May 2004 (Vol. XVII, No. 5)

To speak the truth through our words and through our lives is the obligation that authenticates spirituality in us humans. Spirituality is mysterious, but this we do know: spirituality is the way wherein we will experience vitality, truth, and transformation.

Silence is a kind of stillness, a place of retreat into which we may enter and, having entered, may know the Truth.

True integrity grows from an awareness that we can stand in the honest light of God's unconditional love and be seen in our truth. Integrity, like a muscle, needs to be worked and stretched. As we sit in the center of integrity, our heart and God's heart beat as one. The transparent light of truth filters through, embracing every cell of our being, and we are able to see and speak more clearly. Then, little by little, as the layers of lies and pretending are stripped aside, a genuine simplicity remains. Freed of grandiosity and illusion, we stand radiant and unencumbered in truth as we claim our own voice with which we dare speak our truth and live with integrity.

Seek within and you will find the answer. Truth is like a many sided diamond: every side belongs to the whole but it all depends where you are as to just how you view it. Every soul views Truth from different angles. There is a time along the pathway of every soul when it has to stand alone and find the I Am within without help or guidance or support from any one else.

TRUTH: knowing we are integral to the Whole. Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all Where truth abides in fullness; and around Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception — which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Blinds it, and makes all error, and, to KNOW Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without.

Compassion is an aspect of Divine love that melts all defenses and resistance when anyone's suffering is really seen. There is nothing the personality can do to create compassion, but when we are willing to be completely open and truthful about whatever we are truly feeling, it arises naturally and soothes our hurt. (We could say that truth without compassion is not really truth, and that compassion without truth is not really compassion.) The Divine love that seeks to express itself in the world through us is a powerful force that can break through all of the old barriers and untruths that have accumulated in us.

I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply on the inside. I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself to be.

Prayer is listening to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. It is to constantly go back to the Truth of who we are and claim it for ourselves. I'm not what I do. I'm not what people say about me. I'm not what I have. My life is not rooted in the world, the things the world gives me. My life is rooted in the truth of my spiritual identity. Whatever we do — we have to go back regularly to that place of core identity.