The inner voice in the silence

Today I am thinking about some of the people whose writings have had most impact on me.

One is Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, the Sufi master who is in charge of the Sufi Golden Centre in San Francisco. In his book, Catching the Thread, he writes:

For each seeker the spiritual path will be different, because each of us is different. Every lover makes his own unique pilgrimage within the heart. And He loves us for our own individual self. He loves the fact that we are different because He made us different. In this love affair there can be neither comparison nor competition. We each must find our own way of loving Him, of being with Him.

Many people have difficulty grasping the concept of God, perhaps because of the tendency to think of God anthropomorphically. But Father Timothy Radcliffe, the former Provincial of the Dominican Order in England, reminds us: ‘God is not another person. God is the deepest interior of one’s self’.

Father Bede Griffiths founded a Christian ashram in India where he integrated the spiritual teachings of the Upanishads with those of Christianity. My final quotation comes from him:

I believe that each one of us has an inner light, an inner guide, which will lead us through the shadows and illusions by which we are surrounded, and open our minds to the truth. It may come through poetry or art, or philosophy or science, or more commonly through encounter with people and events day by day.

Personally I find that meditation, morning and evening every day, is the best and most direct method of getting in touch with reality. In meditation I let go of everything of the outer world of the senses, of the inner world of thoughts, and listen to the inner voice of the Word, which comes in the silence. Then, in the silence, I become aware of the presence of God, and I try to keep this awareness throughout the day.