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There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
-Rumi

Wisdom is rarely expressed, and when it is, silence is often the messenger.

In practice, silence is like a well collecting water, it succeeds by waiting. Waiting is the practice of opening. When we wait, unexpecting, our reward is endless, gratifying, and just what we need. We are opened pores. We are eager clear eyes, unblocked ears and we receive.

It is not peace or enlightenment that we are grateful for. These would spoil our satisfaction.

It would cause the missing,

          of the gesture of God

                      unfolding.

most people are perfectly afraid of silence – e.e. cummings

When we meditate, we learn to put silence around our experience. We learn to hold it like a well holds water. We meditate in a nice quiet place to exercise our silence, tone it’s muscles and increase its flexibility. But we are training for life.

When we decrease the space between our practice and life, we discover no boundary. There is no time where clarity of awareness is not useful, the same way that suppleness of the body serves us every day.

Then the space that our meditation offers us grows, from a small pool to a great ocean. When we are open and this space is large, we are able to take it all in, the beautiful and the difficult. We can respond as an ocean receives the rivers.

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