Good day, good people,
We may sometimes feel that cultivating a relationship with Silence is a luxury—even a selfish or self-centered act. For many, stepping away from life's demands in order to have time and space to access quieter environments is indeed a privilege. However, as Thomas Keating, Robert Sardello, Cynthia Bourgeault, and other teachers remind us, Silence reveals a deeper reality. It is not merely an absence of noises but the very source of all sound, a purposive dimension of divine nature.
Even sound cannot cause us to fall out of Silence, just as we cannot fall out of God, Mercy, or the Ray of Creation itself. Our way of being and doing reverberates within the vast Whole of Silence, the Divine, Mercy, and the Ray of Creation. When we relate with Silence, we participate in what Cynthia Bourgeault has termed imaginal activism amidst the prevailing egregores—non-physical entities created by the collective thoughts and emotions—of terror, rage, dissociation, and disengagement. As Sardello explores in his book Silence, the heart is our instrument for finding our way and attuning ourselves to the healing currents and oscillations intrinsic to the great Silence of Cosmic Wisdom. This at once physical, psychic, and spiritual organ's interior is full of the movements of Silence. When we reside within the heart, entrained by empathetic resonance to these movements, we access the imaginal world and act as the bridge we are meant to be for this earthly realm.
Cynthia Bourgeault often reminds us that our post within the Ray of Creation is to allow the more subtle energies of the imaginal realm (World 24, the Kingdom of God) to be mixed with the more dense conditions in our own realm (World 48). She also emphasizes our responsibility to steward our atmospheres in such a way as to operate by way of the frequencies and laws of World 24 rather than being pulled into the frequencies and laws of World 96 and 192. This is our present task, our imaginal activism which is much more than an individual or collective improvement effort but a service to something unmanifest, something beyond our current capacity to envision.
In the spirit of this task, let us return and hold close the prophetic words of Bayo Akomolafe, which function both as a call and a blessing:
May this new decade be remembered as the decade of the strange path, of the third way, of the broken binary, of the traversal disruption, the kairotic moment, the posthuman movement for emancipation, the gift of disorientation that opened up new places of power, and of slow limbs.May this decade bring more than just solutions, more than just a future - may it bring words we don't know yet, and temporalities we have not yet inhabited. May we be slower than speed could calculate, and swifter than the pull of the gravity of words can incarcerate. And may we be visited so thoroughly, and met in wild places so overwhelmingly, that we are left undone. Ready for composting. Ready for the impossible. Welcome to the decade of the fugitive.
As we traverse the final weeks of Epiphanytide, perhaps we can embrace the ongoing cultivation of our relationship with Silence as our imaginal activism—for our Whole Selves, the Whole Self of Humanity, the Whole Self of this Earth Ecosystem, and the Whole Self of the Ray of Creation.
With Great Love and Silence,
Heather
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, February 3rd
Reading: “In his exploration of silence, Sardello shows that it is “not merely human transformation but the transubstantiation of the world… Holy Silence is calling us to bring the entirety of our human experiences and perceptions to and through a hidden altar, deep within the human body and heart, for the good of the world.” — Therese Schroeder-Sheker
Chant: Stilled and quiet [I Am], in God’s presence, I take my rest (by Sister Helen Marie Gilsdorf, RSM)
Tuesday, February 4th
Reading: “The first paradox—and it is foundational to all eight of these poems—is that silence is not absence but presence. It is a "same thing," not a nothing. It has substantiality, heft, force. You can lean into it, and it leans back. It meets you; it holds you up. Thomas had made this discovery no later than the early 2000s, and he was leaning into it more and more powerfully during the final years of his life. "One just listens to the sound of sheer silence, which is no sound at all, but just presence," he comments in Reflections on the Unknowable-"a delightful being with the silence, presence or stillness."' His own Centering Prayer became progressively more formless and spontaneous as he simply closed his eyes and leaned back into that relational field, so vibrantly alive and enfolding.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Mystic
Chant: I am Present to the Presence, it is my only care, I am held by the Presence, the fountain of creative love (by Kristy Christian)
Wednesday, February 5th
Reading: “Gradually, as you progress in meditation, you begin to reorient. Centering Prayer's instruction to let go of all thoughts, regardless of content, directs you back to the silence itself, where the shape of the new terrain gradually reveals itself. Like Thomas, you begin to discover that silence does indeed have depth, presence, shape, even sound. It speaks, eloquently and intimately, but it speaks in sensation, not in thought bytes, and what it brings is not messages but an intuitive, intimate knowingness. As progress along the path unfolds, the perception that the emptiness is in fact the presence becomes more and more palpable. The "sound" of silence keeps right on growing-until at last, at Thomas's own late stage in the journey, it has become “thunderous.”” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Mystic
Intone: silence
Thursday, February 6th
Reading: “AIl spiritual traditions value Silence. The Tao Te Ching speaks of the Tao as "for lack of a better word, the Great Way. It flows, circles, flows and circles. And it has no name." So described, the Tao is probably the same as Silence… Meister Eckhart says this of Silence: "The central silence is the purest element of the soul, the soul's most exalted place, the core, the essence of the soul." Here, the exalted place of Silence as constitutive of soul correlates with all that this book says concerning a new manner of living the great inner life. Pythagoras said, "Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb the silence." Silence is autonomous. It is beyond us; our task is to coordinate our being with the greater Being of Silence.” — Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness
Chant: Listen, listen wait in silence listening; for the one from whom all mercy flows (by The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West)
Friday, February 7th
Reading: “The traditions have always recognized the autonomy of Silence. Silence is not something that we do, nor is it a personal capacity. We can become quiet and by doing so the door to Silence opens. Krishnamurti agrees: "This quietness, this silence is the highest form of intelligence which is never personal, never yours or mine. Being anonymous, it is whole and immaculate." Lao Tsu speaks of Silence: "The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return. They grow and flourish and then return to the source. Returning to the source is Silence, which is the way of nature." Here, what is spoken of as the Self corresponds with what in this writing we speak of as the capacity of attention necessary to find and be conscious with the Silence. Of the many things Rumi says of Silence, here is one: 'Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, Be more silent.'" — Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness
Saturday, February 8th with Tom
Reading: STILLNESS by Thomas Keating
Our true nature is stillness,
The Source from which we come.
It manifests itself within us
As a rising tide of silence.
A flowing stream of peacefulness,
a limitless ocean of calm,
Or just sheer stillness.
The deep listening of pure
contemplation
Is the path to stillness.
All words disappear into It,
And all creation awakens to the
delight of Just Being.
“Everybody just loves this poem. It seems to meet people wherever they are. It plays equally well with beginning meditators and with folks who've been on the path for a decades....
"… a Christian might call this (process) theosis or divinization. It's a term many Christians are still a bit wary of; It sounds like a human being claiming divine status. In reality, the unfolding is in the opposite direction. A human being has not been transformed into God; Rather, God has descended fully into a human heart, transforming it into a radiant hologram of the divine wisdom and compassion. As the early church father Irenaeus of Lyons famously taught, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” The glorious, flowing aliveness is what speaks to us so deeply in this poem.
"Surprisingly, this glorious, flowing aliveness is also what Thomas means by 'stillness.'" — Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Mystic
Chant: Stillness, deep deep within us. From small beginnings it flows into the living waters. The ocean of God, through our stillness, God moves.” (words by Gerard Guiton, from Stillness, p. 23, put to chant by Paulette Meier)
Sunday, February 9th with Angela
Reading: 'It Is Possible' by Joyce Rupp, The Cosmic Dance
it is possible
to become so one
with Earth
that every flower
perfumes the soul,
every snowflake
sends icy softness
dancing through veins,
every drop of rain
trickles down vessels
of the heart,
every cloud in the sky
sails along
song
lines of the spirit,
every earthquake
rumbles in the gut,
every tide of the sea
moves in and out of self,
it is possible
to become one
with Earth
just as it is possible
to become one
with all people,
their pain, my pain,
their joy, my joy,
their struggle and delight
an echo of my own.
it is possible to become one.
it is possible.
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