I consider this a follow-up to my previous post, where I spoke of darkness and light being a key to fuller understanding of oneself. They are the negative and positive aspects of and range of experiences of oneself, both within and without us, or outside of us.

When darkness occurs, when we experience what may be called a negative experience, we may be quick to shut off and shut down the memory and recollection of what happened. Much of this may be natural for psychological reasons, for containing a sense of self in the face of a perceived or real threat to what happened.

I spoke of embracing the mystery of life, allowing it to unfold naturally, or more naturally, as a way to work with the darkness of experiences, and by inference, the darkness of oneself.

When a negative experience occurs, part of us will always or naturally be led to wanting to understand more fully what happened, and to know why, what are the reasons it occurred.

We can come to understanding ourselves in relation to what occurred, but to understand beyond this, I might suggest the approach of embracing the mystery of life, of embracing the mystery of what occurred.

For me, and for I believe the experiential reality of others, life seems to expand and resonate more richly, be full of more light, and begin to be full of possibilities again, if we are able to allow the unknown of life, the unknown about why anything might have occurred, if we are able to get in the spirit, allow the spirit, of the vastness of the universe to be with us, as if looking at the night stars, away from city lights, into the seemingly infinite blackness of the starscape before us, where we feel small, but somehow comforted, knowing our place in the universe in this way, feeling content within ourselves, allowing a resonating and perhaps vibrating sense of energy within and with the universe, ourselves feeling peaceful and curious, perhaps spiritual and connected, not without alignment with what we see, feeling a part of this vastness, full of its space and perhaps uncommon beauty.

Darkness, in ourselves, in events that occur, contains a natural beauty, but only in the context of letting go into the unknown, into the unknown of why anything might have occurred, into the unknown where answers are not forthcoming, but we are able to tap into an understanding beyond the event, larger than the event itself, where we may get our self-referential answers of understanding, where we may feel embraced by a loving universe, the comfort and nurturing presence of it being felt as there, being felt as always there.

We are embraced in the vastness of the universe in these moments.

This we can know.

Some may align more, or try to, with the cold light of truth.

I feel it is time to speak of the love of the unknown of the darkness, however, of the love of the ongoing mystery of life, where we can feel out the answers, come to an understanding, where what we can know may never be enough for a rational and searching mind, but we can rest easy and at peace in knowing ourselves in the context of this larger scale of understanding.

We are embraced in the universe, in the night, peace, and darkness of it, in the unknown of it, where the answers of whether we are supported or not, of whether we have a place in it or not, become revealed as the mystery unfolds.

We do have a place in it, each and every one of us, but this does not come from knowing all the answers.

We must proceed unknowingly, trustingly, allowing the ever enveloping mystery of life, of the universe, to unfold. We will not know a love, on both this intimate and vastness of scale, if we do not.

Embracing the mystery of life, we allow the universe to unfold.

Sitting where I usually sit to do a certain meditation every now and then, I spied two cardinals out the back window on a slanted beam of the deck.  They seemed to be playfully with one another, one of them seemingly feeding or pecking into the mouth of the other.

Standing up to confirm whether it was a couple, as in mating or mated birds, I did indeed see the colored male cardinal, and the more neutral-colored female cardinal.

In this meditation, I always hope to, and usually do in some way, uncover that sense of connection to what I believe in about life, what I know of it, a spirit of life that nourishes, contains a true peace, feels full of possibility, and has an exchange of love with me in all of these areas.

I did begin to feel this just as the two cardinals alighted on the beam.

I thought this fitting, as I confirmed it was a playful couple, and was smiling as I intuited a sense about this: whenever we are just relaxed and enjoying our connection to life, feeling a love about it, this is not unlike a subtle but present feeling of a give-and-take, a subtle exchange between the universe and ourselves, between life and who we are.

Everything became or was all right in those moments.

That is what I hope from the meditation each time.

That is what I hope for you, for each of us.

We can find our moments of relaxed peace and love.

As summer starts heading into fall, maybe we can start to thoughtfully set some time aside to allow these moments to happen.

As winter approaches, it may feel good to stretch into this time of year, lean into it, feel its quietness, solitude, and peacefulness, such peace.

I encourage you to find solace in the silence, make that happen for yourself this time of year.

I am including many inspirational quotations about silence below.

Peace, mj

--

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
~William Penn

Silence is the true friend that never betrays.
~Confucius

An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
~Walter Bagehot

Silence is a source of great strength.
~Lao Tzu

Silence is the universal refuge....
~Henry David Thoreau

Accustomed to the veneer of noise ... society is suspicious of those who value silence.
~John Lahr

I have often lamented that we cannot close our ears with as much ease as we can our eyes.
~Richard Steele

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
~Mahatma Gandhi

Silence is a fence around wisdom.
~German Proverb

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time.
~Thomas Carlyle

Silence is medication for sorrow.
~Arab Proverb

Silence was never written down.
~Italian Proverb

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.
~Edward Hoagland

Nature and silence go better together.
~Astrid Alauda

You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind.
~Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
~Peter Minard

Silence is more musical than any song.
~Christina Rossetti

Nothing is more useful than silence.
~Menander of Athens

Silence is a sounding thing, to one who listens hungrily.
~Gwendolyn Bennett

Silence is the mother of truth.
~Benjamin Disraeli

Her hearing was keener than his, and she heard silences he was unaware of.
~D.M. Thomas

We must have reasons for speech but we need none for silence.
~Proverb

Silence is the secret to sanity.
~Astrid Alauda

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.
~Leroy Brownlow

Silences make the real conversations between friends.  Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.
~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson