The Silence of the Tomb and the Death of the Ego - When the Soul Meets God
Updated: Sep 29
Understanding Ego Death as a Spiritual Awakening
Have you ever felt like something inside you had to die… so that something far more alive could finally be born?
That heavy silence. The painful death of the ego. The moment when all your striving, proving, and controlling finally falls apart.
What if that wasn’t a defeat but a sacred invitation?
In this reflection, I invite you into that quiet tomb-like place where the soul meets God by finally letting go. Together, we’ll walk through the powerful story of Hannah, a woman who knew barrenness and heartbreak intimately. We’ll also draw on the wisdom of Scripture, Carl Jung’s profound insights into the “psychic death” of the ego, and the deep spiritual reflection of Alicja Lenczewska.
You’ll discover how surrendering control doesn’t leave you empty, but it makes space for genuine rebirth in truth, freedom, and grace.
The Silence That Opens the Gates of the Soul
What are the silence of the tomb and the death of the ego?
In Christianity, the tomb of Jesus is not only a symbol of a life's end. It is also a place of mystery - a place where God seems to be silent. A kairos moment, when old ways of living, thinking, and loving pass away, while the new has not yet been born.
Because not everything that is silent is dead. And not every emptiness means abandonment.
The “silence of the tomb” is a deep, piercing stillness in which something has ended, fallen quiet, or been lost. It is a silence with no answers, no movement, and no visible hope.
Jesus died in the body so that man could meet God in the soul. For this to happen, the ego must also die within us - our self-centeredness, stubbornness, need to be right, and resistance to God’s will.
As Alicja Lenczewska wrote: “The silence of the tomb is only apparent - the death of the body brings fullness of the soul… To mortify oneself is to put one’s egoism to death.”
Seemingly a Perfect Morning, and yet…
This year’s June days in Canada are beautiful. Perfect weather, silence, sunshine, nature - ideal conditions for prayer and rest.But today… something felt off.
Despite these ideal circumstances, from early morning, various unpleasant thoughts attacked me - like uninvited guests walking in without knocking. Discouragement, frustration, irritation. Completely without reason or any logic. I hadn’t gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, and I had slept long enough. So where did this unrest in my heart come from?
I made coffee and sat on the terrace. ☕ I let the sun warm my heart a little.
Then I opened the Word. Maybe I’ll find an answer and calm down, I thought.
But no. When I opened today’s readings, the words of Scripture struck me more provocatively than comfortingly - a sudden negative jolt straight to the heart - a divine ambush from Matthew 5:38–42. Four in one!
“Let love be without hypocrisy.”
But can love even be hypocritical? If it is, is it still love at all?
“Give your cloak as well…”
Give away my cloak if someone needs it? Alright - I can do that.
“Go two thousand steps…”
Two thousand steps? Okay. Even gladly. That’s not so much after all.
“Turn the other cheek…Give your cloak…Go the extra mile…”
Wait - what?
Seriously, Lord? You mean that? All of it?
But not resisting evil? Taking emotional punches in silence?
My soul recoiled like a child. So I grabbed my “Sacred Notebook” - where I meet God in raw honesty - and asked:
“Lord, what are You really saying to me today?”
The Silence of the Tomb according to Alicja Lenczewska and Gabor Maté
And once again, God spoke - simply and with care. I opened A Word of Instruction by Alicja Lenczewska - p. 162 and read:
“Suffering that can save is grace, and it must be received with joy.”
What depth! Suffering that saves… So there is also suffering that does not save - meaningless suffering? And further, the Lord Jesus says to Alicja:
“If you suffer, give Me your suffering, so that I may accomplish holy things in the souls of those who are the cause of your pain. Let the awareness of this bring joy and peace to your heart.”❤️🌺❤️
As I surrendered to the flow of this thought, I remembered the words of Gabor Maté:
“Suffering does not come from the pain we experience, but from our refusal to accept that pain.”❤️🌺❤️
And further: trauma is not the events that happened to us. Trauma is the wound we carry within. Fighting this wound, rejecting it, pretending it does not exist, or trying to “get rid of it” only deepens the suffering.
Instead, Maté proposes acceptance - being with the pain, the shame, the anger, the fear, without judgment and without fighting it. Only then is true integration possible, and a return to one’s authentic self.
This grace of suffering - the external circumstances is like a seed that can bear fruit if it is received with acceptance and without complaint, consciously. Then peace and joy are born. Suffering received in this way allows the soul to be saved. If that is so, then the ego must die; it must be crucified, instead of entering the spiral of revenge and seeking false justice. Simply… begin a new round with God as the main player - like Hannah, the mother of Samuel or Job. Job loses almost everything that gave his life meaning and security. His possessions, his children, his familiar world. And yet, in the middle of that devastation, he blesses the name of the Lord.
An what about me? wow, hmm... I am still learning. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. But I begin again, accepting what is in the present moment, and this brings joy. And I read further… on page 163 of A Word of Instruction:
“The silence of the tomb is only apparent - the death of the body brings fullness of the soul… Removing suffering without leading to God is meaningless, because suffering is a grace given for conversion.”❤️🌺❤️
Since the Lord Jesus said this to Alicja Lenczewska, it means it referred to life on earth, not after death. The soul can be set free only when the ego is tempered. And that hurts. Here courage is needed - the courage to receive the light about oneself.
The first slap is like standing before the Truth. The second is accepting the Truth and metanoia - conversion, a change of mind.
“You open your mind to thoughts that destroy you, instead of listening to Me.”
I continue reading in A Word of Instruction. After a longer moment of reflecting on myself and on those situations when I myself open my mind to destructive thoughts, Hannah - the mother of Samuel - stood before my eyes, and the way she responded to a pain she could no longer bear.
The images began to arrange themselves in my mind - thoughts running quickly, as if I were scanning a 2,000-piece puzzle, yet I chose the answers slowly and carefully. The words of the Gospel have many layers. At first they sound concrete and literal. But they also carry a spiritual meaning that can be understood only when the heart is ready. That is why the same words may strike one place today, and next week or next year a completely different place. Not because their meaning changes. We change - like fruit that ripens, or flowers that bloom.
The Bible brings us the Word for every day.
I understood that the Lord Jesus was not speaking about submission to evil, but about not responding from the same level from which someone wounded me.
He was not calling for passivity, but for freedom from revenge. Only then can suffering save and bring joy.
Jesus never proved His rights to anyone. He did not defend Himself, did not explain, and did not enter into arguments about who was right. Even when He was struck before Annas (John 18:22-23), He did not silently turn the other cheek in a gesture of passivity, nor did He retaliate. He only asked:
“If I have spoken wrongly, testify as to what is wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike Me?”
And then He fell silent. He did not fight for Himself. He surrendered everything — including the right to be understood.
The Gospel points to a path of transformation. It teaches us not to resist the evil that touches us, because resistance hardens the heart. And a heart of stone cannot hear God. (Matthew 5:38-39)
“But I say to you: Do not resist the one who is evil.”
The ego always wants to be right. It wants to defend itself, explain, win the argument, and prove that it has been wronged. Instead of entering into war with our own ego, our wound, or our anger, it is better to allow them to “die” through acceptance. Fighting the pain only strengthens it. True freedom begins when I stop defending myself and allow it to be.
External evil has the right to wound me. But it has no right to become the master of my inner life. It is not about being passive toward evil in the world, but about not allowing evil to win inside me through revenge, bitterness, the ego’s demand for “justice,” or the struggle against my own pain.
Once again I was reminded of Jung and his image of the soul that must wage a battle with the ego in order to be truly born - in order to begin to live.
The Battle of Soul vs. Ego
Today the silence was not a comfort for me, because the Word struck the most painful places.
Yet it is precisely in such a difficult encounter that both you and I have the opportunity to draw closer to ourselves, to another person, or to God because we finally stop pretending.
And we allow Him to speak. Even when it hurts.
Although the silence of the tomb sounds like an ending, Jesus says otherwise: the tomb is the place where life is born. Lenczewska adds: “the death of the body brings fullness of the soul,” and Jung: “the soul is born where the ego dies.”
Three languages - one meaning:
When we stop fighting for ourselves, we begin to live according to God. The Gospel is not about allowing ourselves to be humiliated. It teaches us how to move the battlefield from the outside to the inside.
It is not about giving up on ourselves, but about discovering who we truly are when we no longer need to prove anything, explain ourselves, or pretend.
The ego shouts: “I must defend myself!”The soul whispers: “I am safe, because I am in God.”
Spiritual Death as the Path to Holiness
Holiness is not perfection. It is the growing presence of God within me and the decreasing need for control. It is the readiness to give away my cloak, because I know that He will cover me. It is the decision not to answer fire with the fire of anger, because the fire of the Holy Spirit is already burning within me.
Holiness is a soul that is no longer afraid to die to the world, because it is already rooted in eternity.
Hannah, the Mother of Samuel - the Soul’s Path to True Freedom
Let us return to Hannah, the mother of Samuel.
She was humiliated by her husband’s other wife, Peninnah, who had children while Hannah’s own arms remained empty. Peninnah touched the most painful place in Hannah’s heart, constantly reminding her of what she so deeply desired and could not receive.
She was undervalued, wounded, full of sorrow and unanswered questions. And yet she had a husband who loved her, though even his love could not soothe the pain she carried within.
Her ego could have fought, rebelled, and demanded justice. She could have closed her heart, become angry with God, with Peninnah, and with her husband who was unable to protect her from humiliation. She could have allowed bitterness to poison everything that was still good in her life.
Her rival kept provoking her to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. This went on for many years. Every time she went up to the house of the Lord, Peninnah would torment her in this way. So Hannah wept and would not eat.
In Hannah’s heart, illusions were dying - the dreams of an immediate answer, of recognition from people, of acceptance of her situation, of control over her life.
Every disappointment, every tear, every year of God’s silence was like a blow against everything in her that still tried to fight humanly.
“No, my lord. I am a woman deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman. I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.”
But in this inner dying, something far greater was being born.
A soul was being born that no longer needed proof. A soul that truly knew God not through answered prayers, but through a Presence that never leaves.
And then, when everything in her fell silent, in that silence of the spiritual tomb, God spoke. Not through a storm or a sign from heaven, but through the priest Eli, an imperfect instrument.
“Eli answered, ‘Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.’”
Hannah conceived Samuel - the prophet who became the key to a new chapter in Israel’s history. But the physical miracle of conception was not the beginning of the transformation. The beginning was the death of what was merely human in her - and the birth of a faith that no longer cried out, but trusted.
It was in this struggle of silence and tears that Hannah met God face to face.
Not symbolically, not indirectly, but truly, in spirit and in truth. Her prayer was so deep that Eli thought she was drunk, because she was beyond this world. In the place where the soul meets God without words.
Hannah became a metaphor for a relationship with God that does not rest on what we receive, but on Who He is. A relationship that no longer needs miracles in order to believe, because it has already encountered the One who does not need to prove Himself through wonders.
If Hannah had tried to fight in her own strength, seeking justice, demanding recognition, proving her worth, she would have lost inwardly. Her pain would have turned into bitterness.
But because she allowed what hurt and cried out within her to die, because she gave God not only her request but also her “why,” her heart became a holy place — a path for God’s action, an instrument of a new beginning.
Guidelines for Today💛🌺💛
✨ Instead of asking, “Am I right?” ask, “Does this draw me closer to God?”
✨ Instead of an automatic defence, stay with the question: “What in me has been touched?”
✨ Instead of fighting your thoughts, recognize which of them are only the echo of a wounded ego.
The silence of the tomb does not mean that nothing is happening. It is the moment when the soul recovers the oxygen that its own ego reactions had been taking away.
🕊️ Perhaps what hurts you most today is not your weakness, but the very place where God wants to birth holiness in you.
Perhaps pause today in prayer, just as Hannah did, and allow Him to touch you. Give Him not only your request, but also your fear, your fatigue, and your silence - those places where the silence of the tomb touches you and the ego dies. It is precisely there, where control ends, that a true relationship begins.
📖 Take up 1 Samuel, chapter 1, and allow the Word to transform you.
Grave Silence is Not Emptiness
The silence of the tomb is not the absence of life - it’s the space where the soul finally breathes again.
Maybe the thing that hurts the most today isn’t your weakness…
…it’s the very place where God wants to birth holiness in you.
☕ 🕊️ Morning Prayer
Abba, thank You for coffee, silence, and even my wandering thoughts.
Teach me to listen to the voice of the soul, not the ego.
Teach me to lose in the world’s eyes, so I may win Your gaze.
Let my love come not from fear, pride, or pressure but from You.
Amen.💛🌺💛
❤️🌺❤️
Between laundry and conversations, between tiredness and trust that it all matters.
Psalm 1 invites us to ask a simple but searching question:
What am I allowing to nourish the roots of my life?🌱 My walking and thinking reflection:
There are many ways to read the Bible. But there is another way of opening the Bible - one that asks me not only, “What does this passage mean?” but also, “Lord, what are You saying to me through Your Word today?”
Women of the Bible - Their Faith, Strength, and Heart
A jeśli wolisz czytać po polsku to zapraszam tutaj:
Thank you for reading this post to this point. I hope you enjoyed your coffee or tea… and didn’t drop it somewhere between ego death and meeting God.
Blessings & Hugs.
BE☕💛🌺
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