The sculptor imposes nothing but only frees what is held captive in stone. The practice of contemplation is something like this. It does not work by means of addition or acquisition, but by release, chiseling away thought-shackled illusions of separation from God.

He tells us to “picture ourselves aboard a boat. There are ropes joining it to some rock. We take hold of the rope and pull on it as if we were trying to drag the rock to us when in fact we are hauling ourselves and our boat toward that rock.”

If this commitment is not balanced by an operative knowledge of how much we fall short of them, we will likely struggle a great deal with the fact that others fall short of the ideal as well.

silence does much more than simply tiptoe around; its essence has little to do with the absence of sound waves. For Silence has no opposite. Its embrace is wide and generous enough to receive all, both sound and the absence of sound.

To get caught up in a buzzing commentary on how irritating the noise is makes for a noisy relationship with noise.

Expansion of awareness does not mean that we become aware of yet more things. This book concerns the expansion that takes place within awareness itself, before awareness becomes awareness of this or that object.

deep prayer is not about a physically silent environment, but about the Loving Communion that is Silence itself, and Silence itself is deeper than the presence or absence of sound waves.

that power which is both everywhere and yet nowhere,

Boredom heals by diminishing our reliance on this spiritual glitz that keeps us preoccupied with how our prayer is progressing.