KNOW that all who live in the magnified Presence
are forever advancing towards the moment of
Great Realization
in their lives.
The Light that shines in the Silence,
in that space of Awakening,
is beyond the brilliance of even the greatest Sun.
It is the Light of your Heart.
and your Heart is the Morning Star.
O listen if you would,
for therein lies a teaching.

Notice that the more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are the victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego -- your need to possess and control -- and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous -- large souled.

Prayer opens the heart. Each time we pray we are connecting with a greater source of energy and we are amplifying that energy. Our gratitude, thanksgiving, for even the smallest gift we have received, allows our heart to open. The more the heart opens, the larger our vision becomes. This prayer, this energy, links us with all the goodness on the planet.

We seat ourselves so that we are evenly spaced from one another and begin to meditate. In my own meditation, I see how I have tried to control a situation in which a friend wanted to participate -- a situation that was actually beyond my control. In retrospect, I recognize that the presence of my friend has been a blessing. In gratitude, I realize that I must always be ready to shift and adapt, for in rigid resistance, I might miss my greatest opportunities.

To learn to be grateful for each challenge, every heart, every tear, as well as for the unexpected joy and love you encounter, is a lesson of great growth. Every experience is a step closer to your eventual union with the Source of All Creation. Even a moment of expressing your gratitude for your own creation, your own eternal life each day brings you closer to the love and power within.

Each thing I have received, from Thee it came,
Each thing for which I hope, from Thy love it will come,
Each thing I enjoy, it is of Thy bounty,
Each thing I ask comes of Thy disposing.

In all things may we be grateful, our hearts open to joy.
O Blessed one, speak to us within our hearts;
let your Voice be heard.
As we listen and heed your Word, joy will be our song of thanks.
As you lead us into the Silence, we become friends with solitude;
With trust in You, our lives become simple, with assurance
and peace leaving no room for fear.
All that we have is gift from You, O Beloved,
all that we are is Yours as well.
May we come to see that all we give to others,
we give to ourselves and You.

The hieroglyphy for peace is a simple loaf of bread set on a reed mat. It implies nurturing, simplicity, contentment, and rest, a prayer of thankfulness before a meal, an offering made.

The heart is contented because it receives what it needs and its needs are simple: silence, prayer, nourishment, presence. Simplicity of the heart keeps our aims and purposes in life clear... In peace we contemplate our lives and concentrate our energies on the true desires of the heart aligned with God.

We learn that patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to live each moment, knowing that we will be attended to by God.

Now are come the days of brown leaves. They fall from the trees; they flutter on the ground. ... I hear them tell you of their borning days, when they did come into the world as leaves. ... Today, they were talking of the time before their borning days of the springtime. ... They told how they were a part of earth and air, before their tree-borning days. And now they are going back. They go back to the earth again. But they do not die.

In that moment of awareness, I had an epiphany, that the light we encounter on the road of death is our being in the act of coming home to itself. I understood that light is our natural state, but that we human beings must help each other as we move toward the shores of light. ...Being in the light is knowing we must get others into it. ...The light is where we belong. Everyone who is not in the light is looking forward to being there. So we leave the light to go and experience the need for light and thus come back to it anew.

The world is not a place but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true. I once thought love was supposed to be nothing but bliss. I now know it is also worry and grief, hope and trust. ... If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.

I am not sure at what point I realized that the man whom I had seen as my all-powerful and invincible father not only wanted me as I am, but also needed me to stand by him through the long journey into his own death. My father needed my friendship. It still seems to me to be an astonishing gift of God's grace that in the last years of his life I was able to stand with him as his friend who was his adult child.

The only way to avoid death is not to be born in the first place. In death there is union with the Beloved. The real skill is to reach the secret of death before dying.

We prepare for death, or rather eternity, by consciously adjusting the focus of our life so that it is not upon our personality and the flowing world that spawns upon it, but instead upon our individuality and the Great Fullness with which we are one. This process of focusing our attention is called meditation. In meditation we die to the personality and are reborn as something much greater. That rebirth is not a sudden or one-time event, but is a gradual process in which we become ever more focused on who and what we really are behind the mask of personality ... the process of dying to death by being reborn to reality.

Naturally, most of us would like to die a peaceful death, but it is clear that we cannot hope to die peacefully if our lives have been full of violence, or if our minds have mostly been agitated by emotions like anger, attachment, or fear.  So if we wish to die well, we must learn how to live well: Hoping for a peaceful death, we must cultivate peace in our mind, and in our way of life.

Teach me to treat my death as an act of communion.

Our society has forgotten that all of life can be a work of art, even the most mundane-seeming tasks... There is great beauty in cleanliness and order and bringing it into being. Watering the plants is as necessary as cleaning the stove, and vice versa. All these tasks bespeak care for oneself and others, and appreciation of the opportunity to create a temenos -- a sanctuary, a safe and sacred place.

Let us, like a painter, take time to stand back from our work, to be still, and thus to see what's what... True repose is standing back to survey the activities that fill our days.

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin -- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

The true prophetic message always calls us to stretch our arms out wide and embrace the whole world. In holy boldness we cover the earth with the grace and mercy of God. This is a great task, a noble task... Helmut Thielicke writes, "The globe itself lives and is upheld as by Atlas arms through the prayers of those who love has not grown cold. The world lives by these uplifted hands, and by nothing else!"

O God, that at all times You may find me as You desire me and where You would have me be, that You may lay hold on me fully, both by the Within and the Without of myself, grant that I may never break the double thread of my life.

The universe is my way.
Love is my law.
Peace is my shelter.
Experience is my school.
Obstacle is my lesson.
Difficulty is my stimulant.
Pain is my warning.
Work is my blessing.
Balance is my attitude.
(The Voice of Silence is my guide.)

We receive according to the emptiness of our hearts and hands.

When a young man in Uganda, a great soccer player, had his knee purposely blown out by someone in a soccer game, ending his professional career, he could have chosen bitterness. But instead, he began to help other young men who were aimless and without directions, who were on drugs, in gangs, doing nothing.

First he gave himself to building them up by teaching them to be soccer players. Once that relationship was established, he helped them develop skills and crafts, so that they could make a living and then become responsible fathers and community contributors...You could see how his own soul was nurtured by his desire to contribute, to focus outside himself.