In the previous post, I mentioned Divine Listening as one of the meanings of the "Silent Night" of Christmas Eve. The "sleep" of the Christ-child gives us a clue to another aspect of this Silence. For contemplatives, this sleep represents the practice of "resting" in God. For example, Lady Julian of Norwich - a 14th century English mystic - reminds us that "God is the Very Rest . . . When, for love of God, it is empty, the soul can receive His deep rest." Here, the God in whom we rest is perceived to be the "Ground of Being" or as "Being Itself." After all, each of us is primarily a "Human BEING" rather than a human DOING. Resting in this silent Ground of Being then enables all of the forms of life, together with their associated energies, to emerge out of this Ground, as though out of Nowhere.
There can be no movement of the life-force present within each creature and phenomenon without a Silent Stillness to serve as the backdrop out of which it can emerge. All "becoming" emerges out of the prior ground of "Being." During meditation, we identify with this silent, still ground and then watch - spellbound - as all thoughts, perceptions, forms, energies and phenomena arise out of the Silence and begin to circulate like stars or meteors in the nighttime sky. When we BECOME the Silent Night, then - suddenly - all of creation begins to emerge from within us. How amazing!
Photos: (Left and Middle) Snowy rock formations on the Gem Lake Trail, December 22, 2014; (Bottom) Bierstadt Lake, with Long's Peak in the background, December 19, 2014. All three photos were taken in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO.
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