··· Tags pointing to: presence ···

Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.

— Thomas Merton  <link>

Only a heart, only a soul, only one who loves hears.

— Danusha Goska, Save Send Delete  <link>

A Moment’s Halt—a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—
And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reach’d
The Nothing it set out from—Oh, make haste!

— Omar Khayyam, from The Rubaiyat, XLVIII, tr. Edward Fitzgerald  <link>

When you come to know God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others—not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.

— C.S. Lewis (via)  <link>

God comes to us disguised as our life.

— Paula D’Arcy  <link>

Presence does not happen in the mind.

— Richard Rohr, Things Hidden  <link>

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson  <link>

The place where God happens is between each other.

— Rowan Williams, Where God Happens  <link>

The beautiful line in the Course of Miracles says, “It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be who you are.” To be who are means who you are in your essence underneath the mind structures, the conditioned mind structures, and the only access you have to that is through the little doorway of now. And it is only here, it is only through the power that is inherent in the present moment that all those mind structures dissolve. The power of the present moment is the power of life itself, your very being. What arises in the now is presence, allowing this moment to be.

— Eckhart Tolle, Through the Open Door  <link>