Meditation and the "seeking of the silence within" are the
best methods of uncovering the wisdom of the spirit.

Wisdom comes with the ability to be still.

The knowing heart is receptive to the intelligence of Being and is guided by Being. When the heart is awakened and purified, it establishes a connection to Spirit; our finest and noblest capacities are unlocked, our sacred humanness is revealed. What it comes down to, the distillation of all wisdoms, is this: we can rejoin our isolated wills with Love's Will through the knowing of the heart.

Humanity is not alone in the universe, but
surrounded by infinite powers of love and
wisdom.

Wisdom has been defined as crystallized pain.
It is the distilled essence of experience: of
pain and pleasure, sorry and joy, darkness and light.

"Who will teach the young wisdom and discipline? "

Wisdom is not taught, systems are taught. Wisdom comes from experiencing life, or it never comes at all. And life is its own discipline.

"What produces growth and progress? "

Perhaps if we are not pushed and prodded or made to feel ashamed, we will achieve our growth — and our joy as well.

In order to access the grace and power of heaven, we must first learn to live within the gap, that sacred space between our thoughts and judgments.

Most indigenous people will tell you that every location, every part of the Earth, has a spirit and is sacred. They would also say that this sacredness can be intuited, and can directly influence our choices. We can all learn from this wisdom.

Home is where the heart is not famished, the eye not starved, the Sacred not banished or desecrated. The Sacred cannot be caught in formulas. It cannot be analyzed, not even in terms of ecology, as beauty cannot be caught in the semantics of esthetics. Fingers pointing toward the Transcendent need no vocabulary, for they do not preach. Beyond the dialects of all religions they witness to a religious attitude toward life itself.
 

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred.

Suddenly I heard the sound; it was
the sacred whispers. The whispers
come to me from the land, the
sky and the sea, and often they
urge me to be still. Above all,
the whispers signal change.

I began to think of sacredness as a kind of dialogue between the human spirit and certain designated places. These sites that call forth reverence, awe, humility, and wonder — we make them sacred. It is a way of honoring those feelings in ourselves. And when we hear the songs the places sing, we hear our own most ancient voices.

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. … The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God appears with all parts in every moss and cobweb.

To be sacred, a place must be honored, treated with respect. It must gather and hold energy; be alive with the seen and unseen. Above all, a sacred place must be safe — for cells to open, boundaries to expand, what is normally hidden to come forth.

Sacred spaces help us access our own spirits. They offer us doorways through which we can pass, gateways to deepening our connections with nature and our elemental beginnings. Those connections lead us to wholeness; the more we experience the interconnectedness of our bodies and Earth's body, the more we heal spirit.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever we so concentrate our attention that we completely forget our own ego and desires, we are praying.

And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light, there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself, and the sky itself, and to the floating bird. . . . I too dip myself toward the immeasurable.

Prayer obtains what it is due to obtain — not what I personally want to obtain, which is different. It is useful that islands of prayer exist in the world, even if they are composed of only one person, or two, or three, or four.

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

There is a way of BEING prayer that is fully grounded in a personal relationship with the divine. It is the way of trust, in which we do not feel separate from the Source. The entrance to this way has everything to do with the sincerity and intention of the practice and little to do with the particular form of practice. Being prayer includes time and space for lightness and beauty.

If you can't pray a real prayer, pray
hypocritically, full of doubt
and dry-mouthed.

God accepts counterfeit money
as though it were real.

There was simply silence. And in that silence, as I gazed up at the sunlight sparkling through those high upper windows, or followed a secret tug drawing me down into my own heart, I began to know a prayer much deeper than "talking to God."

"Somewhere in those depths of silence I came upon my first experiences of God as a loving presence that was always near, and prayer as a simple trust in that presence.

Dear Pray-er,
A soul not nourished by prayer is like
a barren desert:
Pray when you work.
Pray over every problem.
Pray when you are at home,
Pray with your family.
Pray when you watch the news,
Pray over the nations, the planet.
Pray in the Silence,
Become the Prayer.

The Saguaro (barrel-chested cactus), arms uplifted as though in prayer, might remind us that for countless ages its desert home has been viewed by spiritual seekers as a special prayer space. In the long history of prayer, the desert has often been seen as a holy locale where seekers can travel light and encounter spiritual realities. The desert, whether of sand or of our inner souls, challenges us to see more clearly and to travel with prayer as our best companion.

Holidays are about families, and families can be a bit of a mess under stress. But the love that will gather is much more important than anything else on earth, and bigger than anything else on earth, too. Because finally, that love is sovereign.