The Great Mystery is within ourselves!
Many are avidly seeking, but they alone find who remain in silence... Those who delight in a multitude of words, even though they say admirable things, are empty within. 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 your soul to God.
Our soul is here to perceive past the limitations of our five senses, past the limitation of the world around us.
Kay and I went to Walpi, maybe the oldest continuous inhabited village on the continent... Near a stole altar lives an ancient great-grandmother, over a hundred years old, some say. She asked us to come in. Her hands are arthritic but she is a working potter. She not only throws the pots, but paints them afterward. I asked her how she manages to do it, since her knuckles are knotted by arthritis and she is nearly blind with cataracts.
She said, "It's not my hands that make the pot, it's my spirit. My hands are broken by my potteries hold my soul, and that's whole."
May the stars carry your sadness away,
May the flowers fill your heart with beauty,
May hope forever wipe away your tears,
And, above all, may silence make you strong.
I gazed across the swamp, its beauty overwhelming. I prayed for guidance, then slipped deep into the realm of silence, still not sure as to where I was going or what I was searching for. It did not take too long to reach deep into the quietude of the sacred silence, and in a flash of clarity all body and mind were gone. I emerged into the dazzling brilliance of the swamp in full light. In my imagination the swamp took on a new feel, a feel that reached into the consciousness of my very soul, purifying and healing. All around me was the flow of life ... green carpets of moss, tranquil pools full of frogs and fish, choruses and movements of all manner of birds, other animals dancing to the rhythm of the Earth, and a sense of beauty the like of which I had never experienced before.
I am the breeze that nourishes all things green
I encourage blossoms to flourish with
ripening fruits ...
I am the yearning for good.
Speak to me of serenity, of treasures yet to be found, of peace that flows like a river. Tell me of tranquil places that no hand has marred, no storm has scarred. Give me visions of standing in sunlight or the feeling of spring mist against my cheek as I live and move and breathe. Show me paths that wind through wild lilies and beds of buttercups. Sing me songs like the mingled voices of wrens and meadowlarks, the lowing of gentle cows, the soft mother-call of a mare to her colt. Lead me past a glass-smooth pond where frogs croak of coming-out parties, their graduation from frisky tadpoles to squat green frogs. Find me a place in the sunlight to sit and think and listen to the sweet inner voice that says so quietly, "Peace, be still."
God's creation is to be experienced in the rhythm of our lives, which I see as: exoteric -- the mechanical, habitual body needs (human-made time); mesoteric -- that which we do with intention, awareness ... the pressure is gone, we slow down; and esoteric -- here we meet God, experience the gift and beauty of life with gratitude. Such moments are filled with awe and silence, without limit or measure ... all pressure, tension, worry, and unnessary suffering is gone. What a rich moment is God's Moment, what a rich time is God's time.
In THE SNOW LEOPARD, Peter Matthiesen describes his son, Alex:
In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for near an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying, birdsong and sweet smell of privet and rose. The child was not observing; he was at rest in the very center of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginnings, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through.