Mar 1:25 Hold your peace, and come out of him.
Alternative: Shut up and get out of yourself.

This line is address to a man "with an unclean spirit" (pneumati akatharto - literally "foul breath" and "impure breath of life"). In reading the narrative, the nature of an "unclean spirit" can be interpreted many ways, from possession by a demon to simply having a seriously troubled mind. After this command, the phrase that describes what happens next can be translated,. as it usually is, as the spirit coming out of him, or as saying that "the man convulsed, cried out, and came out of it," which I think is closer to how we would describe this today.

Our goal here is thinking about all of Christ's words as though they were address to us today. Taking Christ's words out of the narrative, they clearly have a deeper message to us.

Christ is telling us to stop talking, both out loud and in our heads, and to come out of ourselves. He is telling us to stop being consumed by the every day issues of our lives. He wants us to look at our lives from the perspective of being an eternal spirit rather than a temporary being in a singular life.

Christ's statement to the Apostles about being "fishers of men" suggested this idea. Their job or rather our job, is to pull people out of the sea, or, as Shakespeare described it, "this sea of troubles." We want to encourage each other to come out of our selves, stop being so caught up in our problems and egos, and come to our senses, seeing the greater reality of our lives.

Why is being quiet important? You know before I even write about. When we are talking to others or worrying inside our heads, we are drawn into the moment and away from the eternal. Contemplation is always quiet, both quiet of mouth and quiet of heart. It is in stillness we sense the eternal.

In stillness, we can reflect on our unique position in the world, our existence at the center of our own reality. We can see the great conflict in existence. In the great scheme of the world, much less the near infinity of time and space, our particular lives seeming so insignificant. At the same time however, we are all we know. Your self-awareness is all you truly know. From your perspective, the only self-awareness you can know is your own. From your awareness, you infer mine, but you can know my self-awareness directly. Each of us, from our individual perspectives, are at the center of everthing and in control of nothing. What happens to us each from moment to moment is at once all important subjectively while seemingly meaningless objectively. Where is the truth: in our importance or our insignificance?

This quiet contemplation of the paradox at the core of our existence leads either to God or to insantiy. Yet, in our day-to-day interaction with each other and in listening to the chatter of our minds, we are distracted from it. We have other issues to deal with. Yet, in getting lost in the temporary distractions, we find another kind of insanity: our denial of our unique self-awareness.

"Hold your peace" is from phimoô (phimoo), which means "to muzzle," "to be silent," and "to be put to silence."

"Come" is from exerchomai (exerchomai), which means "to come or go out of " or "to come out."

"Out" is from ek, which means "out of," "away from," "from," or "by."

"Him" is from autos (autos), which means "the same," and the reflexive pronouns, "myself," "yourself," "himself," "herself," "itself," or the oblique case of the pronouns, "him," "her," and "it." It also means "one's true self," that is, "the soul" as opposed to the body and "of ones own accord."