I recently went on a 48 hour silent retreat. This Catholic facility provides unstructured retreats, simply giving you a hermitage (a heated one bedroom cabin in the woods with a chair, a bed, a basket of bread, and some fruit) and a chance to be silent.
My experience on these types of retreats is that I tend to get “clear” on things I need to get clear on. Regardless of how one interprets it, in silence and solitude there is often a conscious experience of what many describe as a deeper, more authoritative, or clarifying voice. Maybe that’s the voice of God; maybe it is your own deepest self. Maybe it’s “the part of me that is in tune with The Ultimate.” I don’t know. But it heals and it directs. At least that has been my experience when I go off to be alone.