In the sweet territory of silence we touch the mystery. It’s the place of reflection and contemplation, and it’s the place where we can connect with the deep knowing, to the deep wisdom way.
Quotations
The Wisdom of the Benedictine Elders
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Knowledge gives us information. Wisdom gives us light on the way. Knowledge is skill. Wisdom is a quality. Knowledge can be learned. Wisdom can only be distilled from those places in life where knowledge is not enough to really explain what was happening to us, or information failed to resolve what was happening to the other.
Wisdom Circles
We each contain an enduring spark of that Wisdom at the heart of all creation. Isolated and unsupported, it is but a small spark. United with others, those sparks grow into a flame of illumination and strength for us all.
Wisdom is
sweeter than honey,
brings more joy
than wine,
illumines
more than the sun,
is more precious
than jewels.
She causes
the ears to hear
and the heart to comprehend.
O Highest Wisdom,
who circles the great circle,
who envisions the whole world
as one living path,
you have three wings.
One soars above the sky,
another moistens the ground with sweat,
while a third flies
everywhere at once.
O Wisdom, we sing your praise.
Empty Dancing
Everybody has had transcendent wisdom break into the mind. When you’ve wracked your brain with a problem for a long time and then, for some reason, you’ve stopped struggling, and then all of a sudden you got an "Aha! That’s it," where does that come from? Wisdom has broken through.
Maitreya's Mission
Wisdom is an attribute of the soul and unfolds naturally as the soul manifests through the personality. Knowledge can be taught; wisdom is loving understanding or knowledge illumined by love.
Wisdom is not gained by traveling afar, but by standing still; not by thought, but by the absence of thought.
Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine as well as through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is ineffective.
Each part of the world holds wisdom, a key to reigniting humanity’s pure spark.
Walking With Wisdom
Awaken Wisdom within and let it flow out to the world like a gardener sowing seeds of life.
Words of Wisdom for our World
Loving communication implies prayerful surrender to the word of God speaking in ourselves and others. Out of this respectful openness there emerges the wisdom to know when to speak and when to be silent. When we do have to say something, we do so wisely and moderately, and to the appropriate person. In persistently trying to see the other against the background of the Sacred, we preserve inner peace.
Open Mind
Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbing -- resistance to experiencing our pain for the world and other beings.
Meditations and Mandalas
The Earth is home to all creation,
to be lovingly cared for by us in
communion with the Divine Friend.
Praises be to the Creator of the cosmos!
With grateful hearts, let us give thanks!
What other return can we give to the One,
Who continues to gift us with life?
When we open our heart to the Friend,
when we live with compassion and kindness,
we walk in beauty!
We come to know the Divine Guest,
Whose companioning Presence
is ever with us.
Dancing with the Kalahari Bushmen
The greatest gift of all is an awakened, unconstrained, limitless heart. It takes you out of your skin and fills you with such compassion that, in the words of one of my Bushmen teachers, "It even makes you love the man who stole your wife." I have no doubt that the Bushmen doctors of the Kalahari hold the most important answer to the world's present state of crisis, terror, and madness. It is not found in any defense budget, technological development, or politician's deal. It is found in each and every one of our hearts. It's the oldest news that can set us free and it is found when one surrenders to the hot, sweaty, weeping steam of love, the love that reveals the ropes that take us straight to the Big God.
Compassion is not helpless pity, but an awareness and determination that demand action.
The Force of Kindness
Compassion is defined in Buddhist teaching as the trembling or quivering of the heart in response to seeing pain or suffering. Alone with love and altruism, compassion can be seen as warm-heartedness replacing cynicism, beneficence taking the place of indifference, caring supplanting aloofness. The Dalai Lama, whose life has not been easy, has said, "The reason I am pretty happy is because of the force of compassion. Compassion makes me feel at one with everyone."
Live with attention,
cultivate compassion,
establish justice.
Then you will realize the purpose for which
you were created.
The Way of the Dreamcatcher
Everything is here because of love. That's why we were created -- to love, and creation is set up to make love possible. Love keeps things going, not just for now but forever. Love gives life and makes sure what's around today will be around tomorrow. Love sets us on the journey and ensures our safe return. It's about compassion, it’s what the cosmos best responds to.
What should you do?
Do good by doing compassion
to everyone
you know needs it.
Expect adversity.
Bear adversity with love.
My Grandfather's Blessing
In a talk about compassion, a former teacher of mine once said that practice prepares the mind, but suffering prepares the heart. Perhaps the final step in the healing of all wounds is the discovery of the capacity for compassion, an intuitive knowing that no one is singled out in their suffering, that all living beings are vulnerable to loss, attachment, and limitation. It is only in the presence of compassion that we can show our wounds without diminishing our wholeness. For those who have compassion, woundedness is not a place of judgment but a place of genuine meeting.
Divine compassion is ever present within our limited compassion.
365 TAO
Knowing God is the source of compassion in our lives. We realize that our separation from others is artificial. We are neither separate from other people nor from Tao. It is only our own egotism that leads us to define ourselves as individuals. In fact, a direct experience of God is a direct experience of the utter universality of life. If we allow it to change our way of thinking, we will understand our essential oneness with all things.
In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice, but compassion. Not me against you, not me straightening out the present ill, fighting to gain a just result for myself and others, but compassion, a life that goes against nothing and fulfills everything.
Compassion is the fire which the Lord has come to send on the earth.
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
The Contemplative Heart
The process of establishing ourselves in a habitual state of compassionate love takes place in the context of countless failure to be compassionate. But this proves to be no hindrance as long as we commit ourselves to being compassionate toward ourselve in our failings to be compassionate. Even our failures to be compassionate prove to be but new opportunities . . . This process of yielding to compassionate love unfolds and deepens over a lifetime of learning that when all is said and done, love is the playing field where we most truly meet ourselves and others as we really are, precious in our collective frailty.
Lumen Christi . . . Holy Wisdom
Ask that your consciousness be filled with Light;
ask to be illumined to follow the path of simplicity
with integrity and inner sight.
Inspired by Divine Light and Love
you begin to express Divine Will in action:
thus will your journey be eased,
joy will nest in your heart.
Awakening to the indwelling Divine Guest,
Loving Companion Presence of your heart,
family, friends, and strangers alike
are greeted with compassion.
A greater state of awareness being aroused,
you recognize the interconnectedness
of everything and everyone:
the unity of diversity.
Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we'll need no other light.
The Path to Tranquility
The grosser consciousness depends heavily on particles of matter. The subtler consciousness is more independent -- it does not depend so much on the brain. Luminance, radiance, imminence -- the three states of subtle mind -- all of these disappear in the clear Light, the innermost consciousness.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.
The Hight Flyer
I had wondered what Nicholas was doing behind the closed door of his study so early in the morning. Now I knew he was not just reading scripture and praying. He was following a discipline which focused him and made it possible for him to realize his full potential. He was lining up his center with the integrating principle at work in the universe, the principle which was ultimately stronger than the drive to fragment. He was tapping into the powers of light which would allow him to live dynamically, surfing the chaos, splitting the darkness, serving the Creator by serving others again and again and again.
I dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and re-creates. . . . in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.
The Gospel of Truth
Say from the heart that you are the perfect day and in you dwells the light that will never fail.
Know the Light in stillness and silence.
All the Days of My Life
One winter day
something will shine out
from an everyday object
and the darkness will flood with light.
Something we have seen
a thousand times
suddenly becomes
the sentinel of
another world.
Scivias
All living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance, and these sparks emerge from God like the rays of the sun. If God did not give off these sparks, how would the divine flame become fully visible?
Into the Silent Land
"I have just the question for you: who are you?" "I just told you," said the young man. "No, you told me about the clothes you wear. You told me your name, where you’re from, what you've done, the things you've studied. Your problem is, you don’t know who you are. Let me tell you who you are. You are a ray of God's own light."
Peace Pilgrim
You can visualize God's light each day and send it to someone who needs help. Your divine nature must reach out and touch the divine nature of another. Within you is the light of the world. It must be shared with the world.
Living in the Heart
I slowly began to make out forms and shapes, and the shapes soon became brighter until I was in a world of just light . . . As I flowed like mercury into the center of this light field, I knew I was Home! I had been there before. At the center of this awesome experience was a round ball of living water. I stepped into the middle of this ball of light-filled water just as I was asked to return. I know I'll go back there… I didn’t want to return, I was so alive.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
The Music of Silence
I started to compose the opening of "Fos" (light) and I had the idea of a string trio playing in the distance which would represent the soul yearning for God. The choir represented God in uncreated energies. This yearning choir is played by the string trio which is cut off by the joy/sorrow chord by the choir singing the word "Fos," light, light, light, light, light -- until it becomes an expanded light separated from all yet united to all, and moving straight into the second section, Doxa: symbolizing the glory of that Light filling everything with light.
365 TAO
As one progresses on the path, one seeks silence more and more. It will be a great comfort, a tremendous source of solace and peace . . . Here finally is the place where you need neither defense nor offense -- the place where you can truly be open. There will be bliss, wonder, the awe of attaining something pure and sacred . . . This is the peace that seems to elude so many.
Descent of the Dove
When many agree that peace is possible, heaven will grow from a weak and helpless concept to a manifested experience involving an entire planetary family.
A Course In Miracles
The stillness and the peace of now enfold you in perfect gentleness.
Eat, Pray, Love
Sean, my Yogic Irish dairy farmer, explained our chaotic world to me in this way. "Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine," he said. "You want to stay near the core of the thing -- right in the hub of the wheel -- not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness -- that's your heart. That’s where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace."
To be at one with God is to be at peace . . . Peace is to be found only within, and unless one finds it there one will never find it at all. Peace lies not in the external world. It lies within one’s own soul.
Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances . . .
Weaving the Visions
In finding peace and recognizing the light in yourself, we say there's a hearth in your heart where the Creator has given you something very sacred, a special gift, a special duty, an understanding. And now is the time for us to clean out those hearths, to let that inner light glow.