Direct experience suggests that contemplation and deep self-forgetfulness draw us into God, in whom we have our life and being. This magnetic, purifying silence has healing power: it fuses time -- brings past, present and future to a single still and perfect point. Here healing (what we call a miracle) is automatic. This stillpoint is love, and only love heals.
It is the nature of a word to reveal what is hidden. The word that is hidden still sparkles in the darkness and whispers in the silence. It entices us to pursue it, to yearn and sigh after it. For it wishes to reveal to us something about God.
There is an old story about a famous rabbi living in Europe who was visited one day by a man who had traveled by ship from New York to see him. The man came to the great rabbi's dwelling, a large house, and was directed to the rabbi's room, which was in the attic. He entered to find the master living in a room with a bed, a chair, and a few books. The man had expected more. After greetings, he asked, "Rabbi, where are your things?”
The rabbi asked in return, "Well, where are yours?"
The visitor replied, "But, Rabbi, I"m only passing through."
I remembered what Grandfather had once said to me,
Vision, like love, takes no planning, for it just happens. It is directed by the Creator and made manifest by creation. Take no care as to how you will live your Vision or how you will find your love. For the Creator has planned all these things, and the way will become clear to your heart. You have been given a choice, but if you listen to your heart, there needs to be no choice. Your path is your heart, and all that you need do is follow it. I have found that the grave mistakes that take place in life are made when a person does not follow their heart. When the heart is ignored, life becomes complicated and distorted, but when the heart is followed, we touch the Creator. Logic and reason are poor alternatives to a life full of love and Vision.
Quiet the mind
Be still
And watch the breath of God
Rise and fall
In all things.
Allow God's breath
To be your breath;
Allow God's nature
To be your nature.
The nature of God
Is to love and be loved;
Your desire to love creates intention,
Intention focuses attention,
Attention illuminates understanding,
Understanding manifests forgiveness,
Forgiveness is the fountainhead of Love.
Intend to be Love
And know death for what it is:
The inbreath of God.
Let us not be led into the world of attraction. "Falling in love" means coming into Love, coming into Being, and then falling into this world. We cannot come to Love through attraction, the temptation that is with us each moment of our lives. Yet if we come into Love, then we see the whole world as a world of Beauty. The purpose of Love is Beauty. Lead us not into forgetfulness of the object of our search. Let us not be led astray by the unleashed forces of attraction. Is not the object of our search Thyself? Is not the cause of all creation Love itself? And, is not Thy yearning greater than ours can ever be for Thee?
~ from REASON IS POWERLESS IN THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE by Reshad Feild
Love transforms.
Love makes empty hearts overflow.
This happens even more
when we have to struggle through
without assistance,
all unready
for the play
of Love.
It is true, though strange to say, that most people resist being loved. But God is persistent. God is patient and does not give up. God leaves ninety-nine sheep in the fold and goes after the one that is lost until he finds it and brings it back. God sweeps the house clean and searches for the lost coin until she finds it. People who have been hurt are very distrustful; they cannot easily believe that someone loves them unconditionally... All this comes of not understanding the nature of unconditional, creative love, that it is addressed to the true self which transcends all the descriptions... God never gives up, but pursues people forever, hoping to convince them that they are unconditionally loved. This is GOD'S "radical optimism!"
~ from RADICAL OPTIMISM: ROOTING OURSELVES IN REALITY by Beatrice Bruteau
In undertaking a spiritual life, what matters is simple: WE MUST MAKE CERTAIN THAT OUR PATH IS CONNECTED WITH OUR HEART... Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts... When we ask, "Am I following a path with heart?" we discover that no one can define for us exactly what our path should be. Instead, we must allow the mystery and beauty of this question to resonate within our being. Then somewhere within us an answer will come and understanding will arise. If we are still and listen deeply, even for a moment, we will know if we are following a path with heart.
When a mind is awakened to the truth of its identity,
Its creative enactment is always loving.
Its creations image what Love is, providing an opportunity
for minds inhering in the bondage of illusion
To witness the image of what alone is Real.
When Love made visible is witnessed,
it can be recognized, and a movement toward
enlightenment is made without effort...
All minds are channels of Love, to the degree that they
choose to be Awake.
The minds of humankind are intoxicated with love.
They long for love because the Truth of who they are,
and what alone is Real, is necessarily within them.
~ from THE JESHUA LETTERS: A JOURNEY OF AWAKENING by Marc Hammer with thanks to Mary Lou Evans
I'm listening yet I don't know
If what I hear is silence
Or God.
I'm listening but I can't tell
If I hear the plain of emptiness echoing
Or a keen consciousness that
At the bounds of the universe
Deciphers and watches me.
I only know I walk like someone
Beheld beloved and known
And because of this I put into my every movement
Solemnity and risk.
Learn how to wait, how to be silent, how to befriend the dark ... thus, do we prepare to be creative. There is a waiting, a silence and a darkness in all birthing. Heart's winter is already a filling womb... For the font of inspiration and newness to keep welling up within us, old wounds and our shadow side must be encountered and owned. So that creative love may flow in and out, each heart, one day, must be broken.
One morning, as a fire flamed back of a handsome eighteenth-century glass screen, I looked for the silence underneath the explosions of the fire... By now I was adept at finding the silence wherever it was. As I settled into it this morning, letting it fill my ears, mind and being, I heard the words: "I'll never abandon you, no matter what you do." ... Once I heard it, I learned to go and find, first the silence and then to wait for the voice. It comes OUT of the silence. It doesn't always come. But somehow I know it will again. And this knowledge has changed my existence. What I have to do, I now understand, is keep myself ready to hear it when it does.
Silence is where we learn to listen, where we learn to see. Holding silence, being held by stillness, people go alone to the wilderness "to stop and see", to renew their vision, to enter the mind ground, to hear the truth, to return to the knowledge of the extensiveness of self and the truth of no self. One seeks solitude to know relatedness. There the unknown, the unarticulated, the unpredictable, the uncontrollable appear as protectors of the present.
As I experience God as the source of my life, a longing wells up within me, a longing to grow older together with the living fountain of my life. Upon entering into myself, I find God. By coming to discover my original self, I come to God. As I befriend the silent darkness within me, I become more open to the hidden and mysterious dimension of myself. There, as I rest in the darkness, I uncover myself as a gift from God. I need to take up that gift and walk gently and compassionately with the sacredness that I am...I need to care for the precious gift that I am, preserve it, and hallow the ground from which it springs.
~ from "Originality, Ordinary Intimacy and the Spiritual Life" by Vincent M. Bilotta III in "Studies in Formative Spirituality"
The firefly flickers of God's grace are enough to embrace the unknown. A surge of powerful surrender takes over all my looking back, and ever so gently and hopefully I risk the road of another new year.
The chasm between being alone and loneliness is deep. The way you begin to be alone and at peace without being lonely is to know that you are with your best friend. When you are at peace with yourself and love yourself, you can never be lonely. Only when you learn to love yourself, can you love another. You must find that love for yourself before you can touch the purity of aloneness. Love of self, without being selfish, will not allow loneliness to exist. Love of self also creates a love for everything else and brings us closer to the Sacred Oneness.
I surround myself with silence. The silence is within me, permeates my house, reaches beyond the surfaces of the outer walls and into the bordering woods. It is one silence, continuous from within me, outward in all directions: above, beneath, forward, rearward, sideward. In the silence I listen, I watch, I sense, I attend, I observe. I require this silence. I search it out. The finely drawn treble song of a white-throated sparrow is part of it. Invasions of it by the noise of engines are a torment to me. This is my solitude.
