Become more and more acquainted with your body on all its subtle levels, the fine vibrations which really are music, because when we talk of things created, they are only vibrations, nothing else, energy in movement and matter. In poetic language we can say the world is created by music. As we are the world, the universe, all the music of the universe is in our body.
O music, in your depths we deposit our hearts and souls. Thou hast taught us to see with our ears and hear with our hearts.
The voice of the solar wind -- aptly named "chorus" -- is both ethereal and haunting. You can hear echoes of crickets and snatches of whole song in this celestial starry music that bathes our planet. Everything is in vibratory relationship with everything else.
From the "strings" to the fluctuating pulses of cosmic radiationb that attend the expansion of the universe, there is a song that sounds through the fabric of our physical universe. The music of life is heard everywhere. It is we who fail to hear the music.
I felt a firm conviction of the unity, the Oneness, of all life, a kinship with all living things, even to the invisible busy atom, a sense that we were made of the same stuff and moved to the same patterns, from the atoms to the universes, the macrocosm repeating the microcosm, that love and truth and goodness in a single life were interpenetrated by the infinite love and truth and goodness we call God.
Let uis prove to the whole world that we are one,
let us be one in love to the poorest of the poor.
What seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. For the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers. Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others. Things are constantly unfolding on different levels. It's for us to perceive the warp and woof of the Oneness of All as best we can and learn to follow our own threads through the tapestry of life with authenticity and resolve.
We are One with all life that is in nature.
We can no longer live for ourselves alone.
If the world is a temple, then our enemies are sacred, too. The ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing. It doesn't even stop with human beings and enemies of the least of the brothers and sisters. It moves to frogs and pansies and weeds. EVERYTHING becomes enchanting with true sight.
One God, one world, one truth, one suffering, and one love.All we can do is to participate.
It is commonly considered rude to keep silent in the company of others, but voluntary silence connects rather than distances us from others whose individual differences temporarily fade away creating a shared feeling of harmony and oneness.
I think You, my God, for having in a thousand diffeent ways led my eyes to discover the immense simplicity of things. Little by little, through the irresistible development of those yearnings You implanted in me as a child, through the influence of gifted friends who entered my life at certain moments to bring light and strength to my mind, and through the awakenings of spirit I owe to successive initiations, gentle and terrible, which you caused me to undergo; through all these, I have been brought to the point where I can no longer see anything, nor any longer breathe, outside that milieu in which all is made One.
When all things return to One, even gold loses its value. But when the One returns to all things, even the pebbles sparkle.
May I dance body and mind into You
and be changed.
Embedded in your close Presence
all is holy, all is interconnected, all is One.
Some Thing that moves among the stars,
And holds the cosmos in a web of law,
Moves too in me: a hunger, a quick thaw
Of soul, that liquifies the ancient bars,
As I, a member of creation, sing
The burning oneness binding everything.
O Hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,
O Hidden Light, shining in every creature,
O Hidden Love, embracing all in Oneness,
May all who feel themselves as one with Thee
Know they are therefore one with every other.
The exerience of Oneness is not limited to just the great mystics of all the ages. Each one of us is invited to experience this Oneness and we can do so in all our endeavors. We can experience and utilize our Oneness when we are appreciating the beauty of nature, in our spiritual practice, in the creative process, and in our social action in the world. When we are feeling separate from our God source, we can find deep within us that knowing of Oneness to guide us back into the Light.
This is true faith: connection to the universe and its inner divine consciousness through freedom, individual uniqueness, regard for one's true personality, grounding of the divine within, all expressed through love. It saves, for it makes us one with that which endures and can never be lost. It gives peace, for it brings the gift of Oneness. We are only upset by that which is outside ourselves and threatens to come in and destroy, or by the reflection of the intruder within. If we truly know we are One with all that is, nothing is outside us, nothing can threaten, so there can only be peace.
There is an interconnectedness, a oneness, an interrelationship of all life. We are not separate, isolated beings, but are all part of the great mystery of creation.
It is interesting to note that modern scientific thinking in many ways points to a similar underwstanding. An example of this is Bell's Theorem, which is sometimes referred to as the "butterfly effect."
It holds that the beating of a butterfly's wings can have an influence on events far away, even on the other side of the Earth.
There is a part of the sun in the apple,
Part of the moon in the rose
Part of the flaming Pleiades
In everything that grows.
Out of the vast comes nearness.
for the God of Love, of which we sing,
Has put a little bit of Heaven
In every living thing.
In praise of redwoods, ancient trees:
I think that could the weary world but know
Communion with these spirits breathing peace
Strangely a veil would lift, a light would glow,
And the dark tumult of our lives would cease.
So many seasons have come and gone and these tall, majestic tress have waited, waited for someone to linger just a moment -- long enough to hear the word they speak, grasp their wonder and beauty, perfect symmetry of trunk and branch -- revealing their essence to the one who has eyes to see and the heart to share a joyful moment with another.
It would go a great way to caution and direct people in their use of the World, that they were better studied and known in the Creation nof it. For how could humankind find the Confidence to abuse it, while they should see the Great Creator stare them in the Face, in all and every Part thereof?
Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose
from the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all naturala things
I could live or not live; it does not matter
to be one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away.
When we are in tune, we are conscious of spirit activating us and we welcome this alignment of our own little rhythm with the great rhythm of the Universe. Then we naturally feel refverence for all life and want to care for our Earth home. We desire simplicity. With joy we dance in the ecstasy of attunement. And we are led in the steps of the dance to offer our loving service to the world.
God is everywhere. The animals and flowers all manifest God's presence, as does the marvelous ecological balance we're becoming more aware of in recent times. Everything seems to work together over time to produce a certain consciousness of God's presence.
The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating. As I watched it sink, I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I though as I sat there, "Be still and know I am God," and knew that without stillness there can be not knowing, we cannot know what spirit means.
O, You who are ever
giving life to all life,
moving all creatures,
root of all things,
washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
You are our true life,
luminous, wonderfulo,
awakening the heart
from its ancient sleep.
The sacred waterfall of tahe Shuar people of Ecuador is breathtaking and beautiful. Yet standing before it, looking up into the rainbow that arches through the cascading waters, the visitor is struck by a feeling that transcends the magnificence of the landscape. No matter what your religion, you cannot help but sense the spirit of this place. Its power defies any attempt to describe the euphoria by a natural phenomenon so overwhelmingly grand that its voice seems to cross all the bridges of time.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a human soul.
Old trees hold us to the earth by their deep roots. And trees are ourmemories, like the blueprints of our planet's history. When ancient trees are cut, the earth loses its memory.
Our forests, those brave and sheltering Standing People, need their ancient forests, just as we humans need to be firmly rooted to our past generations, the grandparents who hold down our family tree.
What we believe in anguish and doubt
the iris proclaims in simple blue tones;
What we do not see, the chickadee confirms
in its flight to the feeder;
Life, life everywhere, sacred everywhere.
There is a sensuality to nature as well as an asceticism; there are teachings on birth and death. Nature is nurturing, education, challenging ... a profound place of presence, of passivity and activity, giving and receiving. Pure contemplation is a direct route to God, and nature can provide an extraordinary context where that graced moment of being Unified can happen.
We create gardens because we are called to be co-creators with the Great Architect, designers of places to fulfill the human quest for wholeness and well-being.... Here in the garden the small voice of God can be heard as we stop to listen.
The seed of prayer is sown in heaven.
It pushes its stem toward the earth
and comes to grow there.
It produces an abundance of fruit.
Then, as it becomes seed once more,
it thrusts its way back to heaven.
To pray is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming set on fire by the Spirit.
For those who have come to know God,
the whole world is a prayer mat.
We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub, but the spoke of the revolving wheel. In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender. God is the center, the Source, toward which all forces tend, and we are the flowing, the ebb and flow of God's tides. Prayer takes the mind out of the narrowness of self-interest, and enables us to see the world in the mirror of the holy.
The creative act is a courageous, ancient gesture, a dynamic prayerful exploration of the dark mystery that is human existence. When I finally identified this face of creativity as sacred practice, I built a small altar in my studio and my work took on a depth of meaning it never had. Prayer and art suddenly meshed and became refined. It wasn't done in pursuit of holiness as I'd been taught in the child's corner of my life. Prayer became synonomous with art as an authentic expression of my entire complex Self.
The most perfectr prayer breathes in a heart that remains silent before God and knows how to listen to God.
The purpose of prayer is to find God's will and to make that will our own.
The last time I saw Fr. Bede, I asked for his blessing and one final word of advice.
He held my face in his hands and then said, "Pray, pray always!"
And he went back to his prayers.
I am giving Thee worship with my whole life,
I am giving Thee assent with my whole power,
I am giving Thee praise with my whole tongue,
I am giving Thee honor with my whole utterance.
I am giving Thee lovfe with my whole devotion,
I am giving Thee kneeling with my whole desire,
I am giving Thee affefction with my whole sense,
I am giving Thee my existence with my whole mind.
I am giving Thee my soul, O God of all ages.
Prayer creates a quiet place within us where we can go at any time regardless of what is taking place around us. In this quiet place, we are constantly aware of God's presence. By practicing self-restraint in speech and maintaining this quiet place within, we will be aware of the presence of God. Then when we do speak, our words will break down the barriers between this world and the next. Words are the tools of the material world, while silence is the mystery of the spiritual realm. A love of silence is the surest and safest way to find our true selves, fulfillment and joy.
Be constant in your practice, and one day the One who gave you the desire for the prayer of the heart will give you that prayer itself. When your heart's intention is fixed on God, it will keep lit the incense of your prayer, and wind of distraction will not put it out. do not worry about stray thoughts; they may come and go, but they will not take your attention away from God.
Prayer invites us to become aware of the living interaction between the transparent God, who will remain always beyond all we can think or imagine, and the immanent God, who abides deep in our heart. As we become aware of this sacred encounter, we become, ourselves, a place where God's dream is becoming incarnate in our own personal life. We enter into a personal and intimate relationship with the Author of our being.
We often consider prayer a deliberate act, something that we choose to do, or not. In the 18th century, William Law knew better:
"As the heart willeth and worketh, such, and no other, is its prayer.... For this is the necessity of our nature: pray we must, as sure as our heart is alive; therefore, when the state of our heart is not a spirit of prayer to God, we pray without ceasing to some, or other, part of the creation."
Perhaps as we learn what "part of creation" we have been praying to without knowing it, we can enlarge and re-focus our prayer, until we find that we are not so much praying as being prayed through, and all our own best hopes and the hopes of the world are flowing through us.
Love flows through all life and it spins the heart. The spinnin gof the heart takes us beyond the limited vision of the mind into the vaster dimensions of our real being. Love awakens us, frees us from the prison of our ego-self, and it can also awaken the world. When the web of life starts to spin with the frequency of the conscious love and of oneness, the world can begin to awaken to its real nature.
You know, O my God, I have never desired anything but to love You, I am ambitious for no other glory. Your love has gone before me, and it has grown with me, and now it is an abyss whose depths I cannot fathom. Love attracts love and my love leaps toward yours; it would like to fill the abyss which attracts it, but alas; it is not even a drop of dew lost in the ocean! For me to love You as You love me, I would have to borrow your own Love.