June 2000 (Vol. XIII, No. 5)
May BLESSINGS OF HEART-SONG be yours, dear friends! And, out of deep silence, may you awaken to the music of the spheres, the rhythm and harmony of Life ...
May BLESSINGS OF HEART-SONG be yours, dear friends! And, out of deep silence, may you awaken to the music of the spheres, the rhythm and harmony of Life ...
BLESSINGS of a peace-filled heart be with you! For PEACE is a double blessing radiating inward as a life-giving force and radiating outward as gift to the world. Those silent spaces of the heart is where peace dwells and grows.
Divine peace has an inner and outer manifestation. Exteriorly, it manifests as fire, as zeal, as transformation, as death and rebirth. Interiorly, it manifests as silence, as knowledge, as joy, as union with the Beloved: a joy of union that is capable of communicating itself to others.
One little person giving all of her time to peace makes news. Many people giving some of their time to peace can make history.
We don't have peace within ourselves, and yet we talk about peace. When we bring peace to our inner self, then it will flow from us out to the people, to the world.
If you take time to listen, you will know that peace can be felt within. Peace is the flower of silence. It is deep acceptance of yourself and everyone. It is all inclusive. Reject one person, remain angry toward one person and you cannot feel your peace. You enter your peace when you leave all these thoughts and feelings of separation behind. Peace is there when judgment drops away. It opens its heart to you when words and thoughts cease.
Diversity is the world of form in all its infinite variety of textures, colors, contrasts, and differences. Not only are we different from each other, but everything is different from one moment to the next -- everything is change. We are all part of one single unity, but we're also very different. We can't do peacemaking in the world -- in fact, we can't do anything effective in the world -- without taking our differences into account.
Peace is a force -- positive, purposeful, possessed of a definite and sure dynamic; there is no mistaking its presence and action. It touches the jangling thoughts of the human word "peace" spoken by one who is possessed of peace, releases a force whose movement tends to establish rhythmic harmony and restfulness. ... In all ways peace is good and produces good. It comes forth from "the tree of life -- and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
The art of peace is medicine for a sick world. There is evil and disorder in the world because people have forgotten that all things emanate from one Source. Return to that Source and leave behind all self-centered thoughts, petty desires, and anger. Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything.
Perched upon the muzzle of a cannon
A yellow butterfly is slowly opening
and shutting its wings.
Anger destroys all ability to be at peace with yourself and with others. If you harm me, it is you who lose: you lose your peace.
Breathe in serenity,
Exhale peace and contentment ...
Then Silence
will gather all the worlds within itself,
the waves will return to the ocean
of eternity.
And every word that has been spoken
about peace and love
will be recognized like a bright light
by the spirit that has come to rest.
"Peace, peace, be still" came to me today when everything about me seemed in crisis. Tense, worried, anxiously running to and fro, I was like a tumultuous sea. Surely when the surface water is disturbed, we cannot see what otherwise would be clearly visible in the sea's depths. "Peace, be still." I suddenly realized that as long as I was rushed and agitated, I could not see beyond the surface of my problems. As my emotions quieted, I realized that God also was present in the depths of my life, the course of everlasting love unhindered by my problems.
Wolves have what it takes to live in peace. They communicate lavishly. By gestures -- the smile, for instance -- and by sounds, from the big social howls to the conversational whimpers. They even seek to control by sound first, not biting. A full-grown wolf will plead with you not to take its possessions. And you in turn can plead with a wolf. It glances at your eyes, desists from what has displeased you and walks off as if indifferent.
The core of peace lives not in thoughts, not in deeds I do.
It lives inside my heart, in how I feel about me.
When I have learned to be at peace within myself,
then shall I radiate that peace to all.
Let me now go within to calm the inner sea.
May you live with love, strength, faith and wisdom ... and have enough to share with those in need. May you have songs to sing and also blessed silence and peace through every night.
Silence is the beginning of peace. It is in silence that we learn that there is more to life than life seems to offer. There is beauty and truth and vision wider than the present and deeper than the past that only silence can discover. Going into ourselves we see the whole world at war within us and begin to end the conflict. To understand ourselves, then, is to understand everyone else as well.
Noise protects us from confronting ourselves, but silence speaks the language of the heart.
SPRING BLESSINGS: season of new growth! The miracle of the world around us is an endless source of spiritual nourishment for those who are truly aware. What if our sole purpose, our soul purpose, our basic goal, is simply to be gardeners of the planet iin praise of diversity! Too simple! something to ponder in the silence of our hearts.
When I had my breakfast I would leave the door open in the summer and the birds would come right inside and pick up the crumbs around my feet. They had no fear of me at all. These birds also brought their families when ready. I later found out that this bird trust was because of my silence. Once I spoke to them, all went like the wind, and I praised God for such trust. Providing I remained silent they had no fear of me and I learned a great deal about their ways.
People talk about the silence of nature, but of course there is no such thing. What they mean is that OUR voices are still, OUR noises are absent.
Every human being has an obligation to return to this planet and to all its creatures the sound of beauty, the power of prayer, the sense of harmony. In O PIONEERS!, Willa Cather reminds us of our need to believe in the good soil of our lives, to do what we can to wake it up and then to wait.
"The land had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then all at once it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still."
We can learn the same lesson from sitting still with the land of the heart. It, too, has its little jokes. We think it is poor soil because we don't know how to work it. When we learn to do our inner work, it will wake up and work itself. All we need is a PATIENT WAITING and a TENDER ABIDING.
Gardening can provide an opportunity to slow down, be still, breathe, and connect with another form of life. For me, it is an experience of communion; I become one with this precious life in my garden, and it heightens my experience of love in the world. And that is what spirituality is all about: growing in love.
As you see the world as part of yourself
you will care for it;
As you see yourself as part of the world
you will be cared for.
When alone with your thoughts,
listen and hear the Silence.
Listen and see the Silence.
Listen and taste the Silence.
Close your eyes and feel the Silence
deep within.
Let the woodlands become your chapel --
your body the altar.
In the Silence, as you begin to
communicate with the Creator,
receive peace.
Responsible people are beginning to realize that the earth is an awesome mystery, ultimately as fragile as we are ourselves. ...That being so, there is need to be sensitive to the earth, for the earth identifies with our own suffering, exploitation of the earth is exploitation of the human, elimination of the aesthetic splendors of the earth is the diminishment of all existence.
If each of us opens the depths of our hearts to the Mystery of God in the concrete events of life, and then -- in freedom -- decides for the good, then fecundity of cosmos and nature will proceed from this very personal act. For Hildegard the human being -- body and soul -- is a microcosm of the great cosmos and is meant to be a creative member of the circle of life on this precious earth. Each personal decision affects all of us. It can contribute either to the healing of the planet or to a further shriveling up in separation, hopelessness, fear, and pollution. We are responsible not only to God and to each other but also to the elements.
Ask the animals and they will teach you, or the birds of the air and they will tell you; or speak to the earth and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know the hand of God?
I found myself in a miniature inlet. An intense tranquility covered the scene. And yet -- within the tranquility, the lake and hills were burning with spiritual energy. The silence was almost palpable; still, the silence had a sound of its own, like a subterranean waterfall. I felt as if I had stepped back a million years in time; but the energy I felt was electric and immediate. ... The very wildness of the wilderness generates a spiritual field that connects us with the source from which all life evolved. To go into the wilderness, we must undertake a journey that purifies our senses and prepares us for the subtle lessons that the wilderness has to teach us.
May we all receive the BLESSINGS of a listening heart, dear friends! For, as we cultiate our heart's ear to listen deeply in the Silence, we will begin to hear inner promptings of the indwelling Divine Guest.
To meditate is to become silent. In that inner quietness, you lose yourself in God's creation. You recognize the Creator in all of creation. ...To meditate is to keep on listening, listening, listening to God. To listen is to become lost in God, sensing God everywhere. To be silent is a form of being in love with God, and so is weeping in total surrender into immense love and longing for God.
There is a very important distinction to be made between listening and hearing. Sometimes we listen to things, but we never hear them. True listening brings us in touch even with that which is unsaid and unsayable. Sometimes the most important thresholds of mystery are places of silence. To be genuinely spiritual is to have great respect for the possibilities and presence of silence. ...When you listen with your soul, you come into rhythm and unity with the music of the universe.
When you are about to talk, wait a second and consult the indwelling Divine Guest and ...be like someone receiving a visit or listening; without knowing it, grace will be your guide. When you are questioned, swallow your reply and wait a second to hear what you should say; it is particularly when you talk that you must know how to listen. If you are going to see someone, pause for a moment so that you can take Another with you.
People today in a competitive corporate secular world are not encouraged to take up listening AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE. It requires tremendous life forces TO LISTEN, to become inwardly still, to suspend self-talk and arrogant critical and judgmental tendencies and to be present to another person or reality. ...The rudiments of spiritual (or other) knowledge may be received through the ear, but when these ideas penetrate the heart and are apprehended by the heart's eye, then HEARING BECOMES VISION.
When we don't listen, we are shutting ourselves off -- not from others but from ourselves. We can't do anything from a place of knowing. When we think we know something, we don't listen. We have to empty ourselves over and over, return to unknowing, and just listen. And listen. And listen... And once we listen, we have to act. The functioning that comes out of listening -- out of "Attention!" -- is compassionate action. If we don't listen, we can't act with compassion.
The most perfect prayer breathes in a heart that remains silent before God and knows how to listen to God.
The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
Our awareness of God is a syntax or the silence in which our souls mingle with the divine, in which the ineffable in us communes with the ineffable beyond us. It is the afterglow of years in which soul and sky are silent together, the outgrowth of accumulated certainty of the abundant, never-ending presence of the divine. All we need to do is to let the insight be and to listen to the soul's recessed certainty of its being a parenthesis in the immense script of God's eternal speech.
For the abbas (fathers) and ammas (mothers) of the desert, solitude with its silence was a creative medium, a forge of transformation through which the false self in its adaptation to the pride, luxury, lust for power, and greed of the "world" was melted away in the fires of spiritual discernment. One emerged from the silence as a transformed self ... a person of humility, compassion, and responsiveness to the Word of God.
Silence was much more than not speaking, it was mostly a quality of heart. It was the creation of an inner space where genuine listening takes place. The ammas and abbas knew that in silence the Word most readily takes root.
To "listen" another's soul into a condition of disclosure and discovery may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another. But in this scrutiny of the business of listening, is that all that has emerged? Is it blasphemous to suggest that over the shoulder of the human listener, there is never absent the silent presence of the Eternal Listener, the living God? For in penetrating to what is involved in listening, do we not disclose the thinness of the filament that separates person listening openly to one another, and that of God intently listening to each soul?
It has been a long year. Can I REALLY be well again? "Thank You for another day," I whisper each morning. The sheets on my bed feel good. The light coming through the window is a gift. How do I want to live out this day? I look at the African violet on my windowsill. If I don't water it, it will die. I see that my spirit is no different. I am beginning to listen a lot. The silence is my water.
Our part is to pay attention,
to notice,
to turn aside,
to look deeper at each moment,
to look for God's presence,
to listen for God's word.
Calm and serene, let us listen to the Inner Voice. How could I have lived all that time without realizing that everything in the world has a voice and speaks? Not just the things that are supposed to speak, but the others, like the gate, the walls of the houses, the shade of trees, the sand, and the silence. Even before my accident [where I went blind], I loved sound, but now it seems clear that I didn't listen to it.
It was as though the sounds of earlier days were too far away from me, and heard through a fog. At all events my accident had thrown my head against the humming heart of things, and the heart never stopped beating.
May BLESSINGS OF RADICAL LOVE be yours, dear friends. As we learn to abide in Love, our sharing within ourselves and with others will become deepening communion with the Source of all Love. In the Silene we open our hearts to Love.
When we adhere to the belief system of love, and have thoughts only of God, we begin to understand why our true identities are ultimately found in our love rather than in our bodies. We are each the essence of love. Peace and happiness are at the center of the heart of love. There is a complete absence of fear and guilt, and there is diminishing pain and misery; there are only loving and forgiving thoughts. Within this belief system, love and life are eternal.
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
Unless we are grounded in Mystery -- unless we experience both ourselves and others as co-participants in Mystery -- we find it almost impossible to live in compassionate love of one another for any length of time. Unless we have "new eyes" that can see others contemplatively, it is easy to miss the many-spendored thing that is our life together.
Through contemplation you become a fountain that pours forth loving waters in all directions. Anyone who comes within the radius of that fountain -- old or young, rich or poor, man or woman, saint or sinner, friend or enemy -- gets splashed by love.
All that we love mirrors who we are. To be so imbued with love that we reflect it back with our whole being is a fundamental human longing ~ not only to love another man or woman, but actually to become love. When you become love you love everything around you. You greet every human being with love and draw love out of them. ~ You feel you are loved by God, so that God's love streams through you. Everything you do is marked by this love. You do your work for love ~ You do not have to create love in yourself. You have only to drink at the spring of divine love, which is bubbling up in you and is always enough.
There came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. ~ I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence ~ that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all: That the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love.
Love is the energy at the center of all life, the reality beneath our fears, the breath within the breath, the seed of all that grows. Loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God are inseparable, for all is interconnected and sacred. For most people, the journey toward love requires that we penetrate the armor around our hearts, feel our grief, and open ourselves to all our feelings. In doing so we become less and less dependent on others to validate our worth.
The divine love of God teaches us that fruitfulness is more important than success, that love of God is more important than the praise of people, that community is more important than individualism, and compassion is more important than competition.
My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love of humankind.
When silence, wonder, adoration are diminished, so are human beings. We imagine we can get by on love and indeed we can. But love shrivels up and dies in the absence of contemplation and adoration. Love, human love, needs to be transfigured, transcended, if it is to be true to its deepest self.
The experience of the enormity we falteringly label "divine" is unconditional love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion ~ the sense of presence, of simply being, when investigated brings one toward the experience of the Beloved. At times the heart bursts into flame, the mind kind and clear. But usually it is just a simple spaciousness and ease that lets thoughts float in mercy and awareness and recognizes the evolutionary struggle in everyone they meet.
Compassion is an awareness that you become, rather than something that you do on occasion.
"Love isn't something you want to DO with someone."
"I'm not at all sure I know what love is," I said meaning it.
"I think love is when you know that a part of you IS the person you love, and a part of him or her is inside of YOU. You can't use or manipulate or deceive someone you truly love, because you'd be using or manipulating or lying to yourself. Does that make sense?"
God hears only the beating of human hearts and what rests within them. It is the compassion that comes out of the experience of oneness and holds the world in infinitely tender love that speaks efficaciously to Divine Creation Love and alters the course of history. It is not some beautiful thought or insightful idea, but being with the groanings of the earth and all its peoples that makes our prayer. It is only our living out of the Center of unity and oneness that make a difference in the redeeming of the earth.
May the love you are shine brightly;
May love bless you and all you meet!
The entire universe, the cosmos, manifests the mystery of the fiery, ever-living Light of Love that shines forth in and through matter, in and through human beings in their specific historical setting. God, as the mystery of Love, is like the horizon that surrounds the human spirit, wooing it into creative tension between body and soul, mind and emotion, individual and community, heaven and earth. Willingness to live in the tension of these poles is the womb that nourishes and protects those discerning actions that will mirror the fiery, life-giving love that is God.
Prayer is opening into Love; into that radiant and centerless Love surpassing our understanding and enfolding all of life.
DEEP BLESSINGS, dear friends, as we welcome in a new year, a new millennium! more then ever, our offering of SILENCE are needed as our hopes and dreams of a more peaceful and just world are birthe into reality around planet Earth.
We need only to let God's mysterious and silent presence within us to become more and more what shapes us and everything we do. We need to learn the value of silence, stillness, and quiet because it is the way into our human heart, into our center where God dwells.
In silence we discover ourselves, our actual presence to the life in us and around us. When we are present, deeply attentive, we cannot be busy controlling. Instead we become beholders -- giving ourselves up to the mystery of things. We become more willing to let things be. And, as a consequence we can also let ourselves be.
Through silence our days are illumined -- like rooms filled with light -- so we may inhabit our lives.
You are silence. Silence unites us, while words divide us. Silence gathers us together, while words scatter us. Silence invites us to peace, while words stir us to wars. You are silence, simple silence, eloquent silence, active silence, contemplative silence. ... Help me to be eloquently silent -- exactly as You are.
The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart
The secret anniversaries of the heart.
Don't think that those who enter the silence of God are "silent". Nothing could be farther from the truth! Silence is a thunder! You will be able to hear it everywhere. Your nights and days will be filled with it. ...Many confuse silence with solitude. Solitude is being alone with God, waiting for God. But silence is an immense sea into which you enter and never leave. And once you have plunged into this silence, you will always be silent.
It is only in silence and through silence that we can interiorize what is beyond our comprehension and apprehend the power of a design larger than ourselves: it is the medium of transcendence.
Silence, waiting, empty stillness: these are not achievements we accomplish but living forces beyond ourselves which we learn to flow with, surrender to. There is a River of Stillness, or Musical Silence, or Beautiful Darkness flowing through the heart of al beings which we enter into when we allow ourselves to rest in quiet, in silence, waiting. The contemplative way is to begin listening to this dancing stillness.
Spend time in solitude and silence. Solitude permits us to retreat from the press and struggle in order to let our fragmented and dispersed selves to become collected again. Silence goes hand in hand with solitude. Silence sensitizes, just as noise desensitizes.
There are three things needed, for which you don't require a computer, television or radio. The first is a bit of stillness. Nothing can happen if there isn't a certain stillness. We also need silence. There is nothing so vocal and articulate as silence; all good language, all great words, are born of it. Meister Eckhart said, "there is nothing in the universe that so much resembles God as silence". So we need to return back beneath our language to the silence within us. And the third thing we need is solitude ... an invitation for the soul to come alive.
If you love truth be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God.
One of the reasons why communication in general in our society is so shallow and boring is that it does not grow out of silence and solitude. Consequently there is no communion. ...Communication could be a kind of communion if indeed we were a more silent and solitary people. Where we live with God alone in silence, then when we come out of that holy, sacred space, we are deepened and not only ready but longing to share with others the deeper dimensions of life.
There is a silence of the tongue, a silence of the whole body, the silence of the soul, the silence of the mind, and the silence of the spirit. The silence of the tongue is merely when it is not incited to speech; the silence of the entire body is when its senses are unoccupied; the silence of the soul is when no ugly thoughts burst forth within it; the silence of the mind is when it is not reflecting on anything harmful; the silence of the spirit is when the mind ceases even from stirrings caused by created spiritual beings and all its movements are stirred solely by Being, at the wondrous awe of the silence which surrounds Being.
Inayat Khan tells the illuminating story of a disciple who came to the teacher and started to ask a philosophical question. The spiritual teacher was, however, in deep meditation from which he would not be disturbed. He said to the disciple: "SILENCE!"
This word was so powerful that the disciple went into silence -- and remained silent for the rest of his life. However, there came a time when his silence began to speak aloud. His silent thought would manifest and his silent wish be granted; his silent glance would heal; his silent look would inspire. His silence became living.
The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed.
SILENCE is the winter name of God.
May BLESSINGS OF PEACE AND JOY enfold you in the exiting of this year and millennium and entrance into the new! May you schedule times in the Silence to radiate your hopes and joys, your love and light out to the others throughout the world. May your heart's door be open to receive the Love and Light ever being beamed toward each indiviual for healing and joy ...
Sitting there in silence, listening to the quiet, I was filled with a unique feeling of peace, an impression so intense that it seemed to expand into ineffable JOY. ...It went on, second after second, so pervasive that it seemed to fill my entire body. I relaxed into it luxuriated in it. Then with no warning, and surely without preparation or expectation, I knew what it was: for the seconds it lasted I felt, with a certainty I cannot account for, a sense of the presence of God.
Joy has the power to open our hearts, remove fear, instill hope and foster healing. Joy leads us to wisdom because it connects us to all we are -- our mind, heart, power, and spirit. Joy stimulates our immune system, increases our energy, and gives us mental clarity. It helps us heighten our level of consciousness so we can more readily tap our inner wisdom. Instead of agonizing over decisions, we become more able to simply listen within and KNOW what to do.
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
Several years ago I realized the profound impact that joy had in my life by experiencing the lack of it. I did not know that I was "joyless" until I sought the answer to a ridiculous turn of events where everything seemed to be out of kilter. During a very specific time frame the car broke down, the lawn mower fell apart, the clothes dryer died, the TV went on the blink, and my business affairs were like a soap opera. When I finally stopped to go into the silence within and ask, I heard the answer:
"Your joy vibration is practically nonexistent, and joy is the energy and the catalyst for order and harmony. Without joy all forms held in consciousness begin to disintegrate."
Joy is made full through the act of abiding in the Presence. When we are consciously aware of the Presence of the divine consciousness, we become in tune with the Energy of Joy, because the song of the soul is joy.
The smile of the contemplative in the presence of the Beloved is merely a physical expression of the total joy one perceives as one communes with God. St. Bernard used to say, "The joy of being in love is in the very loving." In other words, joy is not to be sought for itself, but is a by-product of love, and the smile is but the physical, exterior expression of the inner joy-love.
The sky of my being is dark and still,
But deep within my heart
The bird of faith stirs, awakens,
And begins a song of joyous anticipation,
Until at last,
Beyond the horizon of my mind,
The Self's own Light breaks forth,
Illumining me with joy.
Cultivate seeds of joy!
You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare --
Don't mix them!
You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them,
Mix Them!
People say that what we're all seeking in life is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think we're seeking the rapture, the joy, of being alive.
The way toward individuality is deceptively simple. When suffering is felt, it is time to move, to do something. Moving means moving out of the fixed patterns of habit. ...It is quite possible to feel joy while finding that the outer life is in many ways more difficult, more trying than was lived before. The bodily sensation that tells us that we are at least moving toward the sense of individuality is joy. Nothing given from the outside can bring joy; it may bring pleasure, but not joy. We are always surprised by joy because this is living from the time current from the future and there are no concepts for joy.
Why has this Frenchman from France written his book in the United States to present to his friends today? Because loving the country and wanting to show his gratitude, he could find no better way of expressing it than in these two truths, intimately known to him [Jacques is blind] and reaching beyond all boundaries.
The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without; Light is in us, even if we have no eyes.
Joy is the perception of beauty, unlike happiness, which is because of something. Joy is singing of the heart, a feeling of praise.
Somewhere downstairs a door slammed, and my father entered the house laughing. Instantly, the whole universe joined in. Great roars of hilarity sounded from sun to sun. Field mice uttered, and so did angels and rainbows. Laughter leavened every atom and every star until I saw a universe inspirited and spiraled by joy, not unlike the one I read of years later when Dante describes his great vision in paradise.
"D'el riso d'el universo." (The joy that spins the universe). This was a knowledge of the way everything worked. It worked through love and joy and the utter interpenetration and union of everything with the All That Is.
The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.
Even on the foggiest nights.
May the BLESSINGS OF PEACE AND SERENITY be yours in times of silence, prayer, and meditation, dear friends: pauses where we come to know ourselves, others, the osmos, the Heart of all hearts as One inter-related Whole: unity in diversity.
MEDITATION does not itself accomplish the tasks of life but provides spaciousness, bringing the great background near, so that whatever we do, rising in the quiet, has force and beauty. In meditation, we take time, sit down, watch, while the silence accumulates -- which is how the spirit gathers to a vessel the soul has prepared ... then, spiritual silence can appear in the midst of any concentrated activity. Meditation is a fasting of the heart in which, for a time, we do not go with our wanting and fear. We cease to attach so strongly to the things of our lives. When the heart fasts and we don't pursue the world, the world begins to come to us.
The silent mind, cultivated in many different forms of meditation, is the matrix of intuition. When you are in touch with the stillpoint at the center of your being there is no need to use imagery or verbal exercises to activate intuition. It flows by itself, unimpeded by fears or preoccupations.
From the brokenness of our humanity we can learn the healing and transcendent wisdom of self-acceptance and the non-judgmental acceptance of others. Meditation makes more sense to the broken or humbled parts of us than to the well-defended, successful or public poses that form the more assertive parts of our identity. Simple and pure awareness, without judgment or evaluation, such as we practice in meditation, is always compassionate.
The modality of my prayer has changed radically. In place of discursive meditation, I have begun the practice of sitting in silence, making myself a capacity for an outpouring of God's love. ... It is my experience that our awakening to the Sacred in the world of everyday is fed and nurtured by our silent journey to that "space" within where all things are ONE.
Mindfulness is meditation in action and involves a "be here now" approach that allows life to unfold without the limitation of prejudgment. It means being open to an awareness of the moment as it is and to what the moment could hold. It is a relaxed state of attentiveness to both the inner world of thoughts and feelings and the outer world of actions and perceptions.
Our task in meditation is to allow our unity to be restored and for our scattered parts to move back into their proper harmonious alignment to the center of our being. To do this we must not scatter ourselves further. We concentrate to move towards our center. When our consciousness truly awakens to that center, in silence, then a power is released which is the power of life, the power of the Spirit. In that power we are reformed, reunited, re-created.
"The mountains, the rivers, the whole earth, the entire array of phenomena are all oneself." If you can absorb the essence of this message, there are no activities outside of meditation: you dress in meditation and eat in meditation; you walk, stand, sit, and lie down in meditation; you experience joy, anger, sadness, and happiness in meditation.
I believe in the influence of silent and radiant people and I say to myself that such people are rare. They, nevertheless, give savor to the world. ...Nothing will be lost here so long as such people continue to exist. Let us wish that out of our meditation we might see in ourselves the beginnings of contemplation, which introduces us to the very heart of creation.
Contemplative life is the putting together of vision and action. Vision alone, meditation alone, is not true contemplation. We must put vision into action. Not just monks, but all of us are called to contemplation in this full sense. If we want to live healthy lives, we have to build into our daily life moments of vision, and let our actions be formed by that vision.
Meditation is basically the practice of quieting the mind on deeper and deeper levels until we reach the underlying, subtle consciousness that is the root of all things. But a quiet mind does not mean the absence of thoughts. It means a mind that does not interfere with or distort the natural flow of sensations, feelings, perceptions, images, and thoughts through the open field of our consciousness. A quiet mind is a clear space, a mirror for the entire experience of inner and outer life.
Meditation consists in learning to focus and to control the mind. When the mind is stilled, then the light of the intellect begins to shine. The mind is ordinarily scattered and dissipated, but gather the mind into one and then the pure light shines in the mirror which is oneself. Speech is the movement by which we go out of ourselves to communicate with another. Meditation takes us within ourselves. It is a process of inward withdrawal, a centering in the place of inner detachment, a staying of the mind upon God.
If we hope to move beyond the superficialities of our culture, we must be willing to go down into the recreating silence, into the inner world of contemplation.
To live a surrendered life is to be present moment to moment with our experience, to accept our experience without judging it. Or if we judge it, to forgive ourselves for defending, for pushing away. To be with our experience does not mean that we do not space out, detach, disappear emotionally. It means that we become increasingly aware of when we dissociate and gently bring ourselves back. This "bringing ourselves back" is the essence of meditation. To meditate, it is not necessary to stop thinking. But it is necessary to become aware of the thoughts as they happen, to see how they take us out of the silence. To see how they prevent us from being wholly present.
In deepest meditation
the mind now utterly still
Truth reveals itself...
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Forgiveness means accepting the core of every human being as the same as yourself and giving them the gift of not judging them. You can be clear about whether or not a person's behavior is acceptable without judging the person. Forgiveness starts with ourselves and extends to others. Accepting that the core of your own being is as precious and wonderful as that of any other person is the greatest gift you can ever give yourself.