I walk in stillness. Where my rest is set
Is Heaven. And the silence of the stars
Sings in a soundless circle. For the song
Of Heaven is past hearing, and ascends
Beyond the tiny range the ear can catch.
And soars into a spaceless magnitude
Where sound and silence meet in unity,
Holy am I, who bring your Name
With me and who abide in You, although
I seem to walk alone. Look carefully,
And you may glimpse the One who stands
Beside me. And I lean on You in sure
Unswerving confidence. It was not thus
Before, for I was bitterly afraid
To take the Help of Heaven for my own.
Yet Heaven never failed, and only I
Stayed comfortless, while all of Heaven's gifts
Poured out before me. Now the arms of love
Are all I have all my treasure is.
Now I have ceased to question. Now I come
From chaos to the stillness of my home.
When a gong or "singing bowl" is struck in the silent stillness, a reverberating sound is suddenly born...it lingers briefly...decays and dies. The sound can represent the span of our life-experience, but never our Life. Our true self is not the perishable sound, but the imperishable, still silence from which the sound arose and resonated temporarily. Indeed, this truth has even greater depths for it may be understood, that in our essence, we are none other than That which strikes the gong, so to speak, and silently witnesses the resulting "sound."