winter, stillness

LISTEN
or your tongue
will keep you deaf.

How cooling is silence! Talk is like the surging sea; silence is like the surface of still water. Silence settles down the disturbed mind to its native calmness. Peace is silence, love is silence, the great Truth is silence. Silence is the cause of all birth. From silence evolves out the varied universe. Silence is the beginning and the end of all things. In the middle state it is all activity, noise, turmoil and the mad rush.

Silence is really vital for the human heart. You see, the human heart can't live with constant sound or noise. It needs silence in order to heal itself. The only two things that are ultimately required for spiritual homecoming are stillness and silence. If, into your day, you can build little windows of silence and little windows of stillness, you will never lose touch with your deepest voice. You will never lose touch with your most secret belonging. Even though you walk and talk and act in the world, you will never leave the inner, tender home of your own soul.

Unless there is a still center
in the middle of the storm ...

Unless a person amidst of all their activities
preserves a secret room in their heart
where they stand alone before God ...

Unless we do this,
we will lose all sense of spiritual direction
and be torn to pieces.

In the stillness, empty spaces occur and new possibilities are searching their way to the surface of the mind. A connection is made, new relationships are formed and new patterns emerge. This process of being still and moving at the same time to something new is the way the experience of metaphoric or creative thinking comes about in our minds.

In this process images that are far apart become connected at a deep emotional level, and we feel a jolt of surprises.

As long as the soul is not still, there can be no vision. But when stillness has brought us into the presence of God, then another sort of silence, much more absolute, intervenes: the silence of a soul that is not only still and recollected, but which is overawed in an act of worship by God's presence.

When the whole consciousness is silent and tranquil, free from all becoming, which is spontaneity, then only does the immeasurable come into being. For, when the mind is still, reality, the indescribably, comes into being. So the mind must be simple, unburdened by belief, by ideation. And when there is stillness, when there is no desire, no longing, when the mind is absolutely quiet with a stillness that is not induced, then reality comes. And when that happens, it is a blessing.

Silence is fruitful only when it leads to interior peace and stillness.

Contemplation is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

You do not find it by travelling, but by standing still.

Silence is a directed stillness, which receives rather than acts.

Understand -- through the stillness,
Act -- out of the stillness,
Conquer -- in the stillness.

In order for the eye to perceive color, it must divest itself of all colors.