Even as a child I knew the sacredness of personal space. I remember going behind my grandmother's house to a place where I could hide behind tall weeds. I would sit for hours in my circle of stones. That space was so special I never revealed it to even my closest playmates... Sacred spaces can be created anywhere. When I felt a need for a sacred simplicity within my city home, on a sudden inspiration, I emptied a closet and painted it white. Within this purified space, I placed a stone, a leaf, a bowl of water and a sitting cloth from the Amazon -- things special to me at that moment. I had created my own sacred space.
~ from "Earth As Sacred Space" by Vijali in EARTHWALKING SKY DANCERS
BLESSED BE in the Silence, dear friends! As we leave the dark days of winter, let us listen for soul-stirrings of new life. Are there seeds gestating in you preparing to crack opena nd emerge in the light? You can nurture them through silent, holy listening.
Holy listening, to "listen" another's soul into life, into a condition of disclosure and discovery, may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another (or oneself).
You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen, simply wait. You need not even wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
When you experience both Silence and the Word deeply, you see that the Word comes from the Silence and the Silence is in the Word. When you really listen to God speaking to you in each moment, you see that what speaks to you is the Silence.
~ David Steindl Rast in MEETING WITH MENTORS by Soren Gordhamer
I am to LISTEN. I am finding it a hard discipline: Listen to every word that is not said. Listen for silences. I have become insensitive to the power of words because I hear and see too many of them. I don't say to myself, "don't listen to words." I am already a past-master of that. I say, "listen to the silence." And I discover this: because silence seems empty of content I cannot place myself in relation to it, and therefore, I cannot place myself outside it. It is a world I enter, not a world I observe. Silent people bear this out: they seem to carry a world with them, while the unsilent always seem to be scurrying in search of one.
~ from TAKE NOTHING FOR THE JOURNEY by Donagh O'Shea
This was my first conscious experience of listening to Gaia, even though I didn't call it that then or hear an actual voice... I have come to learn that there are many ways of listening. One may hear an internal or external voice, feel a body sensation, or simply just "know" with that intuitive understanding that is beyond words. However, I continue to describe this experience as "listening" because we have forgotten how to be silent and listen to ourselves, one another, and the earth.
~ from "Listening to Gaia" by H. I. Austen in EARTHWALKING SKY DANCERS
Truth must find an echo in the one who hears it to be recognized. Put it another way, a heart must really be listening, really wanting the truth, really wanting God.
Listening is being silent with another person in an active way. It is silently bearing with another person. Some people are silent, but they are not open and active. They are either asleep or dead within themselves. The true listener is one who is quiet and yet sensitive toward another person, open and active, receptive and alive. Listening is participating in another life in a most creative and powerful way. It is neither coercive nor pushy. Rather, it is bearing one another's burdens.
~ from SET YOUR HEART ON THE GREATEST GIFT by Morton Kelsey
Travelers at sea take soundings to measure the depth of the water through which they move. This kind of deep listening is necessary if they are to safely navigate treacherous waters. This is what we do as well, whenever we quiet ourselves and go to that inner place where there is enough silence for the words to resound.
