Silence before God has deep significance: in the quietness of the soul the individual sinks into the central fire of communion. In the circle of worship the most personal elemental chords of life receive their deepest stimulation... In the silent act of breathing and in the unspoken dialogue of the soul with God, solitary as these are, deep communion can be given.
If we cannot see the multitudinous splendor of light in every form when it is right before our eyes, then we have to be awakened, jolted out of complacency, cast down from the ivory tower, and buried under the black earth of all our materialistic fantasies. It’s quite a shock and painful. Fearing loss, fear will bind us to forms that have already collapsed and are dissolving. But light is there even in the darkness. At the point where one dies, at the point where one stops trying to assert the ego, at the point one gives up in despair, at the point where one says, “I yield. I give in,” then one finds the Divine within.
The glory of the earth and the bright sun are sometimes a reproach to our dull and listless spirits. In the times when we labor under doubt and dullness of spirit, may we live in trust that we shall pass through the shadows and know once again the inner fire and light within. As our faith in life has sustained us and been fulfilled in us in the past, so that faith will carry us again from dark to light.
It seems all too easy for modern life to become one continuous rush tainted with frustration and a feeling that there is never enough time to do anything with care and sensitivity. So it is a very useful practice just to take one's time. The truth is that if we can take pleasure in what we do and be mindful, we will find we have more time. Our relationship with time itself can change. Time becomes full of life rather than second by second stealing our life away.
~ from REFLECTIONS ON EVERYDAY LIFE by Paramananda
Have you also learned that secret from the river — that there is no such thing as time? ...the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the water-fall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and...the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.
