Breathing

"Unlike the positioning of meditation in Eastern spiritual traditions, as a spiritual practice in and of itself, in Christianity, Word and silence form a sort of "breathing," which is at the heart of the Christian path to inner awakening. It is not an isolated activity, to be undertaken too far removed from the Word. ..."


"It is not 'unitive' simply in the sense of dissolving the multiplicity back into a One, but in the sense of seeing the One beautifully and radiantly illuminating the multiplicity, like light pouring through a stained-glass window, present in both the unity and the diversity. This is the particular genius of the Christian path: the ability to see--really see--the particularly and apparent duality of this world not as an illusion, but rather, as a crucible in which the most tender and intimate particularity of the divine heart becomes fully manifest."

"When word and silence are separated, the driveshaft grinds to a halt, and this deepening process is suspended. Severed from its nurturing ground in contemplative silence, word tends to become unduly analytical, linear, and dialectical. A vicious circle is set in motion. The farther one strays from the wellspring of spiritual awareness and the seeing that flows from them, the more one is dependent on the only other processing mode: ordinary awareness and the egoic identity that emerges from it."

Cynthia Bourgeault [67, 72-73]