When Spiritual Growth Makes Everything Louder Inside

You keep trying to pray, or journal, or “be present,” and instead it feels like someone left a radio on inside your chest.

Not peaceful music. You’re having a five stations at once scenario.

You sit down to be still, and your mind immediately sprints:

What did I forget at work? 

Did I sound stupid in that text? 

Should I be doing something more productive than this? 

Is any of this even real?

Your heart joins in with its own noise: 

Why am I so angry? 

Why am I so numb? 

Why am I crying again?

It is hard to call that “spiritual formation.” It feels more like a spiritual malfunction.

When Inner Growth Makes Everything Louder

There is a quiet assumption many of us carry: 

If I were actually growing, my mind would calm down. 

If I were close to God, my heart would be peaceful.

Then you try to lean in spiritually, and instead of peace, you run into:

- Old conversations replaying on loop 

- Imaginary arguments where you finally say the perfect thing 

- Sudden waves of shame or grief you cannot link to anything obvious 

- A sharp inner voice critiquing how “bad” you are at all this

It can feel like spiritual practices are making things worse.

What if that noise is not proof you are failing, but simply what happens when you stop running from yourself?

When you slow down enough to listen, you do not hear “nothing.” 

You hear everything you have been carrying.

That is not a sign of collapse, but contact.

The Inner Panel of Commentators

Sometimes the noise feels almost like characters around a table:

One voice is practical: 

“You should be answering emails right now. This is a waste.”

Another is policing: 

“You’re not doing silence right. Real spiritual people don’t think this much.”

Another is scared: 

“If you slow down, something terrible will come up, and you won’t be able to handle it.”

And somewhere beneath those, quieter and steadier, something else is present, but it rarely gets the microphone.

Many people assume the loudest voice must be the truest. 

Or the harshest one must be “God” because it sounds serious and uncompromising.

Inner noise gets especially intense when you start suspecting that might not be true, and those loud voices feel their power slipping.

You are not going crazy. You are noticing.

The Cave of the Heart

Many traditions speak of a hidden place within us where the deepest life moves. 

It’s less of an escape hatch and more like a small inner room, where the noise thins just enough to sense what is actually alive in you.

People use different words for it: heart, soul, center, inner sanctuary.

It is not far away. It is not delicate. But getting there can feel like walking into a dark cave without a flashlight.

You move from the bright chatter of the surface into a space where your eyes have not adjusted yet. Your old ways of navigating do not work as well. You cannot grab for your usual distractions. You are more exposed to yourself.

Of course, the noise flares here. 

The ego hates losing control of the volume knobs.

So it does what it does best:

- Rehearses old fears 

- Scans for threats, even in silence 

- Tries to negotiate a way out: “If I just understand this better, I won’t have to feel it.”

More often than not, the first things you hear when you “go inside” are not angels singing. They are objections.

And yet, if you stay even a little longer than usual, something else begins to come into view. Something like a faint presence.

A grief you have been postponing. 

A desire you were taught not to admit. 

A tiny, quiet “no” that keeps getting overruled. 

Or a “yes” that you cannot explain but cannot shake.

None of those are tidy. They are, however, real.

When the Body Joins the Conversation

Sometimes the mind will not quiet, but the body will speak.

A tight jaw that never unclenches. 

A chest that feels flooded when you sit still. 

A stomach that knots as soon as you say the word “God.” 

A sudden heaviness in your limbs when you try to pray.

These are not side issues to fix so you can “get back to spiritual things.” They are often how your deeper life is trying to get your attention.

The body rarely speaks in abstractions. It says:

Too much. 

Not safe. 

I am lonely. 

I do not want this. 

Please slow down.

If you picture those sensations as irritations to push past, inner noise just escalates. If, even briefly, you picture them as something with a message, something shifts.

Not magically. Not all at once. 

But the tone of the inner room changes.

Small, Honest Gestures

Deep interior silence is not something you accomplish by force. 

It is not a reward for good behavior.

Often it begins in the smallest, almost throwaway gestures.

A hand resting on your own chest for two slow breaths before you open your laptop.

Letting your shoulders drop when you feel the first rush of panic.

Letting yourself look out the window and actually see the tree instead of using it as a backdrop to think harder.

Standing up during a time of prayer because sitting is making you feel trapped and foggy.

These are not techniques, but ways of saying to your own being: 

“I notice you. You’re not an obstacle to my spiritual life. You are where it is happening.”

Sometimes that is enough to lower the volume a notch.

Not silence. Just a little more space.

When Nothing Gets Quieter

There are seasons when, no matter what you do, everything inside stays loud.

You try silence. Noise. Music. No music. 

Contemplative books. No books. Walks. No walks.

Your mind is still a crowded marketplace. Your heart is still jumpy or dull.

In those times, the temptation is to decide:

“This is proof I’m not cut out for this.” 

“I’m just a thinking person, not a feeling person.” 

“Maybe God is avoiding me.” 

“Maybe I broke something.”

What if the loudness itself is not a verdict, but a stage of the work?

When a room that has been locked for years finally gets opened, it does not smell fresh. Dust flies. Light reveals clutter that looked invisible in the dark. You may even slam the door a few times before you can bear to stand there for more than a moment.

That does not mean the room is a mistake. 

It just means you are finally seeing it.

Listening Without Trying To Win

One quiet shift many people never name is this: 

Moving from listening in order to win, to listening in order to connect.

We are used to listening to our own thoughts like debaters:

“I shouldn’t feel that.” 

“I should already be past this.” 

“I have to figure out whether this is valid.”

The heart is not a courtroom. It is a place of encounter.

You do not have to agree with every inner voice or obey every emotion. You also do not have to cross-examine them all to death.

You can, sometimes, simply say:

I hear you. 

You’re really loud today. 

You seem scared. 

You seem tired. 

You seem furious.

Not to indulge them, but to stop pretending they are not there.

This kind of listening is not passive. It is courageous because you are choosing contact over control.

When the Sacred Feels Hidden Under the Static

If you were to press beneath the fear, beneath the critique, beneath the racing loops, what would you hope to find?

Most people, if they are honest, long for something like:

A presence that is not threatened by my chaos. 

A gaze that does not turn away when I am a mess. 

A source of life that is not dependent on my performance. 

A stillness that can hold my storm without being swallowed by it.

Some call that God. Some call it Mystery. Some do not have a name yet, but they know when they brush against it.

Ironically, many first taste that presence not when everything is serene, but right in the middle of the noise, when they stop pretending they should be somewhere else.

A sudden sense, mid-spiral, that they are not alone. 

Or a tiny line of gratitude threading through their exhaustion. 

Or an awareness that, even here, even now, something is with them more gently than they have been with themselves.

Nothing outside changes. The inbox is still full. The kids are still loud. The grief is still raw. The noise does not vanish.

But the relationship to the noise begins to change.

It is no longer the whole story.

Noticing Your Usual Moves

If you start to pay attention, you may see patterns in how you usually respond to inner noise:

You argue with it. 

You drown it with more noise. 

You diagnose it and then move on, unchanged. 

You spiritualize it with a quick quote or verse and skip the ache. 

You shame it into silence and call that maturity.

You might catch yourself doing one of those midstream and simply pause:

There I go again, trying to fix this feeling instead of listening to it. 

There is that urge to make this productive, so I don’t have to admit I’m just sad. 

There is that reflex to use “God” as a way to get away from myself.

You do not need to replace those patterns with better ones yet. 

Just seeing them is already different.

Inner noise is not only what is happening in you. It is also how you are used to treating yourself.

The Slow Forming of a New Center

Over time, as you keep returning, not heroically but honestly, something small and steady begins to form inside:

A little more tolerance for not knowing. 

A bit more room between feeling and reaction. 

A sense that silence is not empty, even when it feels pointless. 

A trust, however fragile, that you can survive your own interior life.

You may notice:

You snap just a bit less often. 

You catch yourself before agreeing to something that betrays you. 

You pray fewer words, but they feel less like a performance. 

You find yourself bringing your actual anger or joy into that inner room, not just the things you think are allowed.

None of that looks impressive from the outside. There are no gold stars given for it.

Yet this is how a life rearranges around what is real, instead of around what is most urgent or loud.

When You are Tired of Trying

If you are reading this and thinking, “I have tried all of this before,” that matters.

Some days, the truest prayer is simply:

“I am too tired to care, but I still, somehow, want You.” 

Or even, “I don’t want You right now, and I’m here anyway.”

Those are honest words. They belong in the cave, too.

The work is not to force an inner silence you do not have. 

The work might simply be to stop pretending the noise disqualifies you.

The sacred does not wait for you outside your loud mind and tangled heart.

It meets you in the bathroom stall between meetings, on the couch when you cannot shut your brain off, in the car when you are arguing with someone who is not there.

Right there. As you are. Without fixing the volume first.

Staying with the Tension

There may never be a time when your inner life is pure quiet.

The mind will still commentate. The heart will still surge and sink. 

Life will still press in with its deadlines and losses and small delights.

Spiritual formation is not the removal of noise. 

It is learning to recognize that, beneath and within the noise, something deeper is already moving.

You do not have to see it clearly yet. 

You do not have to be certain which voice is which.

The first step is to simply and gently acknowledge:

My heart and mind are loud. 

I thought that meant I was far away. 

Maybe it simply means I am finally close enough to hear.

If you’d like company as you keep listening in those spaces, you can tap subscribe for future reflections from Essence House.

Live and Lead with Soul,

Ben Shoup