True friendship exists when human beings share a love of goodness and truth. Two friends alone, like two legs on a table, offer a wobbly situation at best. But two friends anchored to a third, spiritual center form a rock-solid foundation to support everything that comes: hardship, suffering, exaltation, love. True friendship between two human beings exists only when there is a third Friend present: call this third friend God, or simply the Sacred.
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Spring greetings, dear friends!May the March winds blow many blessings into your lives! LISTEN in the Silence to a new world Awakening. With so much negativity seeming to cover our Earth home, it's all too easy for us to become discouraged or apathetic. We may not notice millions of our sisters and brothers around the globe who are in harmony with our aspirations and intentions to "peace the world" together. Light workers are networking ... peace and prayer groups are extending love, forgiveness, and hope ... and, notwithstanding the myriad outward news in the media, signs of Awakening and movement toward a just and more viable life for all are growing. As we focus our spiritual eyes and ears on this, as we listen to our heart's inner Voice of Love, we are blessed, we are peace-keepers. For, Love speaks in the hearts of those who become silent in order to LISTEN.
The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only those who listen can speak authentically.
A listening heart is always open, sensitive to the joy and pain of others, offering a space within itself for the other to enter. It gives each person what is so badly needed – an affirmation of their place in this world.
Twenty-five years of listening to stories of pain in individuals' lives have taught me many important lessons. Perhaps the most important is the art of listening. If I reduce the pain I hear to a static moment or try to freeze it with my understanding, then I interrupt a process which always has a deeper meaning embedded within it. Pain is a messenger, a strange winged visitor that asks us to pay attention and listen beyond our usual preoccupations and concerns.
from NAVIGATING THE TIDES OF CHANGE by David La Chapelle
Listen to old stones for information about survival. What a seashell has to say will surprise you. So, too, will words written on the wind. Listening to silence is hardest of all. You want to fill it up with conversation ... distractions ... noise. Resist the impulse. In silence, you can dream great dreams. You can discover your own music. Listening means hearing the voice within you. It never fails to tell you the truth, even if you don't want to hear it.
With a quiet mind, a heart still and silent, You will see the infinity of God And the finity of self. Humility will embrace you, and you will fade into that which is all that is. Your words will be few; the silence great. There is room then for listening.
We say we aren't listening to ourselves in the name of consideration for others. But this is a false premise because we can't really listen to others until we learn to listen, exquisitely listen, and TO ABIDE by our own heart.
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