Conversation is the ultimate experience of being in love. It involves self-surrender to the heart of mystery, to an uncomprehended "Who", given in a mystical way. The shift in our attention from all finite loves and hates, whether interpersonal, familial or philanthropic to concern for the Transcendent Other, available in the unmediated experience of love and awe, occurs first in that incarnate meaning that we are. We discover by God's gracious love, we are a meaningful word already spoken, a beloved whose very being is the expression of God's turning toward us. In essence, our conversion toward God is the created effect of divine love. We could not pray if God was not already invested in our hearts and mind.
~ from THE DESIRES OF THE HEART by Bernard Lonergan
\GREETINGS and BLESSINGS be with you, friends, in this season of seed-sowing! ... a reminder to ask ourselves how we are cultivating the inner soil of our hearts to prepare for renewal and new growth.
Have you ever tried to spend a whole hour doing nothing but listening to the voice that dwells deep in your heart? ... It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of the world and to discover the small intimate voice saying: "You are my Beloved Child, on you my favor rests." Still, if we dare embrace our solitude and befriend our silence, we will come to know the voice ... a voice that can be heard by the ear of faith, the ear of the inner heart.
There is one quality of mind which is the basis and foundation of spiritual discovery, and that quality of mind is called bare attention. Bare attention means observing things as they are, without choosing, without comparing, without evaluating, without laying our projections and expectations on what is happening; cultivating instead a choiceless and non-interfering awareness.
~ from THE EXPERIENCE OF INSIGHT by Joseph Goldstein
Words are unimportant in approaching God. Instead let us go to God with the same attitude one child had as she sat almost hidden in the midst of a field of waving wheat. When her grandfather went looking for her, from a distance he heard her going through the entire alphabet, softly saying, "A, B, C, D, E ..." Curious, her grandfather asked, "What are you doing?" "I'm praying, Grandpa. But I don't know the right words, so I'm saying all the letters and letting God put them together."
~ from THE ALCHEMY OF AWARENESS by Lorraine Sinkler
People often ask how they can avoid daydreaming when they are trying to meditate. Meditation does not make them daydream, but only makes them more aware of fantasies they have always had. In meditating even for a short time, they hold a mirror up to themselves that clearly reveals the shape of their fantasies.
Walking deep in a forest in late autumn, you may be startled by the loud rustling of your feet among the dry leaves breaking in the stillness. Fantasies disturb meditation in the same way.
~ from "The Sound of Our Own Footsteps" by Shundo Aoyama
