All is contained in the Divine Breath
All is contained in the Divine Breath
Like the day in the morning's dawn.
All is contained in the Divine Breath
Like the day in the morning's dawn.
There is no cost to have the Friends of Silence monthly letter sent to you each month.
Enjoying the Friends of Silence monthly newsletter? Now you can sign up to receive a free daily quote in your inbox each morning taken from more than 37 years of 410 newsletters and 5,450 quotes on silence and the contemplative path.
For the past 35 years, a small band of dedicated friends have poured their hearts and love into Friends of Silence.
Each month we send out the newsletter in print and email to a growing community of over 10,000 people.
The monthly newsletter of contemplative quotes remains free and is made possible by your generosity and support.
If our work brings you any hope and a sense of belonging, then please consider supporting our labor of love with a donation.
And if you’ve already given, from the bottom of our hearts: THANK YOU.
Quotations by Author
Quotations by Source
Quotations by Topic
Daily Quotes
Get iPhone App
Conscious labor and intentional suffering are not so much separate practices as twin pillars of what amounts to essentially a single spiritual obligation.
Conscious labor is basically any intentional effort that moves against the grain of entropy, i.e., against that pervasive tendency of human consciousness to slip into autopilot. It means summoning the power of conscious attention (in our era perhaps more widely known as 'mindfulness') to swim upstream against that pervasive lunar undertow drawing us toward stale, repetitive, mechanical patterns, the siren call of World 96.
If conscious labor increases our capacity to stay present, intentional suffering radically increases the heartfulness of that presence. Intentional suffering goes head-to-head with that well-habituated pattern to move toward pleasure and away from pain. It invites us to step up to the plate and willingly carry a piece of that universal suffering, which seems to be our common lot as sentient beings in a very dense and dark corner of the universe. The size of the piece does not matter. It can be as small (though not easy!) as "bearing another human being's unpleasant manifestations," or as vast as "greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his neighbor."