The Beckoning of This Silence Is Grace

Ask yourself, without referring to past, what is my most fundamental knowledge of my self? It is simply the experience, ‘I am’, the fact of being, which is the essence of meditation or prayer. Imagine you’re a particle of water tossed by waves on the ocean surface. Then you sink just below the waves but still encounter turbulence in the currents there. The waves represent our thoughts – the currents, our feelings. The deeper we sink, the quieter it gets. It’s the same in meditation or prayer. We simply sink into our self, losing the agitation and sorrow derived from our thoughts and feelings. The beckoning of this silence is grace. As being sinks, it gradually loses qualities and limitations. At some point, it stands revealed as infinite being, God’s being, the only being there is. Designations like ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘person’ are temporary qualifications of infinite, ever-present being, the divine presence within us, as us.

Ask yourself, without referring to past, what is my most fundamental knowledge of my self? It is simply the experience, ‘I am’, the fact of being, which is the essence of meditation or prayer. Imagine you’re a particle of water tossed by waves on the ocean surface. Then you sink just below the waves but still encounter turbulence in the currents there. The waves represent our thoughts – the currents, our feelings. The deeper we sink, the quieter it gets. It’s the same in meditation or prayer. We simply sink into our self, losing the agitation and sorrow derived from our thoughts and feelings. The beckoning of this silence is grace. As being sinks, it gradually loses qualities and limitations. At some point, it stands revealed as infinite being, God’s being, the only being there is. Designations like ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘person’ are temporary qualifications of infinite, ever-present being, the divine presence within us, as us.