In the Sahara one day, I climbed over a dune to descend into a deep bowl of sand. Sitting at the bottom I encountered for the first time absolute silence, stillness that is indivisible. For there are two silences: a silence can be no more than the absence of noise, it can be inert; or, at the other end of the scale, there is a nothingness that is infinitely alive, and every cell of the body can be penetrated and vivified by this second silence's activity.
The sacred landscape is a window into the other worlds. It is a place where beings encounter each other, and meet themselves. Be open. If you see something, pay attention!
Upon approaching or entering the zone of a sacred shrine, an ancient and wonderfully subtle sense of reverence is called forth, asking for silence and respect. If we heed this signal, and rest with it patiently, we may find ourselves rewarded with a gift of knowing. This gift comes in personal form, and the revelations associated with places of power are accounts of the cultural mind of a given individual in a relationship to the mind of the earth. The quality of that transmission is conditioned by the clarity and character of the receiver.
