Deep Silence at DiyMillionaireGuide

Why is silence so important?

Because it is unconditioned. How so? Because it is withdrawal from the world of conditioned listening, speaking, acting, thinking, tasting, smelling, feeling.

It is withdrawing from all of this which is familiar, rehearsed, finite and predictable. It is opening to the unconditioned, the unknown, the unrehearsed, the infinite, the unpredictable.

What is to be gained?

Why, the peace of freedom from the conditioned and limited. The joy of discovery of the unknown. The abundance of life as yet untapped. The gift of healing which unfolds in the natural, limitless self. The final fall of duality which restores our wholeness, our oneness.

A man once asked Rumi, “Why is it you talk so much about silence?” His answer: “The radiant one inside me has never said a word”. From The Soul of Rumi by Coleman Barks.

Lucy Lopez – Hire Me!

Awakening to our Greatness

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Hello again!

Yesterday, I posted here about the profound experience of a soft gaze, a Peace Gaze. So moved was I by my recent experience of just such a gaze, only a few moments long, that I posted about it at my other blog, Longings Enchantments and Sacred Space.

Today, I wish to share with you another experience of joy and relating to the soul, aroused this time (as it has countless other times) by the rapture of Rumi’s soul:

No one knows
What makes the soul
Wake up so happy!
Maybe a dawn breeze
has blown the veil
from the face of God

Translated by Coleman Barks in The Soul of Rumi

Ah, the soul gazes into the face of god, into all that it is, into eternity itself! How could the soul be anything but joyous? Ecstatic? It re-cognizes its beginlessness and endlessness, its limitlessness, its sheer beauty, goodness and greatness – unenhanceable and incorruptible! How could it not feel rapture? Exquisite, unstoppable rapture?

God has revealed its face and the soul squeals in utter delight as it sees itself! At last!

In love, Lucy

For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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Have you ever looked softly, yet deeply into the eyes of another person? And have you ever done it while holding yourself in a state of peace, joy and openness, which is really the state of love?

‘Peace Gazing’ is something that I invite people to engage in during certain meditation practices. For one minute, people sit in pairs, facing each other, gazing softly and deeply into each others’ eyes. Prior to this, I would have guided us into a more peaceful and open space, so that it is from this space that we engage in the Peace Gaze.

Sometimes, the Peace Gaze can be far from a peaceful experience. After all, most of us live in societies where prolonged eye contact is discouraged and considered threatening.

Have you noticed how we tend to avoid eye contact with strangers as well as friends and loved ones? We even act as if someone we are passing on the street or in a shopping mall or on our way to the living room or kitchen is not there.

Yes, we do acknowledge the physical presence of the person by either giving them space to move or allowing them to pass first but we don’t really acknowledge their spiritual presence in which the eyes play a significant role.

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect
G K Chesterton at thinkexist.com

It is not that we must make eye contact to be spiritually attuned with another. Not at all. In fact, the sense of connection and oneness is often most strongly felt when we close our eyes and allow our thoughts to settle.

However, in our waking and walking moments, our eyes offer us the means to experience the deep and profound spiritual communion we have with another. That contact, held in a soft, open gaze penetrates effortlessly, the layers of conditioning that our individualized personalities are built on, taking us directly and instantly to the seat of our very being – that open, expansive, lush, vibrant field of foreverness, of eternity, of endless lifetimes. That field, which Rumi says, is ‘beyond the concepts of rightfulness and wrongfulness’! In fact, let me give you the full quote:

Beyond the concepts of rightfulness and wrongfulness, there is a field. I will meet you there!
Jalal Ad-Din Rumi

When we gaze into the eyes of another, the ‘windows of the soul’, as the eyes are sometimes described, we gift ourselves and another, the wondrous experience of a few moments in eternity, in bliss, in the truth of who we are.

I have noticed on many, many occasions that by softly gazing into the eyes of another, agitated, fearful, nervous, defensive or even hostile behavior or words instantly cease. It is as if we are meeting for the first time in that place beyond judgment, beyond duality, beyond separation. We meet in the truth of who we are – One!

If you have never done it before, or never done it with certain (types of) people, do try it. It doesn’t even have to be a minute long. Neither do you have to be seated opposite the person. Instead, you might try it with your neighbor, your spouse or your child or the person at the check-out counter, the last of whom was one of the people I exchanged a gaze with yesterday!

For about three seconds, we gazed softly and deeply into each other’s eyes even as he was handing me my receipt. What a beautiful experience that was for me and I sensed it was for the young man too!

Meeting you, Lucy

For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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If there is any lover in the world, 0 Muslim, it is I.
If there is any believer, infidel, or Christian hermit, it is I.
The wine, the cup-bearer, the musician, the instrument and the music,
The beloved, the candle, the liquor and the inebriation, it is I.
The seventy-two religious sects in the world
Do not really exist;
I swear by God every religious sect-it is I.
Earth, air, water and fire: do you know what they are?
Earth, air, water and fire-and the soul as well; it is I
Truth and falsehood, good and evil, pleasure and suffering, beginning and end,
Knowledge, learning, asceticism, devotion and faith-it is I.
Be assured that the fire of hell and its flames,
Paradise, Eden and the angels of heaven-it is I.
Heaven and earth and all they hold: angels, demons, and men – it is I.

Jalal Ad-Din Rumi at www.onelittleangel.com

In the poem above, Rumi expresses the transcendent consciousness that is all-encompassing, god-consciousness, if you like, for god is all-pervading. The divine is present in all through each.

Such a state of consciousness must be of practical use if it is to be of any use at all. How are we inspired by it? I know that it inspires me to ask questions such as these:

Where am I not? Where are you not? How does the dominant perception of separation affect us? Does it draw us closer to one another? Does it help us experience the wholeness that we are? Does it help us go beyond the culture of ‘blame and shame’? Does it make us more likely to see goodness and greatness rather than pass judgment?

It is I, Lucy

For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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