stillness

It was in the fall and winter that I felt closest to my tree

As strange as it may sound, it was in the fall and winter that I felt closest to my tree. Her spring beauty and summer fruit filled me with delight, but when the days began to grow cool and the leaves turned from darkest green to yellow, I could feel something deep and marvelously intimate begin to take place between us. And as fall turned to winter, this feeling of intimacy grew. With no bees humming among the blossoms, no birds fluttering from limb to limb, no leaves and cherries decorating her branches, my tree seemed to reveal herself to me in her purest form -- in her very essence. And when I embraced her and pressed my ear against her trunk, I could hear the silence that united us. And I knew that was sacred. (Choqosh Auh-Ho-Ho)

Attuning our awareness to the way we function

Attuning our awareness to the way we function and our relationship to the universe is the primary aim of most spiritual practice. Many teachings point out that our main enemy is ignorance. Awareness is our only defense against ignorance. This is why the practice of silence in spiritual retreat is so beneficial -- it raises and expands our awareness... A spiritual retreat is medicine for soul starvation. Through silence, solitary practice, and simple living, we begin to fill the empty reservoir. This lifts the veils, dissolves the masks, and creates space within for the feelings of forgiveness, compassion, and loving kindness that are so often blocked.

What is the source of thought?

What is the source of thought? Such a demanding question, the mind wants to go to sleep. It requires an enormous and penetrating effort. What is the source of meaning? There is a silence that does not have to be conjured, doesn't require attainment. Nothing you can do to bring it about. It's there constantly. It is the source of everything. Look into silence for a moment. You can touch this silence with your belly. You can touch this silence with your whole being. There is no more fear. Silence is the meaning. Listen to the chatter of your brain. Only echoes. Look deeply into the valley from which those echoes resonate. Listen to the valley itself, the silence. It is here that true function is revealed.

Ten thousand flowers in spring

Ten thousand flowers in spring,
the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer,
snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

Whenever I experience God playing in my heart, I feel excitement and wonder

Whenever I experience God playing in my heart, I feel excitement and wonder. I am never really clear what has happened except that I begin to see old things in new ways. The whole of the experience seems more than the sum of its parts and the more I ponder the experience, the more I discover in it.

September 1993 (Vol. VI, No. 8)

May the blessings of inner peace and quiet joy be with each of you as we move toward the autumn season!

Listening to my silence

Celia Wesle

Shapes, dynamics,
sounds, meaning:
at a time.
I have to gestate the experience,
bake it in my mind's oven,
pull away,
avoid stimulus.
I need just to be
and listen to my silence.

Wind in the cave

Unknown
Wind in the cave.
Movement in stillness.
Power in silence.

Let us, then, labor for an inward stillness

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Let us, then, labor for an inward stillness, --
And inward stillness and an inward healing;
That perfect silence where the lips and heart
Are still, and we no longer entertain
Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
But God alone speaks in us, and we wait
In singleness of heart, that we may know
God's will, and in the silence of our spirits,
That we may do God's will, and do that only!

Silence makes the secretions of the mind visible

Joan Halifax The Fruitful Darkness

Silence makes the secretions of the mind visible. By emptying myself when I fast, emptying myself in solitude, I might discover myself full -- of history, wilderness and society. And I can see my identity co-evolving with all of creation ... I willingly entered the Valley of the Shadow through solitude, silence, stillness, meditation, and prayer. In those quiet places, I discovered a mindstream whose depths were luminous.

I had decided to marry the silent forest

Thomas McDonnell A Thomas Merton Reader

One might say, I had decided to marry the silent forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife. Out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world. So perhaps I have an obligation to preserve the stillness, the silence, the poverty, the virginal point of pure nothingness which is at the center point of all other loves. I attempt to cultivate this plant without comment in the middle of the night and water it with psalms and prophecies in silence. It becomes the most rare of all the trees in the garden, at once the primordial paradise tree, the axis mundi, the cosmic axle, and the Cross.

A day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence,

Catherine de Hueck Doherty

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, if the voices are, for us, messages and solicitations of God.

A name of God which is not a na

Graham Smith Prayer Words

Dom Henri le Saux, a French Benedictine monk, suggests that the sacred sound "OM" can be used by anyone:

More than any particular name of Divinity, OM conveys the ineffability and the depths of the divine Mystery. It bears no distinct meaning ... It does not even recall any mythological or semi-historic event. It is a kind of inarticulate exclamation uttered when you are confronted with the Presence in yourself and around yourself.

You could say that OM is a name of God which is not a name.

Tilling the fields of silence

Elaine Laforet
One must be still to till the fields of silence.

Stillness

Meister Eckhart

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

We have to earn silence

Pico Iyer

We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion. Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper than mere thoughts allow. In silence, we might better say, we can hear Someone else think ... Silence, then, could be said to be the ultimate province of trust: it is the place where we trust ourselves to be alone; where we trust others to understand the things we do not say; where we trust a higher harmony to assert itself.

If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine

Deng Ming-Dao 365 TAO

If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine. But if we engage solely in the frenetic activities of our daily involvements, if we seek to impose our own schemes on the natural order, and if we allow ourselves to become turbulent ... There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves. True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle. Just as water seeks its own level, the mind with gravitate toward the holy. Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, and so too will the mind become clear if it is allowed to be still.

The name that can be named

Lao-tzu

The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

Stand there

If we are called to be observers and contemplators, we are also called to nourish, to be nourishers, not consumers. Only a nourisher knows when to stop, not to overeat, overindulge, to draw back. To say no. I have a friend who has a coffee mug with the inscription: DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING, STAND THERE ... We often underestimate those who stand there. But I have had to do some new thinking about all this, as I have had to do some new thinking about the sound of the tree falling in the forest. If we are unwilling to practice the gift of contemplation, we are likely to get stuck in one position, and to be fearful of changing it, and so we cling, unable to laugh at ourselves and move on.

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