For some birds, songs are learned by listening to their parents and neighbors during
the first year. For other birds, songs are hardwired -- the music is scored in their
brains from the beginning. For mockingbirds, singing is a lifetime of choir practice
and talent shows, picking up new tunes and modifying old ones.
I experience the Divine Presence in many ways, but the form most often available to me is "spiration," or the act of breathing in which the Spirit often manifests itself and communicates itself. This process has given rise to the experience of inspiration, or in-spiration, in which the Spirit breathes into us. To be aware of God through spiration is to become conscious of God's subtle Presence through our own breathing.
We all share in the eternal spiration of the Spirit. When I am sufficiently absorbed in the experience of divine spiration, I realize inwardly my dependence, and that of all beings, on this subtle action of the Source.
EVERY GOOD WISH, dear friends! Our world cries out for our Work to beome prayer and love made visible. May we listen attentively in the silence for clear, creative guidance of how we can most life-givingly offer our selves in Service. And, as you work, may your grain of sand become a beautiful pearl.
It is not an easy task, but a most rewarding one, to bless the marketplace with a contemplative presence. It seems to me that the life of work and prayer is not only possible, but greatly enhanced by standing firm in the real world with one's being anchored solidly in the Ultimate Reality. It is the harmony of the universe that echoes in the heart of the "new monk" who works and prays, lives and loves, re-creates and recreates in the center of the present world. The mystical monastery is the whole of society; the marketplace is one of its cloisters. The Holy Rule of the New Monk is the solid perspective of the spiritual practice embraced.
The changing of work into play is effected as a consequence of the presence of a "zone of perpetual silence," where one draws from a sort of secret and intimate respiration, whose sweetness and freshness accomplishes the anointing of work and transforms it into play. For the "zone of silence" not only dignifies the soul at rest; there is contact with the heavenly or spiritual world, which works together with the soul. Those who find silence in the solitude of meditation without effort are never alone.
Work is not your enemy but your friend. How you work, not what you do, determines the course of your life. You may work grudgingly or you may work gratefully; you may work as a human or you may work as a robot. There is no work so rude that you may not exalt in it; no work so demeaning that you cannot breathe soul into it; no work so dull that you may not enliven it. Never be tempted to diminish your efforts; always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
~ from THE GREATEST SUCCESS IN THE WORLD by Og Mandino
How terribly the rice suffers under the pestle! But it emerges polished, as white as cotton. The same process tempers the human spirit: Hard trials shape us into polished diamonds.
~ from A PRISON DIARY by Ho Chi Minh in AFTER SORROW by Lady Borton
When you love to do something, that means you have a gift for it. And when you are gifted at something, you have to do it. You don't have to quit your job and mortgage your house, but you do have to give your gift a careful look. If you don't pay attention to what you love, you could overlook your greatest gifts!
The earth needs people who can say, "Yes there is more." Not just more in the way of knowledge or inventions or wisdom or revelations, but more compassion, more gentleness and sweetness, more caring, more love, more valuing of one another. That is your mission, and it is of the highest, for it is nothing other that the mission of manifesting the spirit of the Beloved in your life.
