My mind is still; my ego has been set at rest. The peace in my heart matches the peace at the heart of nature... No longer am I a feverish fragment of life; I am indivisible from the Whole. I live completely in the present, released from the prison of the past with its haunting memories and vain regrets; released from the prison of the future with its tantalizing hopes and tormenting fears. All the enormous capacities formerly trapped in past and future flow to me here and now, concentrated in the hollow of my palm. No longer driven by the desire for personal pleasure or profit, I am free to use all these capacities to alleviate the suffering of those around me. In living for others I come to life.
As long as the soul is not still, there can be no vision. But when stillness has brought us into the presence of God, then another sort of silence, much more absolute, intervenes: the silence of a soul that is not only still and recollected, but which is overawed in an act of worship by God's presence.