Prayer is not a way to get what we want to happen, like the remote control that comes with the television set. I think prayer may be less about asking for the things we are attached to than it is about relinquishing our attachments in some way. It can take us beyond fear, which is an attachment, and beyond hope, which is another form of attachment. It can help us remember the nature of the world and the nature of life, not on an intellectual level but in a deep and experiential way. When we pray, we don't change the world, we change ourselves.
Know who you are. Do not debase the name. Carry it in your heart, a root flame of love. Walk through the world in silence. The moment will come. The sign will be a soft stirring of wings, a gold shimmer of air.
In the forest was a path which led on, and on as if an access to a deeper realm — a place where peripherals, the eddies at the edge of things, were all forgotten, and I entered a silence of green, became a soundless vortex moving through stillness.
Know who you are. Do not debase the name. Carry it in your heart, a root flame of love. Walk through the world in silence. The moment will come. The sign will be a soft, stirring of wings, a gold shimmer of air.
