The silent witness

I think there is only one subject worth my attention and that is the precognition of the spiritual side of the world and, within this recognition, the condition of my own spiritual state.

Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

We in the West think that the mind is everything, but all Eastern practice is to get beyond the mind to the point of the silent witness, where you’re witnessing yourself, where you’ve gone beyond the ego, beyond the self. The Indian tradition rests on what the West has largely lost: that there are three levels. There is the level of the body and the level of the mind, which the Western world thinks is the end. But beyond the body is the spirit. It’s the Atman, the pneuma of St. Paul, another dimension where we go beyond the mind, the senses, and the feelings, and we’re aware of the transcendent reality.

And that is the goal of life, to get to that.

Bede Griffiths

Gateways

I have come to see the profound value of taking in the whole landscape of life and not rejecting or denying what we are given.

I have also learned that our waywardness, difficulties, and ‘crises’ might not be terminal obstacles. They can actually be gateways to wider, richer internal and external landscapes. If we willingly investigate our difficulties, we can fold them into a view of reality that is more courageous, inclusive, emergent, and wise – as have many others who have fallen over the edge.

Joan Halifax

a flowing dynamic process

When we see deeply into impermanence, we see into emptiness. Things are empty of any fixed, inherent identity because they are always changing.

This emptiness is not a void but a flowing, dynamic process. It is the very condition for the arising of all experience.

 Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening

30 seconds

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute.

Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees.

The mind might tell you, ‘I don’t have time.’ But that’s the mind talking to you.

Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.
 

Eckhart Tolle interview with Oprah Winfrey

finding a way

When it is time for you to embark upon a journey of transformation, you may feel a call from within. No one else may hear it, but you do, and it thrills you and terrifies you all at once. There will be guides and teachers along the way—other people, books, dreams, unexpected sources of wisdom – but only you can take the steps.

You are the only one who can find your way through the forest. You are the only one who can recognize your missteps and your breakthroughs.

Others can encourage you, but you must walk the path alone. And eventually, you will come to realize that the way you walk the path is the destination.

Elizabeth Lesser Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow.

Sunday quote: not in the future

One touches the infinite not by striving toward some future moment but by attending to the present

Forever is composed of nows.

Emily Dickinson Letter No. 330