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Nondual Highlights Issue #1897 Saturday, August 21, 2004 Editor: Mark

On SELF

Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I. And the more you become aware of the unknown self -- if you become aware of it -- the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. You are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. You look and look, and one day you are going to wake upand say, "Why, that's me!" And in knowing that, you know that you never die. You are the eternal thing that comes and goes, that appears -- now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown -- and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.

- Alan Watts

The inner stillness of a person who truly 'is peace' brings peace to the interconnected web of life, both inner and outer. To stop the war, we need to begin with ourselves.

'Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run; the sword is always beaten by the spirit.' (Napoleon Bonaparte)

This is the purpose of a spiritual discipline and of choosing a path with heart - to discover peace and connectedness in ourselves and to stop the war in us and around us.

- Jack Kornfield from the book, A Path WIth Heart, published by Bantam, posted to DailyDharma

What is spiritual silence? It is not just the absence of talk. Silence has substance. It is the presence of something.

Thomas Merton claims that silence is our admission that we have broken communication with God and are now willing to listen. We can be reduced to silence in times of doubt, uncertainty, nothingness, and awe. When we have exhausted all our human efforts, experience the limitations of human justice, or the finitude of human relationships, we are left with silence. Those who have experienced the sacrament of failure are more likely to know the emptying power of silence.

There is a relationship between outward silence and interior silence. Merton notes that even the overuse of sign language within the material silence of the monastery promotes the busy mind. The more silence becomes part of our lives, the less impulsive we become. We are slowed down. Silence can reconcile the contradictions within us holding them in a healthy tension. Often we can internally watch our first response to a situation. The awareness that comes from a grounding in silence allows us to respond more authentically.

- excerpt from the essay Some Thoughts on Silence by Kathryn Damiano

More here: http://www.quakerinfo.com/silence.shtml