Simon and Garfunkel sang about the sound of silence, but as an autistic person, I experience it differently than they probably intended. Silence isn't the absence of sound—it's its own kind of sensory experience. And that experience has taught me things about prayer that I never learned from books about spiritual disciplines.
When I retreat to quiet spaces, I'm not just escaping noise. I'm entering a different sensory state, one where my nervous system can process without constant defensive filtering. And in that state, I've discovered something that contemplative Christians have known for centuries: silence creates space for a different kind of awareness.
Sensory Overload and the Need for Quiet
For many autistic people, typical environments are sensory assaults. Fluorescent lights flicker at frequencies most people don't consciously notice but that I can't not notice. Background conversations, humming electronics, ambient noise—they all demand processing resources.
My brain doesn't automatically filter out irrelevant stimuli the way neurotypical brains do. Everything comes through at full volume, competing for attention. This is exhausting.
Silence offers relief. Not just from noise, but from the constant sensory processing demands. In quiet spaces, my nervous system shifts from defensive filtering to open receptivity. Instead of blocking out stimulation, I can actually attend to subtle signals I'd miss in noisier environments.
This isn't just personal preference—it's neurological necessity. And it's taught me why contemplative traditions emphasize silence.
The Desert Fathers and Sensory Retreat
Early Christian monastics fled to the desert seeking silence and solitude. Historians often frame this as escaping worldly temptations or pursuing ascetic discipline. But I wonder if some Desert Fathers might have been autistic, seeking sensory environments where they could actually think and pray.
The desert offers radical sensory simplification. Minimal visual complexity, little ambient noise, reduced social demands. For someone whose nervous system is overwhelmed by typical social environments, the desert wouldn't be deprivation—it would be relief.
Their emphasis on hesychia (stillness/silence) might have been partly neurological wisdom. Create environments where the nervous system can rest, and different kinds of awareness become possible.
I'm not claiming all Desert Fathers were autistic—that would be historical overreach. But I do think autistic sensory experiences illuminate why silence matters spiritually, regardless of neurology.
Contemplative Prayer as Sensory Shift
Contemplative prayer traditions emphasize reducing external and internal noise. Quiet the environment, quiet the mind, quiet the constant stream of thoughts and intentions. What remains when you strip away all that activity?
For me, the answer is: a different kind of awareness. When my nervous system isn't in defensive filtering mode, I notice things I otherwise miss. Subtle body sensations. The quality of breath. The texture of present moment experience.
And sometimes, in that cleared sensory space, there's something more—a sense of Presence that was always there but obscured by sensory noise.
This isn't mystical in the sense of weird or esoteric. It's simply what becomes perceptible when you stop processing everything else. Like how you can't see stars in a city but they appear when you escape light pollution. The stars were always there; you just couldn't perceive them through the noise.
Autistic Meditation
Traditional meditation instructions often don't work well for autistic people. "Clear your mind" is meaningless when your mind doesn't work that way. "Focus on your breath" is difficult when interoception (internal body sense) is unreliable.
But contemplative traditions offer alternatives. Instead of clearing the mind, simply notice thoughts without following them. Instead of forcing focus, allow attention to rest on whatever arises. Instead of achieving some special state, simply be present to what is.
These approaches work better with autistic neurology. I can't force my mind to be empty, but I can notice thoughts as thoughts rather than getting caught in them. I can't reliably focus on breath, but I can allow awareness to rest on sensory experience as it unfolds.
The goal isn't controlling experience but being present to it—and that's something autistic nervous systems can do, often with unusual clarity.
Noise as Spiritual Issue
Here's a provocative thought: maybe our culture's constant noise is a spiritual problem, not just an autistic one.
If contemplative traditions are right that silence creates space for divine encounter, then environments designed to eliminate silence impede spiritual awareness. Not just for autistic people, but for everyone.
Constant background music, 24/7 news cycles, endless notifications, always-on connectivity—these don't just overload autistic nervous systems. They prevent everyone from experiencing the kind of sustained quiet that contemplative prayer requires.
Autistic people might be canaries in the coal mine, showing earlier and more dramatically what happens when environments lack adequate silence. But eventually, everyone pays the cost.
The Sound Silence Makes
Here's what I've learned: silence isn't empty. It has texture, quality, presence. When external noise quiets, you notice things you otherwise miss. The hum of your own nervous system. The rhythm of breath and heartbeat. The constant subtle adjustments your body makes.
And beneath all that, sometimes, something more. Not a voice exactly, not a sensation, but a sense of being attended to. Of being held. Of not being alone.
Elijah encountered God not in earthquake or fire but in "a still small voice"—or as some translations render it, "the sound of sheer silence." This wasn't God's absence but God's presence in a mode that required quiet to perceive.
Sensory Processing as Spiritual Capacity
My autistic sensory processing, which causes so many difficulties in typical environments, becomes an asset in contemplative practice. The same sensitivity that makes crowded spaces overwhelming lets me notice subtle shifts in awareness that others might miss.
The same difficulty filtering stimuli that causes sensory overload in chaotic environments becomes open receptivity in quiet ones. The same tendency to attend to details others consider irrelevant becomes capacity for sustained contemplative attention.
What society frames as deficit becomes spiritual gift—not despite my neurology but through it.
Practical Implications
This suggests that churches should think more carefully about sensory environments. Worship spaces that are constantly loud, visually busy, and socially intense might make certain kinds of encounter with God difficult or impossible—especially for autistic people, but potentially for everyone.
We need spaces and practices that honor silence. Not because silence is inherently more holy than sound, but because different modes of divine encounter require different sensory environments. God speaks in the whirlwind and in the whisper. We need to cultivate spaces for both.
For autistic believers specifically: your need for quiet isn't spiritual weakness. It's neurological reality that can become spiritual strength. The contemplative traditions offer resources for prayer that work with autistic neurology rather than against it.
Conclusion
The sound of silence isn't the absence of God's voice—it's a medium in which God's voice becomes perceptible. Silence creates space for awareness that noise obscures.
My autistic sensory processing taught me this through necessity. I need quiet spaces to function. But in those quiet spaces, I've discovered why contemplatives throughout Christian history have sought silence: it opens awareness to realities that constant noise obscures.
The Desert Fathers fled to the desert. I retreat to quiet rooms. The specifics differ, but the principle remains: sometimes you need to quiet external noise to hear what's been there all along.
In the silence, there's a sound. Not audible to ears, but perceptible to the attending soul. The sound of being known. The sound of presence. The sound of God, speaking in modes that require quiet to perceive.
That's the sound of silence I've learned to listen for. And it's taught me that my autistic need for sensory quiet isn't a limitation to overcome but a path to contemplative awareness—a neurological necessity that becomes spiritual gift.