Recently, Sr. Francesca-Marie wrote that a foundation of their community seems to be in gestation for the United States. She and several others spent time this summer gathering information and meeting with friends in the states for prayer and discernment. She asks us to pray in the Silence that the Lord of the harvest will send forth enough living American stones to build a solid foundation.
"Water from the moon" -- a Javanese proverb for what one cannot have. Why are we so full of these strange movements for what is not here? Longings get touched, yet have no place to expand into fullness. And what is longing anyway? Water. From the moon. I am not at home -- never have been. Not that I don't know at some levels my way around. I do. But in the end, I am alone. Still waiting. Still riding the swing of my childhood years with my feet stretching up to the clouds ... The person of a thousand dreams rarely realizes one. And worse, never gets broken by one -- and humanized ... So, what claims me? Perhaps only that I set my face toward the stars -- less compellingly than I could hope ... and yet, more tenaciously that I would wish. I face. Perhaps that is enough.
We are knee deep in a river, searching for water. We are part of an invisible river, but we are so distracted by outer things and what we imagine they could mean to us that we lose contact with the source of our own Being. When we are caught in desire, in form, in externals, we are pulled out of ourselves into a fantasy world, a desire world. We lose touch with the invisible river, the waters of life, through our identification with unconscious inner processes and with outer demands.
We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. In addition to the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative, and creative capacities; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification because they are operating best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call "heart".
Anyone who has probed the inner life, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its
apparent noise is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the center
of human consciousness something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so
much that these two dimensions exist – an outer world and the mystery of the inner world – but that we are suspended between them, as a space in which both worlds meet ... as if the human being is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds.
Only as we begin to open to others in love can our isolated ego be transformed. An awareness of our interdependence with other human beings and with all of life provides the environment in which the seed of our souls can flourish.
The essential self is fundamentally invulnerable and at ease, because it is anchored in Being. This anchoring at the core of oneself allows the personality to be much more vulnerable, open, honest. If the essential self adopts a provisional or social identity — which may be necessary for certain reasons—it does not take it too seriously, does not become completely identified with it. The essential self does not become inflated with its identity, it lives in the humility of presence and can keep a sense of humor about itself.
The knowing heart is receptive to the intelligence of Being and is guided by Being. When the heart is awakened and purified, it establishes a connection to Spirit; our finest and noblest capacities are unlocked, our sacred humanness is revealed. What it comes down to, the distillation of all wisdoms, is this: we can rejoin our isolated wills with Love's Will through the knowing of the heart.
Love is the motivation behind every yearning.... In all of life, Love is seeking to discover itself. We com einto this world, and we experience a profound forgetfulness; we are asleep. Everything that happens from then on is the process of waking up to the fact that Love brought us here, that we are loved by a Beneficent Unseen Reality, and that the core of our being is Love. The whole purpose and meaning of creation is to discover the secret of Love.
Anyone who has probed the inner life, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the center of human consciousness something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist – an outer world and the mystery of the inner world – but that we are suspended between them, as a space in which both worlds meet ... as if the human being is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds.
