Meditation is not about trying to create something special, to get to a special state; meditation is more about uncovering what has always been and always is here. One is simply trying to bring external conditions into alignment with that fundamental reality of human nature.
Ajahn Amaro, Finding the Missing Peace
I don’t know who God is exactly.
But I’ll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking….
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying.
Said the river I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water.
I’d been to the river before, a few times.
Don’t blame the river that nothing happened quickly.
You don’t hear such voices in an hour or a day.
You don’t hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears.
And it’s difficult to hear anything anyway, through
all the traffic, the ambition.
Mary Oliver, At the River Clarion
A sense of Mystery can take us beyond disappointment and judgment to a place of expectancy. It opens in us an attitude of listening and respect. If everyone has in them the dimension of the unknown, possibility is present at all times. . . . Knowing this enables us to listen to life from the place in us that is Mystery also. Mystery requires that we relinquish an endless search for answers and become willing to not understand. . . . Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years, I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.
Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings
The more alert we become to the blessings that flow into us from everything we touch,
the more our own touch will bring blessing.
Br. David Stendl-Rast
Our psychological distress is composed of at least three elements: the basic pain of feelings that seem overwhelming; the contracting of body and mind to avoid feeling this pain; and the stress of continually having to prop up and defend an identity based on this avoidance and denial. One of the main ways we try and hold our identity together is by developing an elaborate web of rationalizations – stories about the way we are or reality is – to justify our denial and avoidance.
John Welwood, Toward A Psychology of Awakening
