The reason why silence is so disturbing to us [is this]: As soon as we begin to become silent, we experience the relativity of our ordinary everyday mind. With this mind we measure our space and time coordinates, we calculate probabilities and count up our mistakes and successes. It is so useful and familiar a state of mind that we easily think it is all there is to us: our whole mind, our real selves, our full meaning.
Laurence Freeman
When we learn to be where we are, we gain perspective on life. Yesterday loses its hold on us and tomorrow loses its allure. Where we are becomes the ground of our salvation, the reason for our joy and the acme of our salvation…..Mindfulness calms the storms of life and gives them meaning. [It] makes the present, present and gives us back the energy that endless worry and countless calculation drain. It concentrates what has become scattered and brings us home to ourselves.
Joan Chittister, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily
Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now
We can only make one choice. Throughout our lives, we do only one thing – again and again, moment by moment, year by year. It is how we live our days, and it is how we shape our lives. The choice is this: what is the next right thing for us to do? Where, in this moment, shall we choose to place our time and attention? Do we stay or move, speak or keep silent, attend to this person, that task, move in this or that direction? …Our choices are small, quiet, intimate things that flow from us as water from a mountain spring, simple, endless, each thimble of water tumbling into the next, creating a small stream that somehow…inevitably, finds its way down the mountain to the sea.
Wayne Muller, A life of Being, Having and Doing Enough
The source of forgiveness lies in the realization that we are not solely products of what was done to us, the realization that there is something essential within us that is not necessarily tarnished by calamitous experience…. There is a [… ] capacity for joy or love that is not dependent on external circumstances, not compromised by trauma or mistreatment, and capable of surviving destruction.
Mark Epstein
As the holidays season approaches we may be finding time to wind down, rest, and simply be, without the constant demands to do and to achieve. Our restless, always-switched-on society does not encourage the development of time spent strengthening our capacity to be with ourselves. As a result we see the sad effects isolation and alienation, as well as the difficulties that occur in a world that tends to define people in relation to they appear to others. When we practice meditation we are showing a profound act of gentleness towards ourselves, because we allow ourselves to simply be, without any need to achieve or do, or any link to appearing special. It can be one means of transforming our deep aloneness into a kind solitude rather than into the fearful, judgemental, loneliness which many feel:
The question is whether we let our aloneness become loneliness or whether we allow it to lead us into solitude.Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community. Letting our aloneness grow into solitude and not into loneliness is a lifelong struggle. It requires conscious choices about whom to be with, what to study, how to pray, and when to ask for counsel. But wise choices will help us to find the solitude where our hearts can grow in love.
Henri Nouwen
