In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each individual a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
The awareness of the unity and interconnectedness of all beings leads -- if it is consistent -- to an empathy with others. It expresses itself as reverence of life, compassion, a sense of the communion of suffering humanity, and the commitment to heal our wounded earth and its peoples.
Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.
Earth will be safe
When we feel in us enough safety.
Listen! The streams carry Love's Voice
mingled with bird song
sharing gratitude and praise
in support of Life!
Listen! Join the song of Creation!
Stone is storyteller.
Stone is meditation master.
Stone performs the dance of stillness.
The earth gives us life. The world around is beautiful and meant to be viewed with respect and wonder... The Sioux holy man, Black Elk, expressed it well when he said that any place you are is the center of the world. This beautiful creation is always speaking to us, it is just that we sometimes do not stop to look and listen. We forget to see as we were meant to see, not just through our eyes, but through the eye of the heart.
"The world is a sacred place and a sacred process," I told her, "and we're part of it."
“That's excellent -- simple and to the point. This is what was understood -- and is still understood among Leaver peoples. Wherever you were in the world, you found people who took it for granted that the world is a sacred place, and that we belong in that sacred place as much as any creature in the world." Smiling, she looked around the park, as if giving it a silent farewell. Then she included me in the smile as she said, "Maybe someday someone will find a way to say it that makes the ground tremble."
What a gift each morning to encounter some part of nature... It is a pure gift of beauty, of life. The sunrise can be a reminder of the day's gift because it comes unbidden. We don't produce it. The light is given. The world is reborn each morning, and we are given a whole new time of opportunity. Even if the difficulties are the same we had yesterday, we can tackle them in a new way. Primordial freshness is renewed each morning.
I often wonder what it would be like if we dared to love this life -- the fragile and the vulnerable, the endangered, daring to be humble before the magnitude of our beginnings, daring to learn our species into a stubborn and pliant wonder, until reverence shines in all that we do -- until we live an economics of reverence -- until it permeates education, development and health care, homes and relationship, arts and agriculture -- a reverence for life, for planetary, social and personal wholeness. This is our purpose now. May we do it well, with thoroughness and love.
For, it is through prayer that we receive the courage to accomplish what God, neighbor, and our deepest selves are calling us to do. It is when we pray that we are able to surrender to a higher power one day at a time, accepting whatever comes. It is the practise of prayer that can teach us true wisdom, the wisdom of compassion, the wisdom of the heart.
Prayer is an opening of the heart, an alignment with the beauty of the universe. We pray to open our hearts to spiritual power, the ability to sparkle, to shine warmth and light. We open to both the power of clear sight and the power of reflection, to actions that are thoughtful and kind.
The path of silence ... is the path of meditation or contemplation which leads us to the center of our being. We plant the seed of silence within ourselves by quieting the mind. We allow our minds to empty of thought so we can enter our own resounding silence, a state from which we gain deep refreshment... Experiencing the silence within is like opening a hidden door to the soul.
Prayer trains the soul to singleness of focus: for God alone my soul waits. Another will is greater, wiser and more intelligent than my own. So I wait. Waiting means that there is another whom I trust and from whom I receive. My will, important and essential as it is, finds a will that is more important, more essential... In prayer we are aware that God is in action and that when the circumstances are ready, when others are in the right place and when my heart is prepared, I will be called into action. Waiting in prayer is a disciplined refusal to act before God acts. Waiting is our participation in the process that results in the "time fulfilled".
Are you aware that God visits with you?
In a breath of silence, in a whisper,
God speaks to you humbly.
Simply remaining in silence,
in God's presence,
to receive the Spirit, is already prayer.
God will show you the way.
At times silence can be everything in prayer.
The wonderful beauty of prayer is that the opening of our heart is as natural as the opening of a flower. Just as to let a flower open and bloom it is only necessary to let it be, so if we simply are, if we become and remain still and silent, our heart cannot but be open, the Spirit cannot but pour through into our whole being. It is for this we have been created.
In the life of the Indian there was only one inevitable duty -- the duty of prayer -- the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal. Daily devotions were more necessary than daily food... Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth and the Great Silence alone!
Inner stillness is perhaps our greatest ally. Gandhi once wrote that silence brings "the highest potency and is self-acting power." Prayer, meditation, reading scripture (which is, to me, alive with silence, embedded with sacred codes about our deepest mind) -- even quiet walks -- become healing acts. These quiet the world's noises and provide clues about who we are and our healthiest directions.
Prayer never touches us as long as it remains on the surface of our lives, as long as it is nothing but one more of a thousand things that must be done. It is only when prayer becomes "the one thing necessary" that real prayer begins. Prayer begins to take on its full dimensions only when we begin to intuit that the subtle nothingness of prayer is everything.
Prayer is moving into a personal relationship with Divine Love and intelligence. It is impossible to have a prayer without power. It is impossible to have a thought that is a secret, for all energy is heard. When you pray, you draw to you and invoke grace. Grace is uncontaminated conscious Light. It is Divinity. Prayer brings grace and grace calms you. Grace is the tranquilizer of the soul. With grace comes a knowing that what you are experiencing is necessary. It calms you with a sense of knowing.
We are not human beings having spiritual experiences; we are spiritual beings have human experiences.
There are many different kinds of prayer. Yet all prayer has one basic purpose. We pray not to get something, but to open up a two-way street between us and God so that we (and others) may inwardly become something beautiful that we share with others.
"There is a time for silence and a time for speech." Teach me, O Holy One, the silence of humility, the silence of wisdom, the silence of love, the silence of perfection, the silence that speaks without words, the silence of faith. Teach me to silence my own heart that I may listen to the gentle movement of Thy Spirit within me and sense the depths which are of God.
In the final analysis meditation is a love affair. And love is the most powerful energy in the universe. The great irony of meditation is that we become more immersed in the here-and-now. We are liberated from our false egos, and begin to know and love others at a deeper level of awareness. Liberated from our possessiveness, we reach out with a new found compassion to our family, friends, and the less fortunate.
To journey into the interior world within
love must already be awakened.
For love to awaken in us:
Let go ... Let be ... Be silent
Be still in gentle peace
Be aware of opposites,
Learn mindfulness and forgetfulness.
The Tree of Life is located in the very depth of our own soul, and of the rich, abundant fruit that grows and ripens to the fullest perfections, the most life-giving, is Love... The Divine Principle of Love may be used to eliminate every sorrow, every infirmity, every harsh condition and every lack that harasses humanity... With wings outstretched, Love searches out the arid spots of the human heart, the waste places of life, and redeems humanity and transforms the world.
If you wish the world to become loving and compassionate, become loving and compassionate yourself. If you wish to diminish fear in the world, diminish your own. These are gifts you can give. The fear that exists between nations is a macrocosm of the fear that exists between individuals... The love, clarity and compassion that emerge within the individual that chooses consciously to align itself with its soul is the same that will bring sexes, races, nations and neighbors into harmony with each other.
The entirety of the contemplative life is grounded in the love of God. Without that love there would be no prayer ... nothing at all. This love calls into being -- creates, quickens, gives life to -- all that is. This love binds together each one to the other, and in the end binds us to the Source of that love, draws us back into the One whom we never really left, draws us back into God. In that returning we discover that there never existed a division between us and that ... the whole of life is in truth one continuous mystical experience because it has always been suffused with God's love.
My request, my appeal, is that you try as much as you can to develop compassion, love and respect for others, to share others' welfare, and to become more giving... The important thing is to have a good heart, a warm heart, in daily life. This is the principle of life.
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but
but in looking together in the same direction.
The only beloved who can always be counted on is God. The ultimate partner is a divine one, an experience of ourselves that is totally supportive and forgiving... It is the love we give as much as the love we get. The passion we most need to feed is our relationship to God, ultimately our relationship to ourselves.
Peace of mind has nothing to do with the external world; it has only to do with our connection with God. Love really is the answer. We're here only to teach love. When we're doing that, our souls are singing and dancing. When we remind ourselves that we are spiritual beings, that life and love are the flame eternal, that's when our soul is nourished.
May Love grace your life and
may Love guide your way!
Divine Communion begins when you love.
Then not only are you connected to Love,
you are love.
The way by which we commune with God
is by being love.
We must not think that our love has to be extraordinary. But we do need to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. These drops are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being quiet, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. They are the true drops of love that keep our lives and relationships burning like a living flame.
It is the going out from oneself that is love and not the accident of its return. It is the expedition, whether it fail or succeed.
God has given you a beautiful self. There God dwells and loves you with the first love, which precedes all human love. You carry your own beautiful, deeply loved self in your heart. You can hold on to the truth of the love you were given and recognize that same love in others who see your goodness and love you... The task is not to die to life-giving relationships, but to realize that the love you receive in them is part of a greater love.
The love of God, unutterable and perfect
flows into a pure soul the way that light
rushes into a transparent object.
The more love that it finds, the more it gives
itself; so that, as we grow clear and open,
the more complete the joy of heaven is.
And the more souls who resonate together,
the greater the intensity of their love,
and mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.
It is often in silence and solitude that you will find your most meaningful real moments. Silence nourishes the soul and heals the heart. It creates an insulated space between you and the noisy, demanding world you live in, a womb of stillness in which you can be reborn over and over again. Silence has a regenerative power of its own. It is sacred. It returns you home. Solitude is very necessary for silences to go deep... Silence will help you see clearly, sometimes for the first time, exactly what is out of balance in your life. When you make the time for the apparent non-doing of silence and solitude, your doing will become much more effective and meaningful.
The goal of healthy solitude is love: love and acceptance of ourselves as we are and where we are, and love and compassion for others.
There are few things as powerful as solitude to help you get in touch with your inner self -- especially when that solitude is accompanied by silence and the elimination of outside stimuli... Solitude give you the opportunity to confront your inner self in ways that few other endeavors can. Out of your times of solitude come serenity, peace of mind, and unparalleled opportunities to connect with your soul.
Solitude builds up, affords a conscious setting in which significant growth in the life of the Spirit can take place. Solitude is a gift of time without accompanying distraction, an opportunity to keep company with one's own soul. It is where the Spirit can help one harness one's own cross in such a way that it can be carried without too great strain... Solitude is conducive to journaling, reflection, meditation and is indispensable to contemplation.
I watched ice form on the river outside my window one Sunday afternoon and felt loneliness more intense than any I could remember since childhood. The day had grown incredibly still -- so deep it seemed poised at the edge of eternity... Nearly empty, I could not hope to fill myself -- certainly not with human companionship -- and I began to sense that this was exactly as it should be. God wanted me empty, alone, silent and watchful. I was suffering from both sever laryngitis and a lame leg, and had to laugh at myself, wondering if I was really so dense that God had to resort to these extremes in order to get me to shut up and be still.
To move toward the desert where interior prayer and interior transformation can take place means a willingness to go into the desert, to learn to shut the door, and to move into the necessary solitude which prayer and the deeper levels of worship require.
If we cannot wait,
we cannot know the
right time to move.
If we cannot be still,
our actions will have
gathered no power.
Solitude is a return to one's own self when the world has become filled with people and too much of a response to others. Solitude is as much an intrinsic desire in us as our gregariousness. Hermits, solitary thinkers, independent spirits, recluses, although often stigmatized in the modern world, are healthy expressions of our dialogue with ourself.
Silence reminds us that we have only to be still and let the waters of grace refresh us and the sunlight of peace shine upon us.
Solitude and loneliness are not the same thing. Loneliness is the sign that something is lacking. The purpose of solitude is to bring us home to the center of ourselves with such serenity that we could lose everything and, in the end, lose nothing of the fullness of life at all. When you are alone, are you lonely or are in solitude? If loneliness is what it's about, what you may need most is the cultivation of the richness of solitude.
The spirit of the wilderness is solitude. We go alone to meet the divinity within us. The wisdom of the wilderness comes from God interacting through creation to touch our very soul. We emerge from our journey with a new identity grounded in God. Transformed, we discover we have been given back to ourselves.