For, the ultimate goal of living in Silence is love, is to become holy and whole. The Holy is the most intimate and intensely personal and unitive of all experiences; that which integrates most totally, where all superlatives converge, where the sense of the overflowing ultimate Presence and Joy enwrap and draw us into the ecstasy of wordless adoration. Adoration of God is a long, slow life process of interpenetrating manifestation and discovery. Each of us is a pilgrim of the Absolute on an immense and limitless journey. Blessed are those who follow the Way with a single eye!
~ from SURPRISED BY THE SPIRIT by Edward J. Farrell
Sitting there in silence, listening to the quiet, I was filled with a unique feeling of peace, an impression so intense that it seemed to expand into ineffable JOY. ...It went on, second after second, so pervasive that it seemed to fill my entire body. I relaxed into it luxuriated in it. Then with no warning, and surely without preparation or expectation, I knew what it was: for the seconds it lasted I felt, with a certainty I cannot account for, a sense of the presence of God.
