silence

Our soul is not to be regarded as a higher- as distinct from a lower- self but as a vibrating link through which our human personality perceives the influences exerted by the cosmos. At the same time, our soul is equally a link to every earthly desire. Left on its own, soul gravitates toward earthly desires & becomes forgetful of its connection with the spiritual cosmos. Silence is the primary means by which this connection can be reestablished & desire can be turned again toward the stars, without abandoning the world. Until we develop an inner discipline within our soul, we feel rebuffed, turned away; & cast aside when we try to enter the Silence in a conscious way & go deeply into it. Silence seems to be an unformed, dark, mysterious realm without specification of any kind. However, there is much more to this realm than the rippling after-image of feeling ‘whole,’ a feeling we mistake for the essence of the experience……Robert Sardello

this deeply humbling journey finds effort to be without worth & a never-ending distance between monkey mind & deep rest…….& where is this infinite realm? void? emptiness? bliss?

when the work of emptying is done, kneel to your heart in fullness….

When faced with the need to keep going inward, we are confronted with a very difficult kind of life choice: like carving up your grandmother’s table for firewood to keep your loved ones warm or burning an old familiar sense of self because it’s gotten so thick you can’t feel the rain. In truth, always needing to stay immediate by removing what is no longer real is the working inner definition of ‘sacrifice’- giving up with reverence & compassion what no longer works in order to stay close to what is sacred……..Mark Nepo

this seems to be the secret to finding stillness…the seat of silence may be about shedding…..that lightness of being found whole again & again by breathing in softness & breathing out the edge…..

To find yourself in the infinite,

You must distinguish & then unite.

…..Goethe