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.
I know now that the spiritual Child is sleeping inside all of us. All beings, no matter how reactionary, fearful, dangerous or lost, can open themselves to the sacred within and become free even in prison. Prison is a perfect monastery.
~ from a letter written to a meditation teacher in prison in ARISE MY LOVE by William Johnston
