Forgiveness is a method FOR GIVING
love...a way of saying, "I am going to let go
of the wrong you did; I am not going to be bitter and I am going to go
on loving you anyway"...Every time we forgive, we begin a new life,
free of the past and open to love. Remember, forgiveness is not only
about your relationship with others but also about your relationship with
yourself.
~ from PRESCRIPTIONS FOR LIVING by Bernie S. Siegel
Mysticism is about being-with-being: being-with-being in silence, in experience, in awe, in connection making, in non-dualism, and also about being with suffering beings, with the victims of self-hate and oppression.
Have you ever been "stricken with silence"? If so, you have tasted the ineffable; you have had a mystical experience. Silence is too often defined as "the absence of something" when it is much more than that. Silence is also a search for something, a search for the depths, for the source. Many of the mystical awakenings experienced by astronauts and cosmonauts in space have been triggered by the cosmic silence they have encountered there. Similar things happen to persons swimming in the depths of the sea or spelunking in the caves of Mother Earth. Silence moves people. That is why it is so essential to meditation practices, including the art of listening to our images. Being, one might say, is silent. We must embrace silence in order to experience being. Then -- and only then -- does it speak deep truths to us. As Rilke says: "Being-silent. Who keeps innerly silent, touches the roots of speech."
~ from THE COMING OF THE COSMIC CHRIST by Matthew Fox
