Prayer, Silence and Wisdom are sisters.
Memo to God: I've been demanding and demanding things from You, often quite rudely, in fact often very rudely, like an ill-bred spoilt child, but I think prayer must have made me better mannered or perhaps it's helped me grow up a little and now I should like to say politely: "thank you very much" -- not just for staying with me no matter how unpleasant I was, but for actually moving closer and surrounding me with people who care.
There is a contemplative
in all of us,
almost strangled
but still alive,
who carves quiet
enjoyment of the Now,
and longs to touch
the seamless
garment of silence
which makes whole.
Contact with the Divine Beloved is never complete until some other human being feels more loved and cherished as a result of its contact. Further, as all who have ever communed with the Beloved have discovered, the more deeply you encounter the Divine Lover, the more sensitively you feel the agony of the world; the more you are called to care more, feel more and think more deeply about decay in the social and moral order. You live in a state of radical empathy with all those in need. You are transparent to the agony of the world. Together with the Beloved, you must reach out to allay this suffering, or to do what you can in the light of the perspective of grace and the energy of spiritual partnership.
Ecstatic love for God -- heart and mind melted by passionate longing for Truth -- is the one essential factor in the process of awakening. Divine Presence, however one may understand and experience it, exists in and through all conscious beings... Merged in motiveless love, one experiences every moment the tremendous natural attraction of Divine Presence. This Presence is the inner guidance that we feel flowing through us as conscience, intellect, intuition, sense perception, and longing. Divine Presence alone generates the yearning of our heart, the seeking of our mind, the ease of our body, the illumination of our soul.
If your heart is not full of Love, you won't see love anywhere. But if your heart is soaked with the Presence of Love, you will recognize that presence. Where we come together in very simple ways, we sense the presence. Where people are vulnerable together in a quiet way, there is real strength. That is where the realm of LOVE is shaped.
Coming from Love is coming from the heart, the heart of the One Spirit within, and touching other hearts in unity of God's purpose and peace. Loving yourself is the first step home; loving all else is the way, the path; and being Love is the journey's end; for once you become that which you are -- LOVE -- you shall truly be Home.
Spiritual understanding centers on the acceptance of a divine truth, which gradually reveals itself, rising on the horizon of the mind till it pervades all. If the mind and its reactions are brought into willing obedience to that truth, the divine truth continues to permeate the mind even more and the mind develops with it endlessly... It is we who must yield to the love of God so that our minds may be open to the divine truth.
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one "object" of love... If I truly love one person, I love all persons, I love the world. I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody. I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I do not feel it.
I believe in God even when God is silent.
We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes... Our homesickness is alleviated only by love, the love that transcends our self-centeredness, our pettiness... When we are truly in love, not in the sense of romantic, erotic love, but in the sense of God's love for all that the Power of Love created, then our homesickness is alleviated. When we are in love we are no longer homesick, for Love is home.
For inasmuch as this flame is a flame of the Divine Life, it wounds the soul with the tenderness of the life of God; and so deeply ... does it wound it and fill it with tenderness that causes it to melt in love, so that there may be fulfilled in it that which came to pass in the Bride in the Song of Songs; she conceived such great tenderness that she melted away.
We human beings are here to help each other, to support each other, to love each other. We cannot be fully human if we are isolated and alone. But to share our love, always we must first love ourselves. It may sound simple, but to live by this principle is at times not easy. Just the same, if we forget to care for our own being, then how can we ever hope to assist others? Only when we come from our own living center can we give our greatest gift to the world.
Who longs for peace must first clear any battlefield within the heart, then sow there seeds of love.
Adri told us, "LOVING IS NOTHING WITHOUT TRUTH."
I think we really understood, for the first time, how different our lives -- and the world -- would be if we could all operate out of a state of truth and love. Within a loving context it becomes safe to reveal one's own truth. In retrospect we could see that suppressing truth limited our ability to love one another. And when we limit our truth, we limit our lives.
Creation may be seen as a continuing, dynamic process guided by incomprehensible LOVE.
Tranquility
is a little child asleep,
a clear, calm sky,
the softly falling snow;
the space between all heartbeats
in which love
reminds the anxious heart:
"Be still and know."
The practice of contemplative prayer is especially valuable for advancing harmony and peace in the world. For this prayer rises, by divine grace, where there is total disarmament of the heart and unfolds in an experience of love which is the moving force of peace. Contemplation fosters a vision of the human family as united and interdependent in the mystery of God's love for all people. This silent interior prayer bridges temporarily the "already" and "not yet", this world and God's Kingdom of peace.
Although the mind's natural state is one of peace, for most of us this peace lies hidden beneath the distorting veils of faulty perceptions, thoughts and beliefs. Peace has become something that must be rediscovered and remembered through training the mind to correct its distortions. Only by training the mind to correct distorted thoughts and perceptions can the gift of peace be experienced. Peace of mind is clearly an internal matter. It must begin with your own thoughts and then extend outward. It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises.
The inner stillness of a person who truly "is peace" brings peace to the whole interconnected web of life, both inner and outer.
Gandhi reminds us that "all miracles are due to the silent and effective working of invisible forces", of which he believes nonviolence to be the most invisible and most effective. But even more subtle and invisible is the power of the Holy Spirit working through love, a love that knows no defeat because it has abandoned the need for success.
Our greatest resource in reversing the effects of this violent culture, and changing it into a culture of peace, comes from spirituality, and all that rich term implies... Profoundly transformative, it can dissolve the destructive patterns of the culture of violence which have held us captive for so long a time. Spirituality, as the inner yearning of the heart for the Divine, for the Real, awakens in us openness, gentleness, patience, deep reverence for all life forms, including the earth, intense compassion for all sentient beings, and an all-inclusive love, agape, that embraces the totality.
Meditation is the art of paying attention, of listening to your heart. Rather than withdrawing from the world, meditation can help you enjoy it more fully, more effectively, and more peacefully.
The fruit of Silence is Prayer.
The fruit of Prayer is Faith.
The fruit of Faith is Love.
The fruit of Love is Service.
The fruit of Service is Peace.
The power of quiet is great. It generates the same feelings in everything one encounters. It vibrates with the cosmic rhythm of oneness. It is everywhere, available to anyone at any time. It is us, the force within that makes us stable, trusting and loving. It is contemplation contemplating us. Peace is letting go -- returning to the silence that cannot enter the realm of words because it is too pure to be contained in words. This is why the tree, the stone, the river and the mountain are quiet.
If you have not linked yourself to
true emptiness,
You will never understand
the Art of peace.
An old Rabbi once asked the pupils how they could tell when night had ended and day had begun.
"Could it be," asked one of the students, "When you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?"
"No," answered the Rabbi.
Another asked, "Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it's a fig tree or a peach tree?"
”No," answered the Rabbi.
"Then when is it?" the pupils demanded.
"It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night."
The task of making peace ... is not just a matter of realpolitik; it is a matter also of spirit. It requires us not only to deal with the practicalities of our place in the cosmic order of things. We must know who we are and what we are doing -- know not only with the intellect, but with our whole being, in the way that mystics have always achieved the knowledge that has given our species its deepest guidance.
Deep peace of the Running Wave to you.
Deep peace of the Flowing Air to you.
Deep peace of the Quiet Earth to you.
Deep peace of the Shining Stars to you.
Deep peace of the Heart of Love to you.
Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth,
Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust,
Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace,
Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe.
Silence
utter quiet
mind being still
blessed certainty growing within
peace.
For, the soul tastes the supreme joy of being, not only in the cave of the heart, but also in the endless multiplicity of her contacts with the world and nature of which she is part. Every moment is a sacrament of eternity; every event a sign and a sacrament of the perfect Bliss; for nothing in the universe can escape being transformed by Divine Love at every moment of time. In the crucible of faith and love, all our joys, the greatest as well as the least, and our sorrows, too, are taken up into the one eternal Joy in the heart of God and in the hearts of saints.
Joy is a gift from Universe and Divinity.
Sorrow and Pain are there for the healing.
Through touching of the heart,
the Heart is Opened.
Then the Knowledge may enter,
To return the seeker to Balance.
Watch now, for the Joy and Sorrow
dance together,
And in that is their dissolution,
Leaving nothing to perceive by Truth.
Embrace the Truth, for always it is precisely
who you are in your Eternal Being.
When you live life from your center, you operate from the indwelling spirit outwards into the visible world, like the spokes of a wheel, radiating God's love, wisdom and power. This is what is meant by being in the world but not of it. You remain calm in a crisis. You carry this calmness with you through the ordinary activities of the day, even when things go wrong... Centered in peace, you experience JOY... This is the culmination of growth in being. What you ARE, far more than what you say or do, will be the witness of your faith.
When selfishness vanishes, all you want from life is to give. It is a constant source of joy. Not that you are blind to sorrow. Personal suffering is gone, but for that very reason there is no barrier separating you from the suffering of others. And that immense empathy releases intense action. "What one takes in by contemplation," Eckhart says, "one pours out in love." You live to give, to alleviate the sorrow and improve the lives of those around you, and in that giving is more joy than the world knows. It is the perfect fusion of the inward and outward currents of life, of meditation and action.
I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!
If we are committed in our lives to the force of lovingkindness, then people know that they can trust us. We will not deceive them; we will not harm them. By being a beacon of trustworthiness in this world, we become a safe haven for others. We become a good friend to people, and can experience the JOY of intimacy with life.
JOY is experienced when true spiritual grace allows one to transcend suffering.
Essentially, prayer is attentiveness to God, and this has various degrees, from weak or faltering to total. This attentive attitude is itself the fruit of love; God's love becomes the dominant commitment of the will. The person has achieved purity of heart and spiritual wholeness. Joy takes hold of the heart, transmuting every moment into the irresistible attraction and power of divine love.
Unless we can give up the old life, we can never experience the new. In our youth, we lived in the today and looked forward to the future and the challenge it would hold. As we matured, we became hypnotized by repetition and the habits of everyday life, feeling secure in our routine. So many times we find ourselves settling for what is a full cup of yesterdays. If you desire JOY in your life, have the courage to empty the cup of yesterdays so that it might be filled with the newness of today.
A joyful mind is very ordinary and relaxed... When your aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Things just keep popping your serious state of mind. In addition to a sense of humor, a basic support for a joyful mind is curiosity, paying attention, taking an interest in the world around you... Noticing everything. Appreciate everything, including the ordinary. That's how to click in with JOYfulness.
All meditation aims to bring the person, mind and body to silence, stillness and simplicity of spirit by means of an inner "object of attention". The act of attention is the inner sacrifice, and the work of paying attention is the school of letting go. The utter simplicity of such a way to joy and peace makes one laugh. God seduces us by simplicity.
I would not dance, unless Thou leadest me.
Wouldst Thou that I spring mightily,
Then must Thou sing for me.
Thus will I leap into love,
From love into knowledge into joy,
From joy beyond all human senses.
During this season may we pause
To feel the presence of Love,
See the Light of spiritual awareness,
And enjoy the peace of our Universe
As we recognize our Oneness with everything.
Forgiveness means "to give up resentment against". When we give up our resentment against another person, we are consciously choosing to not allow that person to exercise the power to make us angry. Forgiveness acknowledges that we are ultimately responsible for the world we create and how we feel about it... Through forgiveness we encounter the frail essence of the other ... this creates fertile ground where miracles occur, where avowed enemies join hands as friends.
Part of my bedtime routine when I was a child was to say my prayers with my parents and then confess any wrong I had done during the day. Sometimes I made my parents sad, and myself, too, but my confessions were always followed by immediate forgiveness, by assurances of love, the love of my parents, the love of God. I am grateful for the teaching given me by my parents, because it grounded me in an awareness of God's all-embracing love.