silence

I must see that I am asleep

In order to wish to be present, I must see that I am asleep. "I" am not here. I am enclosed in a circle of petty interests and avidity in which my "I" is lost. And it will remain lost unless I can relate to something higher.

I need to understand that by myself, without a relation with something higher, I am nothing.

I can escape only if I feel my absolute nothingness and begin to feel the need for help. I must feel the need to relate myself to something higher, to open to another quality.
~ Jeanne de Salzmann from THE REALITY OF BEING

When we live superficially

When we live superficially ... we are always outside ourselves, never quite 'with' ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions ... we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.
~ Thomas Merton from LOVE AND LIVING

Be awake

It is important that awake people be awake. The darkness around us is deep.
~ William Stafford from "A Ritual to Read to Each Other" in THE WAY IT IS

This is the mystery

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering becomes love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do.
~ Katherine Mansfield from THE JOURNAL OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD

November/December 2019 (Vol. XXXII, No. 10)

Dear Friends ~ The expectant hush awaiting a baby's first breath, the temporary cessation of wind in the eye of a hurricane, the awkward pause in a conversational misstep, the profound stillness of woods blanketed in snow— there are so many kinds of silence. Silence can be sad or sublime, scary or sustaining; a fretful silence soaked in fear and anxiety or a silence pregnant with hope, expectancy, longing. Beyond, or perhaps within, these is the Silence of mystery, of luminous moments, and of communion.

Unembarrassed to receive the incredible gift

Now let your great and wise and powerful
be as the poor and foolish little ones:
unembarrassed to receive the incredible gift,
and not knotted in guilt over your lack of worth,
and not struggling to "earn" what cannot be deserved,
but just simply, joyfully accepting of all
that is given so humbly and gladly in Love.
~ from ENCOUNTER AT BETHLEHEM by Jean Jones Andersen

The nearness of God

The restless hollowness which surfaces into our consciousness when we reflect in silence is already the nearness of God, who is like the pure light which, spread over everything, hides itself by making everything else visible in the silent lowliness of its being. The Incarnation urges us, in the experience of solitude, to trust the nearness— it is not emptiness; to let go and then we will find; to give up and then we will be rich.
~ from THEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS by Karl Rahner

That is enough

And in the unknowing
I will be found and find myself.
In the unknowing is
the Love, the Silence,
the acceptance of just
Being in the yearning
and that – that is
Enough.
~from "The Unknowing" by Sam Baker

When I notice the spaces between sounds

When I notice the spaces between sounds and the spaces between words and also the spaces between my thoughts and the background silence behind everything, I realize that all these spaces are the same space. This space is the entry point. It is the transformational vortex, the corridor, the window to Spirit.
~ from EVERYDAY IMMORTALITY by Deepak Chopra
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