Only when we are silent can we begin to hear the voice that is truly our own, the still, small voice within. The source of this voice, which may be without sound, and yet is heard, is called by many different names: the inner guide, guardian angel, spirit guide, the collective unconscious, or just plain intuition. Actually, all of us hear the whisperings of this voice every single day of our lives, but many ignore it.
Quotations
Ecumenism and the Culture Wars
"We must do the works of Martha, but in the spirit of Mary. Both of us would agree to that. "
"What is the spirit of Mary?" I asked.
"Silence. Interior silence – and exterior silence, too. Your culture cannot hear the voice of God because its ears are too full of noise. For lack of silence you are going mad. God made you with two ears and only one tongue, so that you could listen twice as much as you speak. Then, when words come out of the silence, they will have power. "
In the silence I listen, I watch, I sense, I attend, I observe.
I require the silence. I search it out.
When the Word is heard, you know that you were silent.
The Beejum Book
"Everything was opening its secrets to me in silence, without a word. Everything shone in my heart now instead of my head. The more I appreciated, the more I could see. It was a whole new way of learning, by listening to silence."
Listen to the silence as it echoes around you.
Ancient spirits dance to it.
There is one thing that we are certain about and that is that we are surrounded by a profound mystery. And in some strange way we are asked to participate in this mystery and to collaborate with it.
My Grandfather's Blessings
We have not been raised to cultivate a sense of Mystery. We may even see the unknown as an insult to our competence, a personal failing. Seen this way, the unknown becomes a challenge to action. But Mystery does not require action; Mystery requires our attention. Mystery requires that we listen and become open. When we meet with the unknown in this way, we can be touched by a wisdom that can transform our lives.
Earth Medicine
The quiet mind
Brings calmness,
Infinite, eternal grace.
Born inside silence
Is the will to be.
Chaos becoming order,
The holiness of life,
The unfolding of Great Mystery.
Mystery is that which shows itself and
at the same time withdraws.
Honey from the Rock
Religion is a more or less organized way of remembering that every Mystery points to a high reality. A reality overarching and infusing this world with splendor. One pulsing through its veins. Unnoticed and unnamed. Of the Nameless One. A holiness so holy that it fills even our everyday illusions with spiritual meaning.
Teaching to Learn/Learning to Teach
... when we do not speak, we may listen, hear, understand, even communicate in other ways. If language distorts, silence may open us to revelation. There are mysteries of life known and apprehended only when one refrains from speech, incommunicable mysteries that transcend the capacity of language.
The Poet of Tolstoy Park
Henry dropped to his knees, his bare toes finding the damp soil underneath the pine needles and leaves. He remained in that position for a quarter hour, unmoving, breathing slowly and deeply, watching the sky. Listening. The silent edge of dusk spread across the hillside. A luminous dark blue and purple void appeared to welcome the first star. And Henry, with loving respect for things he did not know, for what Cicero had called the unseen force that guides the body and guides the world, yielded to that unknown and unknowable force. He would rest in this pool of unknowing for as long a time as he was granted.
When you begin to actively explore the mystery of your own mystery,
God will solve the case.
The Rose of Five Petals
O Dark Mystery
So bright I cannot see
Sometimes hushed
Sometimes clanging in my soul
I enter as You reveal
Darting from tree to tree
Hide and seek
The Mystery
Mystery is the sister of Lady Wisdom.
Let Evening Come
Mystery: it is all around us, and we do not know it. But sometimes when we give it time and space, whether in deep peace or great anguish, it will come up behind us, or meet us face to face, or move within us, changing the way we see everything, and filling our hearts with joy and an upspringing of love that needs no direct object because everything is its object.
One cannot but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
The Vigil
To begin to enter into the profound silence that resides in the depths of our beings is to begin to enter the realm of the Godhead beyond God. Beyond speech, beyond apprehension, is a realm of generative actuality, the realm of essential being out of which the Word is eternally begotten. Our silence is both and the clear road by which the Word proceeds most directly into our hearts.
Ponder These Things
The icon bears witness to the nearness yet otherness of the Eternal. It introduces us to a world of mystery, yet at the same time, we discover that this mystery is not far away, but is hidden within each one of us, closer to us than our own heart.
Empty of desire,
the Mystery can be revealed.
The Song of the Seed
There is something in me that is not content to hang about directionless along the edge of the path ... A thirst in me so deep it will move aside the rocks, seeking moisture. There is a yearning that is intense in its desire to put God first.
It may take a lifetime, but I have no doubt this unnameable Mystery within, the seed that fell at the beginning of creation, will finally crowd out the thorns.
Yes, there is One who believes in me enough to continue singing up the country of my heart.
The Living Tao
Work for the sake of accomplishing the task at hand and understanding; in the beginning, the work is more important than the worker. When you finish your task, look at what you have achieved. If you have worked with your heart, you will be pleased with the results. These results will make you want to achieve even more in your next endeavor. The results are the true rewards of our labors.
Works of love are the way to peace. And where does this love begin? Right in our hearts. We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved.
No ray of sunshine is ever lost,
but the green which it awakens
into existence
needs time to sprout,
and it is not always granted
for the sower to see the harvest.
.
All work that is worth anything is done
in faith.
The Art of Spiritual Healing
When yonever again will your work be a burdenu can find something in your work that is in the nature of a service to be performed, . When you have found something into which you can put your heart and soul and you can pour out some measure of service, even if in the beginning it is the most menial of labors, it will lead you to the joy of expressing yourself. If your consciousness is filled with service and cooperation, then your activity regardless of its nature will express the service and cooperation in your consciousness, and it will be a steadily expanding and unfolding activity.
Humility Matters
Work is work and there's harmony in it when the dignity it deserves is allowed to thrive naturally. The greatest teaching manual labor provides a contemplative practice is that there is no separation between work and prayer: work is prayer and prayer is work.
Crossing the Unknown Sea
To view work as a pilgrimage is to put our heart's desires to hazard, because merely by setting out, we have told ourselves that there is something bigger and better, or even smaller and better – above all something more life giving – that awaits us in our work, and we are going to seek it. We look around to see what we have for the journey and find at bottom that we possess only intuitions and imagination.
As the day brings us the petty round of irritating duties, help us perform them with laughter and a kind face; give us to go blithely on our business.
Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
Meditations and Mandalas
Blessed are you
who work with goodness
who stand for the right
who live in truth.
For you come to know the Friend
who dwells in the secret room
of your heart.
You are like an acorn planted
in fertile soil
that grows into a mighty oak.
Your work blesses others,
you radiate love;
joy delights your heart.
Three Cups of Tea
"My upside days are over, Greg Sahib," he said. "I'd like to work with you for many more years, but Allah, in his wisdom, has taken much of my strength. "
Mortenson hugged this may who'd helped him so often to find his way. Despite Mouzafer's talk of weakness, his arms were still strong enough to squeeze the breath out of a large American. "What will you do?" Mortenson asked.
"My work now," Mouzafer said simply, "is to give water to the trees."
The Dance of the Dolphin
That there is no separation between you and all that is good and true. Grace. A moment in thought where you are not alone, for you realize that you are part of a living, breathing creation. A moment where you understand that the unfolding of your life has meaning. Grace. The interturning of thought, intuition, and work to the highest possible good.
The Mist-Filled Path
The greening spirit that is the shape of our sacred world is ever present, ever near to us. Our daily life can start to feel like a daily grind, causing us to forget this precious greening spirit of life. The Celtic Way banishes the heavy energies of a banal existence by sanctifying every moment with soul energy and purpose. Even the simplest tasks can be invested and imbued with sacred energy.
A work of art is revelation.
Seeds of Grace
Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that at home or in the world we are partners in a common effort, the well understood fact that in God's light all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return ... These are permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes.
True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and to walk humbly under the grace of God.
The Orthodox Way
I am not sitting, I am on a journey. Spiritually we are always on the move. We are on a journey through the inward spaces of the heart, a journey not measured by the hours of our watch or the days of the calendar, for it is a journey out of time into eternity.
The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination of your ignorance concerning yourself and life and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins with spiritual awakening. The "finding" of God is a coming to one's own Self.
The Reasons of the Heart
If I set my heart upon another person, then I cannot live without that person. My heart becomes divided. If I give my heart to my life, on the other hand, if I give my heart to the journey with God, then my heart can be whole in a relationship with another. I can be heart and soul in the relationship because I am heart and soul in the journey of my life.
Mystical Paths
It's strange how much time people spend traveling round and round the circle of existence and getting nowhere. The real journey–the journey all people are required to take to achieve integration, self-realization and fulfillment–"eternal life"–is the journey inwards, the journey to the center of the soul.
The Face Before I Was Born
I first thought of the spiritual journey as a linear path towards a distant goal. Gradually, I came to realize that the spiritual journey is a closed circle of love in which we slowly come closer to the center of ourself, which is always present. In this journey there is no "progress" but a shifting of consciousness that unveils our own essential nature, "the face we had before we were born. "As this spiral path unfolds, so our concepts of both ourself and the journey change, and we come to realize the deeper truth: that the traveler, the journey, and the goal are all one.
The serpentine path was the path of my life, a snakelike, meandering path, winding in and out, up and down. The antithesis of the "straight and narrow." A path that does not ever "come to a point." Two steps left, two steps right. Into the darkness, into the light. Not a goal, but the journey... . I did not know who or what might be ahead on the serpentine path, but I felt a sense of eagerness and anticipation. The dance is about to begin. The dance of my life. It begins anew every day.
Markings
I am being driven forward
Into an unknown lane.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings of expectation.
Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
in the silence.
It is the Journey that matters in the end.
Sacred Journey (April 2001)
I see the way of the artist as a kind of pilgrimage. When you go on a pilgrimage, you set out from where you happen to be and start walking toward a place of great sanctity in the hope of returning from it renewed, enriched, and sanctified. However far you may walk, every pilgrimage is a safari into your own dark interior, an inner journey. For pilgrimages belong to the inner world, to the realm called the "religious."
On Pilgrimage
A journey may feel as if it sweeps towards the skyline, but the sound it makes is always within yourself. The seat of transformation is within.
When the Heart Waits
When changewinds swirl through our lives, they often call us to undertake a new passage of the spiritual journey: that of confronting the lost and counterfeit places within us and releasing our deeper, innermost self–our true selves. They call us to come home to ourselves, to become who we really are.
Ten Poems to Change Your Life
In being true to the small voice within, you are being of service to others and to the world in the most profound way possible. You cannot know where that voice will take you, but in being willing "to save the only life you could save," you are affirming one of the deepest and most sobering truths of all: no one else can ever walk your journey for you. You alone can respond to your call.
We journey together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable supplies of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and the love we give our fragile craft.
The spiritual journey is a story of a return to our heart, the very center of our being, that has been obscured by our driving compulsion to create our own identify.