yearnings, my quick temper…
If I manage all these well - with God’s help, because I can’t do it otherwise - then God will say: “You have been faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things!” And joy starts from that moment; from the moment you learn to master these impulses that harass you in so many ways. And then, talk to your soul: “my soul, what do you need?” We need to listen to this profound voice and to ask God: “Lord, how should I fulfill my need to be recognized?” So I don’t stray away on paths that turn out to be dead ends, caricatures of fulfillment.
But we should not amputate our soul! We should not think that if we go to Church, if we go to God, He will stop our yearnings, our desires. No! But He will orient them correctly toward their true source. He will stop you from drinking dirty water from a puddle and give you water from the spring.
Interviewer:
How can we listen to our internal voice?
Mother Siluana:
To listen to ourselves, we don’t listen to our internal voice but our inner silence. God talks to us in silence. Our soul talks to God in silence. To reach ourselves, we need to reach the kernel of silence in us. What is important is this field of silence where there is nothing. Silence is more than speaking. Because we can engage in idle talk, we can talk to pass the time, but we can’t be silent with no meaning. There is a meaning in silence that escapes us.
And so, we need to go past that terrible fear - because when we go inside ourselves, we are met with fear, a sensation of void, or loud noise. And then we say it's better to hear the loud noise from the TV, or we turn on other devices and escape the fearful meeting with ourselves the way we are. This is a sign that we don't want to be healthy. Think about it: if you go to the doctor and find out you are sick, what do you do? You start treatment, you want to get healed; you don't deny it: "No, no, I have no problem," and then you die.
It’s the same here. I am filled with loud noise, filled with voices, and I go to the doctor of my soul to receive healing. And the power I receive in Church through grace, through the Holy Sacraments, helps me go through these “aerial toll-houses” inside me and reach silence.
And if we stayed silent before God for 15 minutes out of 24 hours, our lives would be totally different.
Translated from Romanian: