For some minutes my mind knows only a silent stillness within, a meditation without effort, a celebration of occasion. Slowly my vision focuses on a bird of red-streaked, chocolate-covered feathers and bright orange beak... I have been watching her a long while now without registering, labeling or defining her particular condensation of being, taking her as much for granted as she appears to take me. So beautiful. So natural. A bird in a tree.
Sacred silence engenders stillness. It IS stillness. And that stillness opens up the dimension of spiritual existence -- that luminous world that awaits our discovery as soon as we redirect our attention from external things to our own radiant depths... Silence is not merely a discipline; rather, it is primarily a state of being. It is in, through, and as silence that we discover our authentic identity, the Self.