Quieting the mind is the most heroic act.
This is the purpose of all practices.
When you quiet the mind you come to absolute silence where time and space do not exist.
You are instantly anywhere and everywhere.
Everything is within your Being.
~ Swami Amar Jyoti
Each month, I look forward to receiving a Light of Consciousness newsletter from Swami. His beautiful words arrived in my inbox this morning and echoed in my mind as I watched the peaceful sunrise.
Yesterday, I read some very disturbing suppositions concerning the resignation of the Pope. If what they say is true – and I pray it is not – I can’t help but think this is what happens when we place our faith inside brick walls that are constructs of money and power. I used to think God was some third person, something to be feared, something that I needed to confess sins to, something I couldn’t access without being in the presence of a man who had studied “the scripture” inside a building with stained glass windows. I no longer feel this way. If I have sins to confess, ‘he’ already knows because he is part of my consciousness. I don’t have to tell him. I just have to be honest with myself. Through yoga and meditation, I’ve come to find that the Divine is to be found inside, not outside, only through me, not someone else. Actually, divinity is to be found everywhere. In me. In you.
Swami writes: “Whichever tradition you follow, whether it is Vedanta, the path of devotion, Zen Buddhism, Vipassana, Christianity or Hinduism, at the end of every path you will see that the mind has to quiet down and come to stillness. When you attain stillness, whatever the outer differences of doctrines, paths and religions, you will find Oneness. When you drop into that quietude, the light shines where you thought it was darkness. Not that you fight with the darkness, resist it or discard it; within that very darkness there is light.”
Need a little boost, to feel closer to the divine, Swami’s joyful writings on awakening to the light within can be found online at:
http://light-of-consciousness.org/satsangs/past-satsang.html
