The spaciousness of silence nurtures new sensitivities, new sense-abilities. During this phase of the spiritual journey, the emphasis will not be directly on speaking but on perceiving: on SEEING instead of just looking, on LISTENING instead of just hearing. Eyes and ears are not sufficient... To speak from the heart, we must listen to the speech of the heart, which grows articulate in being moved and is animated by the speech of the world. The eyes of the heart do not find nouns in the world, but verbs. The seeing and listening of the heart enable us to appreciate the world and all it phenomena as animate. We must simply become quiet enough, heartfully sense-able enough, to perceive and inwardly honor this silent speech of the world.
Much of life…is about awakening to the interior experience.In our day-to-day living, we come to see how all of our physical journeying is not simply a temporal exercise, a transitory, earthly trek, but increasingly points to a shared and liberating inner passage . . .As Christianity and all the great religious traditions of the world testify, our surface-level living is the symbolic acting out of a deep inward pilgrimage leading to -- and beyond -- the gates of the heart.