By Anthony Strano
Anthony Strano is Director of the Brahma Kumaris Centres in Greece, Hungary and Turkey. This article is extracted from his booklet The Alpha Point, published by Brahma Kumaris Information Services Ltd, London 1998.
Anthony Strano points the way to a conversation with God.
When
silence is deep, brimming with fullness, when there is no more yearning
for sound, when there is complete concentration on One, then thought,
like an arrow, finds and melts into its target; there the human soul
not only glimpses God, but is absorbed in the purity of that Being;
absorbed totally, wholly, absolutely. Filled with the pure light that
has now become its being, the soul radiates this energy as peace and
love to others; a living lighthouse.
Silence is the bridge of
communication between the Divine and the divine in the human. Silence
is where I find what is most precious.
Spiritual silence is the
positioning of the heart and mind in readiness for communication with
the One. Neither is it communication based on repetitive words, nor on
intellectual theories nor on asking for the fulfillment of limited
desires. Sacred communication is the harmonizing of the original self
with the Eternal One.
Spiritual silence gives me energy, pure
and selfless, from the Creative Source, to burst out of the cocoon of
dust and routine, opening up unlimited horizons of new vision. To
release the self from negativity, I require silence. Absorbed in its
depths, I am renewed. In this renewal the mind clears itself,
facilitating a different perception of reality. The deepest perception
of all is my own eternity.
The act of silence is as necessary
for living as breathing is for physical life. Strength for living
necessitates finding a point of stillness from which I begin and to
which I return every day: an oasis of inner peace. Silence brings my
mental and emotional energy to a point of concentration, where I can be
still. Without this inner stillness, I become like a puppet pulled
here and there by the many different strings of external influences.
This inner point of stillness is the seed of autonomy, which cuts the
strings, and then the loss of energy ceases.
Silence heals.
Silence is like a mirror. Everything is clear. The mirror does not
blame or criticize but helps me to see things as they are, providing a
diagnosis to release me from all types of wrong thinking. How does
silence do this? Silence revives the original peace of the self; a
peace that is innate, divine and, when invoked, flows through one’s
being, harmonizing and healing every imbalance. Silence is full and it
fills; gently, powerfully, consistently active.
To create
silence, I step within. I connect with my eternal self; the soul. In
that place of unblemished tranquility, as if in a timeless womb, the
process of renewal and restructuring begins. There, a new pattern of
pure energy is woven.
In this introspective space I reflect. I
recollect what has been forgotten for a long time. I concentrate
slowly and gently and as I do so, those original spiritual blueprints
of love, truth and peace emerge and are experienced as personal and
eternal realities. Through these, quality begins to enter life.
Quality is closeness to something purer and truer in ourselves.
Quality is the principle for more enlightened thought and for integrity
of action. In that space, Silence teaches me how to listen, how to
develop an openness to God.
Listening guides me into the right
position, opening the channel of receptivity. Receptivity aligns me to
the reality of God; a very necessary alignment, if I am to truly know
and be at one with Him. For receptivity I must clear myself of
myself. I must stand clean, bare, simple, stripped of artificiality,
then genuine communication begins.
As I listen, I receive. As I
receive, I feel and reflect, and gradually move into concentration.
Concentration is when I am completely absorbed in one thought. Where
there is love, concentration is natural and steady, like the still
candle flame radiating its aura of light. The thought in which one is
absorbed becomes one’s world. When the human mind is absorbed in the
thought of God, the person feels resurrected; the harmony of
reconciliation is deeply felt. In this silent link of love, one
becomes fully reconciled, not as an intellectual process but as a state
of being. I awaken. This wakefulness is where I am fully conscious of
Truth. Simultaneously I become conscious of the illusions in me and
around me and of the effort needed to remove them.
This
wakefulness enables me to respond and receive what I would not normally
notice, either on natural or supernatural levels. In wakefulness, in
this heightened state of knowing, a person spiritualises the self; he
or she becomes a truer being. Within silence the subtle invisible rays
of concentrated thought meet God—this is the power of silence; this is
often called ’meditation’. Sound cannot achieve this meeting with
God. Sound can only praise and glorify, through song or chant, the
closeness of union with the Divine; but it cannot create it. Only
silence creates the practical experience of union.
Concentrated
silence is the wordless focus of pure attention on One. Love for that
One makes the focus easy and steady, fulfilling. This closeness of the
self with the Supreme inevitably inspires the desire for change in the
self; inspiration to better the self, to make the self worthy by
fulfilling the original potential and, where one can, sharing the
fruits of that realized potential with others. This sharing is not
achieved through saying a lot, but rather through the integrity of
personal example.
In silence, the deepest orientation of
consciousness is the desire to achieve personal perfection. This desire
is a result of the divine flow of energy entering the human
consciousness and inspiring belief in one’s own worth. Personal
perfection is accepted as being possible. It’s the faith given by God
as a gift to the soul. The possibility of perfection is accepted
because the soul knows it is not alone in its effort, it constantly has
the support of Divine Love to achieve its goal.
In its
connection with God, the soul is filled and feels itself complete; it
has found what it was looking for. Divine Love works especially
through silence; the soul is awakened from its sleep of ignorance and
given new life, as in the story of Sleeping Beauty. The soul is the
Sleeping Beauty, God is the prince and ignorance is the witch who casts
her magic spell of slumber upon the princess. God’s love for the soul
is such that it is not stopped by any darkness or barrier but reaches
the soul to awaken it, bringing it back to life, back to reality. Love
breaks the iron spell.
It is through Love that I, as a soul,
am awakened and acknowledge my eternity. My reality is far more than
my material appearance. My eternity is my reality. This is the truth
of my existence. In Greek the word for truth is alithea, which means
‘not to forget’. The human being is under a very deep forgetfulness;
an amnesia of spirit. I cannot achieve the awakened state, the true
state of myself with my own skills of intellect. Attainment of Truth
is not a matter of cleverness. I can only awaken when God helps me to
remember. To remember is real knowing; it is Truth.
To achieve
inner change, silence has to be love-filled, not only peace-filled.
Many think that it is enough just to experience peace in the silence of
meditation in order to achieve transformation of consciousness. Peace
stabilizes; peace harmonises and gently quiets. Peace lays the
foundation. However, Love actively inspires; Love moves the universe.
Love moves all things towards their original freedom and happiness.
Both
Peace and Love are needed, and in their archetypal form, come from God,
the Universal and immutable Source. It is this God-filled silence that
restores a human being and the earth to their original state.
In
silence, we realize that it is not only a return to the roots; but,
even more, it is a return to the Seed, to the Beginning; it is a return
to God, a return to myself, a return to right relationship.