sacred place

The power of silence lies in its emptiness. Silence is a receptive space. It creates a sacred void, an opening through which you can receive: truth, perspective, strength, healing, revelation. In silence, you transcend words and contact the wordless. You fill up with a peaceful knowing. Silence is not the same as prayer. Prayer is a way of directing your feelings and thoughts, focusing them and sending them toward a source. Silence is listening, receiving, being. One is trying to reach the source of communication with it; the other, silence, is allowing yourself to hear the source within yourself, to become one with it... In prayer, you are the sender; in silence, you are the receiver.

Experience proves that there is a power in holy places, power to quicken the spiritual life and vitalize the soul with fresh enthusiasm and inspiration. While strong spiritual emotions have been felt for long periods of time by successive generations of dedicated men and women -- especially if they have had among them those who may be reckoned as saints because of their genius for devotion -- the mental atmosphere of the place becomes imbued with spiritual forces, and sensitive souls capable of response are deeply stirred thereby when they come into it.

Space -- whether it's architectural, spiritual, physical, or emotional -- is the medium in which we come alive, in which we feel ourselves and those around us to be alive without blame, without demands, without expectations, without fear, without hope... Space has a spiritual equivalent and can heal what is divided and burdensome in us.

When each day is sacred,
When each hour is sacred,
When each instant is sacred,
Earth and you, space and you,
bearing the sacred through time;
You'll reach the fields of light.

To drink deeply of the silence,
inhale the quiet,
lose myself in timelessness --
that is soul-space.

A sacred place is one where the Earth's voice can be heard more clearly. Go to these places and listen.

Be aware of the sacred site.
It brings us feelings of awe, of presence,
of divinity ...
Feelings that seem to come from the heart
of the universe herself.
Be not, however, beholden to the site...
The sacred is within our hearts.
It is ours whenever and wherever we are.
This is the teaching these sites have
to offer us --
the redemption of our sanctity.
 

The symbolism of a sacred mountain is full of intimations of meditation. It is a state of strong immovability, of perfect balance; a state in which all motion hangs suspended, not in death or inertia but in that great stillness that is the origin and resolution of all things... Any mountain that is sacred is a symbol of the Centre: that point where divine reality impinges on profane reality. The true Centre, the real seat of the great mystery of ultimate reality, resides in our heart.

Upon approaching or entering the zone of a sacred shrine, an ancient and wonderfully subtle sense of reverence is called forth, asking for silence and respect. If we heed this signal, and rest with it patiently, we may find ourselves rewarded with a gift of knowing. This gift comes in personal form, and the revelations associated with places of power are accounts of the cultural mind of a given individual in a relationship to the mind of the earth. The quality of that transmission is conditioned by the clarity and character of the receiver.

Abandoning the nets of my thoughts and words, I follow You willingly into the great Silence.