Silence is the highest form of music ... Music of the infinity, referred to as the music of the spheres, is often heard in deep solitude or reflected in natural sounds -- the wind, the ocean, the melody of birds. The single note of a temple gong is far more powerful than an orchestra of one hundred instruments. The clear sound it produces reverberates deep within our mind and body, conveying a sense of infinite peace and bringing us close to the melodious silence of infinity.
I know the thrill of the grasses when the rain pours over them. I know the trembling of the leaves when the winds sweep through them. I know what the white clover felt as it held a drop of dew pressed close in its beauteousness. I know the quivering of the fragrant petals at the touch of the pollen-legged bees. I know what the stream said to the dipping willows, and what the moon said to the sweet lavender. I know what the stars said when they came stealthily down and crept fondly into the tops of the trees.
Greetings, dear FOS friends. Consider for a moment the conundrum of TRUTH. Every tradition and many individuals claim to know Truth, but the various belief systems can be quite different. Surely we cannot all be right, so...what is Truth? Picture in your mind a huge circle, with Truth sitting in the center and all the people of the world sitting around the circumference. Each of us is looking at Truth, but since we are all seeing it at a slightly different angle, no two of us will see exactly the same thing. How then do we know what Truth is? How do we recognize it? We can take our confusion into the silence and ask That which is deepest within us to help us recognize truth when and where we find it, for Truth is to be found within us. It is there in the deepest part of us, that place where a spark of God resides, just waiting for us to seek it.
Luminous is the word of Truth; like a laser beam, it cuts through ignorance and illusion. . . . Blessed are those who choose Truth. Their path is made straight, their spirit freed to soar.
The task of the peacemaker is to speak the truth, whether our culture wants to hear it or not. As we speak the truth in a spirit of love and peace, we will realize deeper levels of truth and begin to understand the great truth of human unity and God’s way of nonviolence. The pursuit of truth ultimately is the pursuit of God.
Trust that truth whether good or bad, pretty or ugly, is still truth . . . the knowledge of anything true brings freedom and empowerment back to oneself.
The word integrity has two meanings. The first is "honesty"... We have to be honest in facing our limitations, in facing the sheer complexity of the world, honest in facing criticism even of things which are deeply precious to us. But integrity also means wholeness, oneness, the desire for single vision, the refusal to split our minds into separate compartments where incompatible ideas are not allowed to come into contact. An undivided mind looks in the end for an undivided truth, a oneness at the heart of things. The whole intellectual quest, despite its fragmentation, despite its limitations and uncertainties, seems to presuppose that in the end we are all encountering a single reality, and a single truth.
~ from CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL by Joel Habgood
Happy are those who, while possessing the truth, search more earnestly for it in order to renew it, deepen it, and transmit it to others. Happy also are those who, not having found truth, are working toward it with a sincere heart.
