In your nature
eternal Godhead,
I shall come to know my nature
And what is my nature, boundless love?
It is fire,
Because You are nothing but a Fire
And You have given humankind
a share in this nature
for by the Fire of Love,
You created us.
Quotations
The Knowing Heart
The experience of love is the most fulfilling and important experience we can have, the highest of all values. Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our complacency and indifference to know the reality, the centrality, of love. Without becoming passive, we can stop resisting and submit to Love. We begin to see the ínfinite power of Love as the greatest cause in the universe, and little by little we begin to serve it. Eventually, we begin to see that even a bitter drink is sweet when it is from the Beloved.
Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
It is only when we come to total and unconditional "love" of our own darkness that we can know God incarnate in us, loving and understanding us in our totality. Pascal says that no one can love God without knowing their own misery.
Silence
One day I stood quietly gazing through our sliding glass doors. It was a windless day, and without thinking, I found myself slipping into a silent world. Then something overcame me. Whereas silence had been a visitor, a friend with whom I communed when I chose, now silence slipped into the core of my being. Without my knowíng, without even my consciousness consent, sílence entered me ín a way a spouse penetrates his espoused. I realized with a shock that this seeking of silence had led to consummation. I was consumed. I was wed — in a way that had no guests, no celebration, no fanfare or music, and no witness. Except my heart.
Compassion is an awareness that you become, rather than something that you do on occasion.
Compassion is an awareness that you become, rather than something that you do on occasion.
Eternity, My Beloved
My dear, for the last ten years Arletta has been coming to see me every Thursday, and when he can't come, he stops in to tell me. We're old friends. I think he likes to talk with me. Do you know, when he found me, I couldn't even walk? Some of my toenaíls were at least three inches long. He came back with fríends. They heated water, cut my toenalls, and rubbed my feet. Look, over there is the basin, all polished and shiny. Do you know hím very well? I wonder what he sees in me. I had begun to believe that no one would ever love me again.
The Angel of the Presence
Pure Love is seeking desire, searching through space, through the air, through the ground, seeking fulfillment. On and on it goes until at last awakening in Itself, It finds Its foundation in the heart... God's Love is the One Flood that never recedes, but rises, rises, covering the universe, covering every living atom. The lowest and highest join in one overwhelming desire to give all to Divine Love: Love fulfilling, feeding', giving, opening in every direction — giving without beginning or end; Love, the root of Life.
The Other Side of the Sun
Love has to go through darkness and pain and endurance and a stark acceptance before it can come out into the far light of the sun.
The Shape of Living
When someone has compassion on us, we find ourselves really seen, heard, attended to. If someone's attention is genuinely compassionate, it does not stop at attentiveness: he or she is willing to speak, act, or even suffer with us and for us. It is in such passivity, as we receive their compassion, that the most powerful dynamics of our own feeling and activity are shaped. Amazed gratitude for such compassion can last a lifetime.
May the Holy One preserve in me a burning love for the world and a great gentleness.
All loves are but the reflection of One Love and ultimately lead to that love.
The Symbolic and the Real
This is one of the things that love is called upon to do:
To affirm and sustain the seed in another human being even though no tangible evidence has been given of the nature and quality of the seed that is growing there. Love depends upon the capacity to reach beneath the surface of persons, to feel and touch the seed of life that is hidden there. And love becomes a power when it is capable of evoking that seed and drawing it forth from its hiding place.
Grace's Window
In prayer, I am learning to observe the silences between the words. I am learning that I don't have to fill the empty space because the space will eventually sing for itself. The waiting and listening and silence teach that the active work of prayer must be balanced by the humble acceptance of grace.
Awakening to Prayer
At the extremity of prayer words vanish, or rather the "silence-become-word" surpasses all that can be uttered. Prayer becomes the silence of Love, and this silence reveals the "I" in its deepest aspects; and, should words suddenly arise in prayer, we must regard them as fruits of love that send us back to silence.
We pray that God may accept our call for help. And we also pray that God, who knows that which is hidden, may hear the silent cries of our soul.
The seed of prayer is sown in heaven.
It pushes its stems toward the earth
and comes to grow there.
It produces an abundance of fruit.
Then, as it becomes seed once more,
it thrusts its way back to heaven.
The root of all prayer is interior silence.
Reason Is Powerless in the Expression of Love
Many people ask me, "How does one pray?" For me, alone in my room in a prayerful attitude, I just see myself as incapable of doing anything without God, since indeed, God is the Provider, the Guide ... and so I turn to God. When there is no within or without, then our prayers are answered, for surely it is union with the One Source of all Life, the Divine, whatever words you want, that is the yearning of the soul.
And yes, my friends, it is for you to find out what prayer is. It is the humility of a child. It is the beauty of being. And it is the love of being alive. So ask God how to pray with all the sincerity, honesty, humility, and passion you have within you. And I'm sure that one day your prayer, which will be God's prayer, will be answered.
Nothing is more difficult than prayer. In all other tasks of spiritual life, however exacting, one can sometimes rest, but there is no rest in prayer, up to the end of one's life.
Two Sisters in Spirit
Praying brings Therese into communion with her mother, her father and her sisters. For part of her experience in prayer is condltíoned by the presence of beloved persons: the presence of human love is a sort of token for the hidden presence of God. How otherwise can a child be trained in prayer, in realizing the hidden presence, except by the sacrament of visible, tangible love? Therese is taken into their prayer and nestles there.
Source of All, act within my being that I may act in accordance with Thine. Amen
The World Within
PRAYER releases energy as certainly as the closing of an electric circuit does. It heightens all human capacities. It refreshes and quickens life. It unlocks reservoirs of power. It opens invisible doors into new storehouses of spiritual force for the Person to live by, and, as I believe, for others to live by as well. It is effective and operative as surely as are the forces of steam or gravitation.
In downtown Little Rock late one day, a monk saw a bag lady with her full cart staring at the sky.
She ignored his questions, continuing to study the sunset. He looked and saw the bright reds and oranges set against the deep blue sky and white clouds. It was a stunning display of color and contrast.
After a time, she patted his arm and he looked into her sparkling eyes, seeing the fresh tears on her dirty cheeks and the toothless smile.
"God," she whispered, "is just TOO good to me!"
Idylls of the King
If thou shouldn'st never see my face again, pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
As my prayer became more attentive and inward
I had less and less to say.
I finally became completely silent.
I started to listen
--which is even further removed from speaking.
I first thought that praying entailed speaking.
I then learnt that praying is hearing,
not merely being silent.
This is how it is.
To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking.
Prayer involves becoming silent,
and being silent,
and waiting until God is heard.
True prayer is a life of radical abiding in God.
From Center to Circumference
A common way of praying for me is to allow myself to move deeply within into the center of self. I may begin by presenting a situation of concern to God and then move into silence. This is a dark (not depressing) kind of praying, but I descend deep into the mystery where there is both peace and silence; I lose consciousness of the time and place in which I exist in the moment and move into the darkness of God, into unknowing... I return to waking consciousness feeling vulnerable and empowered; I experience tenderness and new awareness.
A Testament of Devotion
Deep within us all, there ís an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn líves, warming us wíth intimatíons of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of humanity.
Knowledge of Freedom
The energy of human consciousness may share an afflnity with light that we do not yet understand. Turning toward that light, we might find it the source of all our inspiration and creativity.
Stories to Heal By
The silence as broken at last by the bell signifying the end of morning activity. Turning to the old woman, I asked, "What are you looking at?" I immediately flushed. Prying into the lives of the residents was strictly forbidden. Perhaps she had not heard. But she had. S1ow1y she turned toward me, and I could see her face for the first time. It was radiant. In a voice filled with joy she said, "Why, child, I am looking at the Light."
The Angel of Presence
The mind is to be a reservoir of Light — free, ready to give color and form, ready to speak from Wisdom's Source. Silence is the opening note. The Indwelling Light illumines the heart and mind, loosening the sightless, stormswept self. The freeing of Light, of God's own Life within, is the means of self-expression — not self-filled expression — but God-like freedom.
The Face Before I Was Born
On the pavement a group of schoolchildren was walking past the
driveway with their teacher. I noticed these young children
crossing and suddenly I saw them in a way I have never seen human
beings before or since. They were so full of light I could
hardly 1ook, and on each child's chest where the heart is, a huge
radiance like the sun was shining. Each little child had this
dynamic, brilliant light, this radiant sun, ín the center of
their being. The experience of the líght, its brillíance and
energy, was beautiful and overwhelming. Later I came to
realize that what I saw is the true nature of human beings —
we are dynamic, luminous creatures of light.
It is better to live a holy life than to talk about it, Lighthouses do not ring bells and fire cannons to call attention to their shining — they just shine.
Without the Light, the journey of life is fraught with dangers and no traveler's vision can penetrate the haze of self-centeredness. The ímage of God as Light that suffuses all the universe is one that unítes the divine transcendence and immanence... All of creation is replete with "signs" of God's presence, but they cannot be discerned without the Light.
The Light Shall Set You Free
The millennium holds the promise that Heaven will be created on Earth, and this will be accomplished by grounding spirituality into all walks of life. We are the light and co-creators with God, and it is our responsibility to use this light to bring peace, love, happiness, and abundance to the Planet.
Voice from the Desert
We are made for Light. There are moments of perfect happiness,
moments when one feels so well, at peace with oneself and with others.
Such moments of fullness exist. They are rare, perhaps, but we have
all experienced them. Each of us is capable of living such moments.
They continue to send signals to us even when we are in despair. For
on the mountain God summons us to the Light.
Sometimes at the momet of despair, a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted," accepted by that which is great than you.
No deep darkness in the world
Can overcome the light.
A single candle flame will burn
Against the darkest night.
Let all the world of darkness come ...
Resentment, envy, fears.
Then light the single flame of love
the darkness disappears!
F=Perfume of the Desert
There are lights which ascend and lights which descend. The ascending lights are the lights of the heart; the descending lights are those of the Throne. The false self is the veil between the Throne and the heart, like springs toward like. Light ascends toward light and light descends upon light, and "it is light upon light."
Lying Awake
Nothing was changed, yet everything was changed. Compared to this, she felt as if she had been sleepwalking all of her life. "God is here."
I pierce the universe.
God pierces me.
I do not think; I am thought.
I do not know; I am known.
Every movement, every breath was poetry. She had passed through her dark night of the soul, and understood now how the light in one's heart – the light of faith – could shine brighter than the midday sun.
Blessed One,
Flood my soul with Thy Spirit and light ...
Shine throuh me and be so in me that
every soul I come in contact with may
feel Thy Presence in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me,
but only You.
Stay with me and then I shall begin
to shine as You shine,
so to shine as to be a light for others.
Amen.
Living Prayer
I need time to listen, to examine, and to confess ... to listen for the Voice, if for no other reason that so I will recognize it more clearly in the ways it speaks into the noise and bustle of the life I lead. The silence that I seek must be nurtured until it lives in me no matter where I am at the moment. The silence I seek must be something more than the absence of the numbing noise and debilitating detail of life in our society. It must be a solitude that is transcendent, a stillness that can be found in the midst of noise, a silence that is portable.
Poustinia
A day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence, If the noises become for us the echo of the presence of God. When we speak of ourselves and are filled with ourselves, we leave silence behind. When we repeat the intimate words of God that are within us, our silences remain intact.
Dancing Madly Backwards
SILENCE: an energy which extends beyond the furthest reaches of the universe — and never vanishes, a quiet which pervades every particle of this world, and glides through the blackness of the great harbor by night, and speaks differently by day. Speech is the body of silence: the word floats up from silence; it flows back into silence. The word of relationship and the quiet of the heart are inseparable — like love and the silence from which it is born, and the rest to which it returns, unceasingly.
Give Yourself the Silent Treatment
Quiet ... silence ... tranquility. Those are qualities of life seldom enjoyed today. Incorporating silence into daily living is both possible and desirable. But in order to make silence a presence rather than an absence, we have to work at it. The effort can result in greater introspection, spiritual sensitivity and creativity. No matter how busy life becomes, anyone can discover occasions each month, each week, and even each day, to create nourishing silence.
The Speech of the Grail
The spaciousness of silence nurtures new sensitivities, new sense-abilities. During this phase of the spiritual journey, the emphasis will not be directly on speaking but on perceiving: on SEEING instead of just looking, on LISTENING instead of just hearing. Eyes and ears are not sufficient... To speak from the heart, we must listen to the speech of the heart, which grows articulate in being moved and is animated by the speech of the world. The eyes of the heart do not find nouns in the world, but verbs. The seeing and listening of the heart enable us to appreciate the world and all it phenomena as animate. We must simply become quiet enough, heartfully sense-able enough, to perceive and inwardly honor this silent speech of the world.
Thoughts in Solitude
The solitary life, being silent, clears away the smoke-screen of words that we lay down between our mind and things... Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world of silence, words to not separate us from the world nor from others, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.
I believe in the influence of silent and
radiant people. Such people are rare.
They, nevertheless, give savor to the
world.
The Enlightened Heart
You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
And I smile, and am silent,
And even my soul remains quiet:
It lives in the other world
Which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.
And I smile, and am silent,
And even my soul remains quiet:
It lives in the other world
Which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.