The silence of meditation is not the silence of a graveyard; it is the silence of a garden growing. There is no deadness in a garden, but in that all-pervading silence an intense activity is going on in the ground which will later take form as buds, blossoms and fruit. So, too, in meditation there is not a blankness, but a rhythmic activity of the Spirit. As the mind exhausts itself the Spirit comes through, and we are in the realm of heaven. True, we are still on earth, our feet are solidly on the ground -- the holy ground of spiritual awareness.
Were You not to grant me the grace
during the night-watchers
of drinking the silence,
of diving into it,
of being soaked in it,
How should I know
that inner silence,
without which
one can hear
neither others
nor You?