One night last autumn I was strangely drawn to the beauty of a moonlit night; there was a strong urge to become part of the night and its beauty. After finishing my kitchen work, I went outside for a walk in the woods with my little puppy. The powerful beauty of the night stirred in my soul. The large silvery moon cast an eerie glow on my world, darkly engraving towering spruce trees against the lighter spaces between earth and its heavens. As the puppy trotted obediently and silently beside me, our shadowy figures against the ground were as daguerreotypes of days past. Almost without provocation, except by the incredibly soft beauty of the night, I felt the desire to meditate. I sat down on a grassy spot and my puppy sat by my side.
Entrance into meditation was easy and natural, taking me into a quietness of no-thinking and timelessness. When meditation was finished, I slowly opened my eyes to find my little dog sitting directly in front of me, watching me with ears erect. The moon, no longer among the spruce trees, had moved into larger spaces diminishing the contrasting blackness of the ethereal forest and the heavens. I found that I was covered with a heavy layer of shimmering dew. I don't know how long I had been meditating, but it was unimportant. I remained sitting on the dewy grass as a flow of nature swept through me. The moon, the shadows, the dew, my dog, and I were one in the silence of the moonlight night. I was aware of the omniscient feeling of detachment, a detachment from knowing the world through myself. I was one with the flow of the universe.
~ from A MEDITATOR'S DIARY by Jane Hamilton-Merritt
"YHWH." It is the Name that by tradition we are forbidden to pronounce. Free yourself, I thought. Pronounce it. With no vowels, it came out: "Yyyyhhhhwwwwhhh." It sounded like breath. God's Name: the breath of life! No words, just the whispering, murmuring sound of a deep-drawn breath. For years I took delight in this discovery It hanged the way I prayed. Yet the hart of what had moved me I still had not discovered. I did not know it was my mother's breath I yearned for. For my mother to breathe easy once again, to draw once more a deep and even breath – that would be God for me. For each of us I realized, the deepest Name of God arises from the depths of our own life.
I weave your name on the loom of my mind To clean and soften ten thousand threads And to comb the twists and knots of my thoughts. No more shall I weave a garment of pain. For you have come to me, drawn by my weaving, Ceaselessly weaving your name on the loom of my mind.
In ancient times the symbolic meaning of names was an assumed part of their overall significance: a name was far more than simply an identifier, it was a way of truly and essentially knowing the person or thing named. Choosing a name for a child was not taken lightly, as that name would necessarily prove to be a source of strength or weakness for that individual throughout his or her life... More recently, the belief in a deep existential connection among all things allows for the possibility that our name is fundamentally correct for us.
The Name unites us all in a wondrous dance of being. One way of knowing God's Name is by linking our own life-breath with the life-breath of creation. Consider how it will affect even our casual conversation when we realize that each time we breathe, we call God's Name. Whenever we breathe we invoke the sacred. How this awareness will change the way we use our breath and our speech. The Name calling us most fully to embrace the divinity breathing throughout Creation, is the one Name we cannot appropriate, the one Name we cannot own.
Blessed friends... Listening deeply, you can come to hear within and through the silence your own heart beating in harmony with the Divine Guest, your soul's companion. In the Silence: the wonder of God's Love!
If the clearest connection to God is inside the heart, when you move more and more into that love center, the ache of being two, of feeling separation, dissolves... Whatever is deeply loved — friend, grandchild, late afternoon light, masonry, tennis, whatever absorbs you — this may be a reflection of how you move in the invisible world of spirit. It is your beauty, the elegant point where everything is one. The unio mystica is a lived thing ... a transformed intention, an intensity, and the peace of walking inside it: The Friend.
~ from THE ILLUMINATED RUME, commentary by Coleman Barks
O beloved friends, please listen: the purpose of human life, the supreme ideal of which all other ídeals are simply an expression, is to cultivate love... There is no boundary whatsoever to Pure love — it embraces humanity and Divinity equally. In this most intense love, no sense of duality can remain.
The heart ís the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to yourself.
In your nature eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature And what is my nature, boundless love? It is fire, Because You are nothing but a Fire And You have given humankind a share in this nature for by the Fire of Love, You created us.
