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.
By the grace You grant me of silence without loneliness, give me the right to plead, to clamor, for all who are imprisoned in a loneliness without silence!
Were You not to grant me the grace during the night-watchers of drinking the silence, of diving into it, of being soaked in it, How should I know that inner silence, without which one can hear neither others nor You?
