"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
NEW YEAR BLESSINGS, dear friends!As we celebrate our twentieth year of Friends of Silence, years of growing together in the Silence, let us take time to be still and listen for the Voice of the Blessed Spirit ever there to accompany us on the journey into Love.
Stillness is formed in the Silence from within where our souls are nourished and renewed.Wisdom, too, is born in the inner being as our minds, senses, and bodies are stilled in the Silence. More than ever, our homes, schools, work places, and even houses of worship … indeed, all of society, need to include times for stillness so that harmony and balance can develop.Imagine: just one individual radiating stillness of the heart can affect the world beyond measure. Be still ... And discover a great revelation: stillness in the Silence!
I saw Nuri sitting in meditation so motionless that not even one hair moved. I asked,
"From whom did you learn such deep meditation?"
"I learned it from a cat waiting by a mouse hole.
The cat was much stiller than I.
To return back into ourselves, there are three things needed, for which you don't require a computer, television or radio: the first is a bit of stillness. Nothing can happen without a certain stillness. We also need silence. There is nothing so vocal and articulate as silence; all good language, all great words, are born of it. And the third thing we need is solitude. We need to acknowledge that solitude is an invitation to the soul to come alive. Solitude is utterly luminous if we lose our fears and begin to enter it more deeply.
... the silence in the mind
is when we live best, within
listening distance of the silence we call God ...
It is a presence, then,
whose margins are our margins;
that calls us out over our own fathoms.
What to do, but to draw a little nearer
to such ubiquity by remaining still?
Stillness is tranquility of the inner life, the quiet at the depths of its hidden stream. Stillness is a collected, total presence, a being all there, receptive, alert, ready.
In stillness we add a grace and a benediction to our lives. For a short period, through a daily practice, we choose to create an interval where we are in communication with Spirit. In this holy stillness we find the deep peace we most need and want in our lives. To be still with the attention in the heart ... all other things are beside the point.
The silence of the storm dominated everything. There are no words to describe a quiet so potent. I knew the snow was echoing a stillness that exists, hidden, in everything. I do not understand how I suddenly knew this, but the knowledge filled me. I saw that this stillness generates all life. And sitting there in the snow, I wept at the profound sound and power of that silence. It was hard to witness its beauty, knowing I'd lived many years never suspecting it was there.
Be still and empty
God shall fill you
with far greater fullness
than you could ever
wish or will.
When you slow yourself down and emanate peaceful, tranquil thoughts, you actually send the anxiety and stress out of your life. Similarly, when you meditate you bring God's silent love into your present moments. In silence and stillness God's energy will become yours. By slowing your mind and other thoughts, you allow the fastest vibrations of spirit to enter. That faster vibration is one of harmony, love, and peace.
My greatest wealth is the deep
stillness
in which I strive and grow
and win what the world cannot take
from me with fire or sword.
As long as the soul is not still there can be no vision, but when stillness has brought us into the presence of God, then another sort of silence, much more absolute, intervenes: the silence of a soul that is not only still and recollected but which is overawed in an act of worship by God's presence.
Everyday at dawn and often throughout the day, I go back to the quiet place where my inner Voice strengthens and infuses my speaking voice. Whether my work is with troubled teens who fight at my city's local high school or with rebels in the Philippines, I go to my inner Voice for refuge and support. If I hear, "Be still and know I am God," then, I know that I am centered and ready for partnership with the Spirit.
To concentrate without effort,
to transform work into play,
I must be still and hold
a zone of Silence in my soul.
I will be still, and let the earth
be still with me. And in that
stillness find the Peace of God,
that dwells within my heart.
Stillness is not a technique, but rather a lifestyle which arises from a personal commitment to take up citizenship in the internal world and a willingness to pay attention to the age-old question, "Who am I?" The best tool we have to begin this inward journey is the breath. As we begin to reclaim our birthright of a deep, smooth, even, diaphragmatic breath, the physical feeling of stillness begins to touch both the body and mind. The more we embrace a lifestyle of stillness, the less time we spend being tossed by the wind.