Create each day anew by clothing yourself with heaven and earth, bathing yourself with wisdom and love, and placing yourself in the heart of mother nature.
Create each day anew by clothing yourself with heaven and earth, bathing yourself with wisdom and love, and placing yourself in the heart of mother nature.
Only in the oasis of silence can we drink deeply from our inner cup of wisdom.
Wisdom is change. Wisdom is both the process and the result of transformation. Wisdom creates, is in constant movement, bringing design to the universe... Wisdom is my commitment to life, my willingness to continue changing, developing, transforming. When I live my life and love the living, all of it -- the births and the deaths, the fullness and the loss -- I wring wisdom out of it. My life is distilled, and wisdom runs rich and strong, a fine essence, through every word and act.
Elders and mentors have an irreplaceable function in the life of any community. Without them the young are lost -- their overflowing energies wasted in useless pursuits. The old must live in the young like a grounding force that tames the tendency toward bold but senseless actions and shows them the path of wisdom.
Compassionate action -- balanced by wisdom -- is a very important component of spiritual life. It opens our heart and puts us in touch with the happiness that illuminates existence and gives us the strength and courage to continue on the path.
In Wisdom, we ask for guidance.
In Love, we ask for inclusion.
In Faith, we ask for space in our
hearts and minds to welcome renewal.
Study the silence of the wise ones,
there you will find messages
for your soul.
When we are able to trust our calling and accept the journey we've been handed, we trust in a wisdom beyond our comprehension, remembering that no matter what happens, we are part of sacred creation.
The acquirement of spiritual wisdom does not necessarily prevent us from making worldly mistakes; but because it develops the qualities that will prevent them, and because it takes to heart the lessons of experience, humbly and receptively, it does reduce the frequency of those mistakes.
When we are endowed with the Wisdom of the heart, but do not have access to knowledge, we are ignorant. Then we only believe what we see, or what has been proven to our satisfaction. Since it does not occur to us that we may be endowed with supernal wisdom, we do not open ourselves to the mystery of the Spirit that invisibly permeates the created world. So long as we limit our explorations and activities to the visible world as though that were all that existed, we must remain blind to the transcendent beauty of the eternal world.
What is the way that leads to life? The narrow way, the way less traveled, the alternative wisdom of Love. It has two closely related dimensions. First, it is an invitation to see God as gracious and womblike rather than as the source and enforcer of the requirements, boundaries, and divisions of conventional wisdom to a life that is more and more centered in God. The alternative wisdom of Love sees the religious life as a deepening relationship with the Spirit of God, not as a life of requirements and reward.
Ecstasy results from the wisdom of emptiness, of seeing the impermanent, insubstantial nature of all phenomena, where there is no clinging, no attachment, and no fear. In this experience, we become one with the unfolding process of life. This oneness is quite subtle, because it is the oneness of becoming zero.
Where Wisdom makes her home
peace and harmony abide
Suffering becomes redemptive
and quiet joy resides within the pain...
Peace and harmony abide
radiating out to a wounded world
And quiet joy resides within the pain --
within the dazzling darkness ...
Radiating out to a wounded world
silent messengers of healing --
Within the dazzling darkness
compassion and justice reign ...
Silent messengers of healing
suffering becomes redemptive
Compassion and justice reign
where Wisdom makes her home.
The Golden Rule is the Wisdom of wholeness calling into the illusion of separateness.
Time and space are the very music of God's harp, for each moment in time is empty of other moments, and each part of space is empty of other parts, so that we will not have to hear too much at once. That is why there are seasons.
The tree of life, the axis mundi is the central point, the pole around which all revolves. The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, but stillness is eternity. Realizing how this moment of your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you are doing in the temporal experience -- this is the mythological experience.
The tree of life is one's inner axis that grows from the depths of the earth and reaches to the heavens. It connects together the primal opposites of the temporal and the eternal. It is life lived from the "still center of the turning world" and it embraces the deepest human mystery: that we are eternal beings living in a world of time.
I have learned to understand time and thought as a spiral: neither a straight line that must go always forward, even into a precipice, nor a circle that must remain forever stuck in repeating past experience. Instead, a spiral, which curves always backward in order to curve forward. What makes time and life into a spiral instead of a straight line or an endless circle is setting aside time for reflection, rest, renewal. That renewal time is the curve that moves the spiral onward. This lets us re-view where we have been, so that we can go forward.
Embrace the open moment, recognizing that each moment may be experienced as a new birth and as a spectacularly open time, when what we do can make a difference to whether the human race grows or dies.
Time ... The ancient ones knew that there was a relationship between time and light. That light has no time. Nothing can travel at the speed of light but light itself. If we approach the speed of light, we must become light. When we become light -- a Child of the Sun -- then time is dissolved. We all know that our deeds today affect tomorrow, that our smallest gestures influence destiny, that the future of our species changes constantly with every action of every living thing on Earth. Time is polychronic AND monochronic -- it does not fly like an arrow only. It also turns. Like a wheel. (He traced a circle in the air with his fingertip.) When these two kinds of time intersect, that is sacred time, ritual time, when you can influence the past and summon destiny from the future.
The orphan boat of my heart
Crosses the unsteady, undulant
Ocean of Time.
All things are accomplished through waiting. Time is the vehicle. If we perseveringly maintain a correct attitude, the force of inner truth is able to work. It penetrates gradually to all that needs to be influenced. To rush anything, or impatiently force results, only causes setback. At best we achieve surface reforms that in time revert to the same problems. Steadfast waiting -- working sincerely to hold correct principles -- leads to slow but permanent changes for the better.
The announcement of autumn comes in
Silence. Listen!
The atmosphere is muted. Listen!
The yellow, red, gold-brown leaves rustle,
A few green ones peak here and there.
They tell of another season gone
... another season coming.
Another season of blustery cold winds,
snow and ice. A time with only
the peep of the sparrow.
Another turn of the wheel of Time.
Another turn of the wheel of our lives.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flow,
Hold Infinity in the palms of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, eternal life is theirs who live in the present.
The whole thing boils down to giving ourselves in prayer a chance to realize that we have what we seek. We don't have to rush after it. It was there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us. There is in all this a sense of the unfolding of mystery in time, a reverence for gradual growth.
Non-action is accepting life and not forcing it: being aware of the ebb and flow of the seasons, aware of the spirituality of all things, aware that in the great abundance of the God-Force, there is no time. It is knowing when to act, and not acting until you know. You can wait forever if you have to. You are eternal... It is being the silent person who is moving relentlessly toward and away from restriction -- towards your goal, one step at a time.
You can't change the past
But you can ruin the present
By worrying about the future.
A favorite Lily Tomlin character is Trudy, the bag lady. Trudy suggests that we practice "awe-robics", by taking time each day to appreciate something such as the beauty of the stars. Trudy says we're closest to understanding when we are in awe of what we don't understand. May our hearts open to a love that is awesome.
There are paintings and sculptures that tug at the heart because they catch a simple moment and make beauty conscious. There is music that "brims the eyes with bliss". Such works of art are shock waves that travel between the ego and the Divine Guest, reminding us of a nobler purpose to life. They create moments in which we know that we can lead a symbolic life, when the Self, like Michelangelo's God, reaches out to touch the outstretched hand of our inner Adam and our ego.
We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose bedecked with dew... Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful ... and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.
With that from the earth,
beauty I will create --
With that beauty,
my soul I will give.
Music is like a human echo of the beauty of the world or nature or flowers somewhere out there sounding the beauty of a Creator... As I listen to this beauty, I can rest, let down the guard I consciously or unconsciously maintain against the next minor or major difficulty or crisis.
What do I have to give You, God? A flock of gulls flies overhead. They are so beautiful, their black wings against the morning's blue sky. Last night I watched the same sky, covered with stars. I feel the ocean water which laps at my toe. I walk among the rocks, picking up quartz and crystal. What do I have to give You?
I close my eyes and listen. You say to me, "Love the beauty of my creation." I wait. There must be more. But there is no more. And I am left hearing the words again. Love the beauty of my creation.
Appreciation of beauty is access to the soul. With beauty in our lives, we walk and carry ourselves more lightly and with a different look in our eyes. To look into the eyes of someone beholding beauty is to look through the windows of the soul. Anytime we catch a glimpse of soul, beauty is there; anytime we catch our breath and feel "How beautiful!" the soul is present.
Beauty itself bears witness to God.
Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant -- and therefore beautiful. A tree has significance if one sees it against the empty face of the sky. A note in music gains significance from silence on either side. A candle flowers in the space of night.
I have been lost and drowned
In beauty's deeps
Forgetting,
Beauty is but the garment
Thou dost wear;
And when the eventide has come
Thou has departed,
Leaving Thy garment,
But I seek Thyself.
Aesthetics is concerned with form, shape, composition, expression, and seeing forms AS THEY ARE. Just as the artist is "inspired" and filled with enthusiasm, so too those who SEE are seized with the divine spirit. What is seen is the doxa (glory) of the form, but this glory is the glory of being. Balthasar argues that the mystery in such beauty is the interruption of the eternal into the material in such a way that one can speak of the event of beauty, the entrance of the numinous into this world. To see beauty is to be overcome by the glory that breaks out of this person, this poem, this picture, this flower... We are confronted by the sense of its Otherness.
Looking for and enjoying beauty is a way to nourish the soul. The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere, ready to nourish the soul. It must only be seen to begin helping us.
In beauty, the soul recognizes its higher self and seeks to become one with it.
How can I search for beauty and truth unless that beauty and truth are already known to me in the depth of my heart? It seems that all us human beings have deep inner memories of the paradise that we have lost. We were innocent before we started feeling guilty; we were in the light before we entered into the darkness; we were at home before we started to search for a home. Deep in the recesses of our minds and hearts there lies hidden the treasure we seek. We know its preciousness and we know that it holds the gift we most desire: a life stronger than death.
Music is not merely a rhythmic arrangement of notes, but derives its life from the matrix of silence out of which it arises and into which it flows. And it is the silence between the notes that gives them meaning and grace.