Silence is safe, natural, serene, and immediately available in our hearts, minds, and bodies. We do not need to empty ourselves in order to be contemplative, as if that were even possible. We gently choose to be present to the stillness between and beneath all the sounds and thoughts that flow through our lives.

Our thoughts, our feelings, and our heartbeats are merely the sounds of life dancing in the silence. They arise, and they fall away. We do not have to fight them, suppress them, or criticize them. We may simply let them be.

The play of consciousness and awareness is like clouds floating across a beautiful blue sky. They come and they go; they are always changing. The clouds often enhance the beauty of the firmament, and the vast celestial openness is always there, no matter how overcast it is.

As we discover how simply available silence already is, we recognize how it actually forms a subtle interior presence: tender, compassionate, watching. This infinite presence beholds us from within, invites our ever-deepening beholding, and reveals that all is one love.

Silence has no fixed location in space or time. When we attend to it, we attend to heaven and we attend to eternity: all right here, and right now. Eternity abides in our hearts, and heaven is manifest in our very bodies.

The work of contemplation is a gesture of consent. We consent to the silence. We consent to the presence. We consent to love, and to joy. We consent to peace, and to each fruit of the Spirit. Such assent does not make everything suddenly better, but it lays the foundation for an ongoing transformation of life.

The ocean of grace we find flowing in our hearts eagerly desires to be given away. To be a contemplative is to be an embodiment of love, an exemplar of humility, and a catalyst for justice and reconciliation. The still point within will transform every aspect of our lives, so long as we welcome it with gratitude and care.

— Skye McColman & Cynthia Hizer

Thanks to my good friend the Rev. Cynthia Hizer for working with me to shape and hone this series of contemplative affirmations. We are happy to share these with everyone. Please feel free to download the audio and/or the graphic above, or to cut and paste the text. All we ask is that you acknowledge us as the authors, and a link back to www.mccolman.net would be nice as well.

To read the meditation instead of (or in addition to) listening to it, click here.

A “School of Mysteries” aims to explore the process of learning the mystical life, under the guidance of the Spirit.