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The Lord of Heaven and earth we found to be near at hand, and, as we waited upon him in pure silence, our minds out of all things, his heavenly presence appeared in our assemblies, when there was no language, tongue, nor speech from any creature. The Kingdom of Heaven did gather us and catch us all, as in a net, and his heavenly power at one time drew many hundreds to land.
“There is a progression in the spiritual life. It is not wise to tackle the Mt. Everest of the soul before having had some experience with lesser peaks. So I would recommend beginning with a daily period of from five to ten minutes. This time is for learning to “center down,” or what the contemplatives of the Middle Ages called “re-collection.” It is a time to become still, to enter into the recreating silence, to allow the fragmentation of our minds to become centered.”
As we learn the way of holy silence — a silence that expects to encounter and hear God — we begin finding our spirits in continuous communion with God. This can be true even when life rushes around us […] Interior soulful silence shows us that we can live at different levels. We can be outwardly busy while inwardly talking and listening to God.
In contrast to traditional ways of living, modernity relies on what we can consciously think about and talk about, what we can demonstrate or exhibit in the public arena. We moderns need to be in control. That is our strength. But it is also our weakness, because we dare not trust those aspects of our life that elude our control, our rational understanding. We become insensitive to them, even sometimes denying their very existence.
Oh, that ye might inwardly know these things! Turn in, turn in. Mind what stirs in your hearts; what moves against sin, what moves towards sin. The one is the Son’s life, the Son’s grace, the Son’s Spirit; the other is the spirit and nature which is contrary thereto. If ye could come but to the sense of this, and come to a true inward silence, and waiting, and turning at the reproofs of heavenly wisdom, and know the heavenly drawings into that which is holy and living, ye would soon find the Lord working in your hearts.
When your heart is wandering and distracted, bring it back quickly to its point, restore it tenderly to its Master’s side, and if you did nothing else the whole of your hour but bring back your heart patiently and put it near our Lord again, and every time you put it back it turned away again, your hour would be well-employed.
The silence we value is not the mere outward silence of the lips. It is a deep quietness of heart and mind, a laying aside of all preoccupation with passing things — yes, even with the workings of our own minds; a resolute fixing of the heart upon that which is unchangeable and eternal.
The phoebe sits on her nest
Hour after hour,
Day after day,
Waiting for life to burst out
From under her warmth.
“In 1987 I first came across the fourteenth century text and foundational text for Centering Prayer, The Cloud of Unknowing and I knew then that I’d found something I was looking for – a way to enter the sacred, a direct approach to God, and something that I believed would deepen my experience of meeting for worship:
‘Do not pray with words unless you feel you really must’ and ‘…look that nothing remains in your conscious mind but a naked intent stretching unto God, not clothed in any particular thought about God – what he is like in himself or in any of his works – but only that he is as he is.’”
To clear your mind and become ‘spiritually focused,’ you have to learn to concentrate what George Fox called “thy wandering mind.” Unfortunately, many Quaker writings don’t specify a way to develop this concentration.
But concentration is a central part of mindfulness, and the literature on mindfulness contains a lot of advice about learning to concentrate. Most of it boils down to repeatedly focusing your attention on your breath or some other aspect of your experience.
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