To be in harmony does not mean that upheaval and upset don't occur, but that their very occurrence is used, fully used, as a gift of purification that leaves one in a deeper harmony with the dictates of one's core of being. Implicit in this is trust, open-eyed trust... True trust obeys no moral code, however archaistic. It is but the unexploitable, awakened faith of one who has left the promises of the mind for the already-present glory of their heartland. It is a joy, a fertile brilliance, a holy renewal, a yes that has room for every no, a yes both paradoxical and devastatingly simple, a yes wherein the elements dance and die, a yes aflame with the transcendence of blame, a yes already alive in you.
A paragraph from Frederick Franck's new book, A LITTLE COMPENDIUM ON THAT WHICH MATTERS, which he graciously sent to Friends of Silence, also speaks to this theme:
D. T. Suzuki wrote that the spiritual life is pain raised above the level of mere sensation. 'Spirituality, born from life-pain, is that specifically human impulse from delusion to the really-Real within and outside of ourselves,' which characterizes the maturation of the human inner process: the thrust towards, and the commitment to, the Real ... Authentic spirituality is intimately related to firsthand, direct experiencing. It may mature through various disciplines, as for instance structured meditation and verbalized prayer. To live in radical openness to pure experiencing in the kitchen, bedroom, subway, newspaper, that is: to everyday life, inside as well as around oneself may, however be the equivalent of both formal meditation and verbal prayer. It is it he finding of one's path without being 'bamboozled, confused, side-tracked.'