The mountains, rivers, earth grasses, trees, and forests are always emanating a subtle, precious light, day and night, always emanating a subtle, precious sound, demonstrating and expounding to all people the unsurpassed, ultimate truth.
May we all attend to reuniting our heads, hearts, and hands, taking time to be receptive, suspending judgment, and awaiting patiently for insights that arise, unbidden. May we practice being still and really listening – to ourselves, to each other, and to the gentle whispers of the living intelligences of the natural world.
If we can do that, we will build a contagious energy that will ultimately lead to real healing and restoration – the restoration of our wholeness, as a global community – of our deep and fundamental interdependence and Oneness with each other, other species and the whole interwoven web of creation.
I long for the day when the statement, "Our God is love, our race is human, and our religion is Oneness," is more than the musings of my mind, but is the creed of the heart of the human family.
It may seem difficult to believe that a simple culture in the Himalaya has anything to teach our industrialized society. But our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness and Oneness that ancient cultures have never abandoned.
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. Integrity also means wholeness, Oneness, the desire for a 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 quest for integrity presupposes that in the end we are all encountering a single reality and a single truth.
~ from CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL by John Habtood
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Spring greetings, dear friends!May the March winds blow many blessings into your lives! LISTEN in the Silence to a new world Awakening. With so much negativity seeming to cover our Earth home, it's all too easy for us to become discouraged or apathetic. We may not notice millions of our sisters and brothers around the globe who are in harmony with our aspirations and intentions to "peace the world" together. Light workers are networking ... peace and prayer groups are extending love, forgiveness, and hope ... and, notwithstanding the myriad outward news in the media, signs of Awakening and movement toward a just and more viable life for all are growing. As we focus our spiritual eyes and ears on this, as we listen to our heart's inner Voice of Love, we are blessed, we are peace-keepers. For, Love speaks in the hearts of those who become silent in order to LISTEN.
The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only those who listen can speak authentically.
A listening heart is always open, sensitive to the joy and pain of others, offering a space within itself for the other to enter. It gives each person what is so badly needed – an affirmation of their place in this world.
Twenty-five years of listening to stories of pain in individuals' lives have taught me many important lessons. Perhaps the most important is the art of listening. If I reduce the pain I hear to a static moment or try to freeze it with my understanding, then I interrupt a process which always has a deeper meaning embedded within it. Pain is a messenger, a strange winged visitor that asks us to pay attention and listen beyond our usual preoccupations and concerns.
~ from NAVIGATING THE TIDES OF CHANGE by David La Chapelle
Listen to old stones for information about survival. What a seashell has to say will surprise you. So, too, will words written on the wind. Listening to silence is hardest of all. You want to fill it up with conversation ... distractions ... noise. Resist the impulse. In silence, you can dream great dreams. You can discover your own music. Listening means hearing the voice within you. It never fails to tell you the truth, even if you don't want to hear it.
With a quiet mind, a heart still and silent, You will see the infinity of God And the finity of self. Humility will embrace you, and you will fade into that which is all that is. Your words will be few; the silence great. There is room then for listening.
We say we aren't listening to ourselves in the name of consideration for others. But this is a false premise because we can't really listen to others until we learn to listen, exquisitely listen, and TO ABIDE by our own heart.
Listening has to do with awareness. Hearing is easy; listening is difficult. Few of us recognize that listening is an ability and not an instinct. As such, it is an act that has to be learned. To listen is to be sensitive to reality. Good listeners live in the moment and pay attention to what is going on in the here-and-now ... a listening that is beyond words.
~ from THE ZEN TEACHINGS OF JESUS by Kenneth S. Leong
You, neighbor God, when I disturb with heavy raps your quiet during a lonely night, it is because I rarely hear You breathe, though know: You're in your room alone. And while in need, there's no one there to bring your groping hand a drink. But I am listening. Just give me a sign. I am close by.
Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the Unseen singing softly to itself and you.
Those who are learned love to talk about what they know; and as they know much, they talk much. Yet to hear God, they must LISTEN. The learned often make a storage room of their mind, where so much is stored that there is no room left for God to enter and dwell in it ... The learned like to argue for the sake of arguing. It becomes a game, and in the end they love the argument and miss the opportunity to hear God.
Most people need to know that they have been heard. Listen to their body, their eyes, to the colors they are wearing. If you really want to hear someone, open your heart and listen to their soul.
As a young man just 25 years old, the reality that my father was dying gave me the strength to find silence again. I spent uncounted afternoons by his side talking and listening to pure sound, not noise. He told me to be my own man. He helped me recognize the noise so I could stop listening to it. His dying pushed it away and created a space where silence could bloom and thrive. And in that silence, perhaps for the first time since I was five, I heard the voice of my spirit. It told me what I value. It showed me my weaknesses, illuminated my strengths, and gave me the clarity to decide for myself how I ought to live.
I believe the noise of our world is killing people, stifling spirits, and limiting the potential of humanity ... I believe there is a person inside all of us that needs to be heard.
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Heartfelt warm blessings to you, dear friends of silence, dear friends of Love and Peace!
We are born to love; we are all One Love. To extend Love, we must express the Love we are. And the more we recognize and forgive all the hidden ego-fears that keep us seemingly separate and bound to the world's values, the more Love we are able to share with all. In the silence, we can question our values and ask of each one, "Is this an eternal value?"Extending universal, eternal values is Love and Peace in action.
