Listening is the royal route to the divine.
Listening is being silent with another person in an active way. It is silently bearing with another person. Some people are silent, but they are not open and active. They are either asleep or dead within themselves. The true listener is one who is quiet and yet sensitive toward another person, open and active, receptive and alive. Listening is participating in another life in a most creative and powerful way. It is neither coercive nor pushy. Rather, it is bearing one another's burdens.
Travelers at sea take soundings to measure the depth of the water through which they move. This kind of deep listening is necessary if they are to safely navigate treacherous waters. This is what we do as well, whenever we quiet ourselves and go to that inner place where there is enough silence for the words to resound.
LISTEN for the voice of the Spirit, for that which enlarges the mind, frees the heart, brings together what was scattered and lost, holds fast in unswerving fidelity, instills peace, renews confidence, comforts and endures. Happy are you if hear that voice!
In meditation we turn within a state of silent receptivity with that open inner eye of love, that listening ear, and we let our self unfold and reveal to us whatever is necessary to the NOW of our experience. We truly drink from the well of our consciousness. The water of eternal life "gushing up" brings forth to our external world a manifestation of harmony, love, peace and health.
Silence is not merely negative -- a pause between words, a temporary cessation of speech -- but properly understood, it is highly positive: an attitude of attentive alertness, of vigilance, and above all, of listening.
Listen, my child, to the silence
The undulating silence
where valleys and echoes slip,
bending foreheads
to the ground.
Listen.
So often, the Spirit is blowing blessings on us, but our hearing is not attuned to this wind from heaven.
You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and listen to it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. I can hear it.
LISTEN is such a little, ordinary word that it is easily passed over. Yet we all know the pain of not being listened to, of not being heard. In a way, not to be heard is not to exist. This can be the plight of the very young and the very old, the very sick, the "confused", and all too frequently, the dying -- literally no one in their lives has time or patience to listen. Or perhaps we lack courage to hear them.
We forget how intimate listening is, alive and fluid in its mutuality. It involves interaction even if no one moves a muscle and even if the listener says nothing. Vulnerability is shared when silence is shared.
We are here because the Big Love recognizes our value and knows what we can become, what we can give, what we can do that will bring new life, new vision, new spirit, new love to the world. This is the primal call: to treasure and value and love one another and all the other creatures and things of the earth. It is the call to acknowledge and to act from that knowledge that each person is just as valued and just as loved as the next, and all are invited to participate in the communion of that love.
In order to have compassionate relationships, compassionate communication and compassionate social action, there has to be a fundamental change of attitude... The basis of any real kind of compassionate action is the insight that the others who seem to be out there are some kind of mirror image of ourselves. By hurting others, you hurt yourself. By making friends with yourself, you make friends with others.
Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.
As you grow in Being, innocence flowers on its own. The love that accepts everything is one day found in your own heart.
God is love, and God is my life. Divine love, as me, continually gives of itself in sacred relationship. As I keep open the door of my heart and behold the face of God as everyone I meet, true friends abound in my life. With divine insight and a compassionate heart, I witness the sacred reality of each friend. I am grateful for God's love as my life.
It is not through the way in which someone speaks about God that I can see whether that person has passed through the crucible of Divine Love, but through the way the person speaks to me about things here on earth.
As we are filled ever more deeply with the Spirit, we become more confident in God's abundant love for us.
There is always a way to extend our love depending on the situation and what is appropriate, and by doing that you'll make a difference. Start small. Rather than trying to love the human race, love whom you love, love what you love, and express that. This will draw creativity out of you and will lead you to the next step. Gradually your capacity to love deepens and becomes more universal. Start where you are.
Love is this: that two solitudes border, protect, and salute one another.
Love is the strongest unifying factor; it is directed outward, toward the other, toward the world and its problems, toward God. The fire of love has the greatest power to unite, to transform, to make whole, to heal.
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone;
it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time,
made new.
Our hearts are one single Virgin, which the dream of no dreamer can penetrate ... which only the presence of the Beloved penetrates in order to be conceived therein.
To love another person is to see the face of God.
The unfathomable mystery of God is that God is a Lover who wants to be loved. God not only says: "You are my Beloved". God also asks: "Do you love me?" and offers us countless chances to say "Yes" to our inner truth. The spiritual life, thus understood, radically changes everything. Being born and growing up, leaving home and finding a career, being praised and being rejected, walking and resting, praying and playing, becoming ill and being healed -- yes, living and dying -- they all become expressions of that divine question: "Do you love me?" And at every point of the journey there is the choice to say "Yes" and the choice to say "No".
Love in action is the answer to every problem in our lives and in this world. Love in action is the force that helped us make it to this place, and it's the truth that will set us free.
There is a place past walls. Though I have barely touched it, still it awaits me. To bathe in the love of God ... past longing, past war, alone in infinite space. A wind of light through what once I called my self, behind, suspending the self in it, rendering what I was transparent until all I am is that through which God's love unfolds, through which God's will be done.
Sooner or later we shall have to acknowledge that love is the fundamental impulse of Life. It is through love and within love that we must look for the deepening of our deepest self in the life-giving coming together of humankind. Love is the free and imaginative outpouring of the spirit over all unexplored paths. It links those who love in bonds that unite but do not confound, causing them to discover in their mutual contact an exaltation capable of arousing in the heart of their being all that they possess of uniqueness and creative power.
At the core of me is God. Suddenly I see the fury of the night as startling and beautiful. I am humbled right to my knees, but this time not from fright, but from reverence. I see the same storm through new eyes. I bow my head.
"Majestic, mysterious God. Great Spirit, which moves through all things. I will never know you fully. I will always be learning to love you. But YOU are love. I am sure of that. I believe that behind all fury is love. I do not see it or feel it right now. But I trust it is there."
And for a long moment I let the trust fill me.
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.
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.
In the Middle Ages people were well aware of the inexhaustible power that arises simply from sitting still... The inner quiet which arises when the body is motionless and in its best possible form can become the source of transcendental experience. By emptying ourselves of all those matters that normally occupy us, we become receptive to Greater Being. True enlightenment has the effect of so fundamentally affecting and shaking the whole person that they themselves, as well as their total physical existence in the world, is completely transformed.
In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where humans may enter the harbor and reclaim their dignity. The sabbath is a designated day -- also a state of mind -- a time of detachment from things, instruments, practical affairs and the hurly-burly of life's struggles. In the sabbath state-of-mind we can seek attachment to the spirit, recapturing the goodness of our essential being.
Breathing is one internal function that the conscious mind can control with comparative ease. The effect of controlled breathing is almost like communication with all conscious parts of one's being saying to them, "Simmer down and listen; there is something beyond the turmoil". It is communication in action that often works when words merely go in one ear and out the other, not even changing the cognitive mind. In essence, the effect is to turn all the elements of our will toward stillness and waiting.
A stillness descended upon the room, and in the heart of that stillness was something beyond the power of mere language to describe. I felt we were being given a glimpse of the underlying unity of all things, and that this harmony -- though no metaphor was adequate to describe that singing silence -- was enfolding us so that we were wholly in tune not only with one another, but with a healing presence at the very centre of our being.
The moment passed, but I thought of the disciples on the road to Emmaus and how they had recognized the stranger in the breaking of the bread.
In the rhythm of each day, may you find silence amidst speech, stillness amidst action, and peace amidst creativity.
We have heard it said that the eyes are the windows of the soul, and the soul is very present in children... We have all been children, and we all have memories of our childhood: those experiences of the emotional body which are palpable and still radiating from us. Those experiences have consolidated and crystallized the imprints upon which act as our frame of reference for who we are, and what we are allowed in our life today. When we make contact with that inner child, we are able to shift from the emotional body's experience to the deeper, more profound love of our cosmic self. The child reminds us that God laughs.
Through the mystery of inner work, darkness is turned into light. The chaos and confusion of our unconscious gradually and miraculously reveal a higher center of consciousness which is none other than our innermost essence, "the face we had before we were born". This is the Self, the Divine Child, which was always present within us, but hidden beneath layers of ego and conditioning.