‘It doesn’t form when all is running smoothly.’

A precious truth: Gabrielle Scott finds a pearl of wisdom in different faith traditions

My favourite bit of Advices & queries is from the Postscript at the beginning, written in 1656, ‘for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life’. It brings up the question of how to share a spiritual truth that is beyond words. This is perhaps why various religious traditions use parables, metaphors and sutras, which tend to point to spiritual truths rather than spell them out. They are signposts to something we do not grasp through our conscious mind but come to know experientially at a deeper spiritual level.

I find that I have the metaphor of a pearl going through my mind. This precious spiritual truth has been rolling around and emerging for some time. A pearl is used as a symbol of the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew 13:45-46, where the merchant sells all he has to buy the ‘pearl of great price’. He recognises it as the most important thing in his life. There is something that makes a pearl special. It is created when an oyster encounters a piece of grit – it doesn’t form when all is running smoothly. We are not always aware of the Kingdom when we are coasting along, with our attention absorbed by everyday life. Sometimes it takes something gritty to stop us in our tracks and realise that a pearl is forming, if we let it.

So, there’s a ‘pearl’ to be found. But for some readers I may already have killed the spirit with those letters. Maybe the images are too biblical and don’t chime with you? In that case, perhaps it’s best to drop the labels, especially when they are not helpful in finding the spiritual truth. The words are but signposts up the mountain – the mountain is still there regardless of the path that we take.

Let’s get back to the grit. That’s the real reason I started thinking about pearls. I’ve had a rollercoaster of a time in the last few years but have also found myself experiencing inexplicable moments of peace and stillness. Right now many of us are on the receiving end of grit of all kinds, so perhaps what I’ve discovered will be helpful.

The grit I have experienced has shaken me deeply. It has caused suffering and grief – but with this has come something of an opening. Advices & queries 21 says: ‘When experiencing great happiness or great hurt we may be more open to the working of the Spirit.’ What happens when we focus on stillness while all around us is in turmoil? George Fox says: ‘Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord God, whereby thou wilt receive his strength and power from whence life comes, to allay all tempests, against blusterings and storms. That is it which moulds up into patience, into innocency, into soberness, into stillness, into stayedness, into quietness, up to God, with his power.’ I love this language as the modern mind has to pause and consider it, a bit like a parable. What does it mean? Does it work for you as a signpost to the Divine?

At the same time as the situation causing the grit unfolded, I was reading people like Eckhart Tolle, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ajahn Amaro and Edward Salim Michael. They all have really important things to say about silence and stillness. If the more traditional Christian signposts don’t work for you, I recommend these – they are most likely different paths up the same mountain. In Stillness Speaks Eckhart Tolle asks us to pay attention to the gaps between thoughts, words and sounds – to start to notice the silence and stillness in the background. This focus doesn’t need to be limited to the sense of hearing. We experience a sudden shift in perception – our focus is suddenly not on the noise of the world and its material form but on the background of stillness. We are aware of the formless stillness and our awareness is part of that realm – not thought but consciousness – perhaps ‘that of God’ which is in each of us.

Edward Salim Michael’s The Law of Attention has a focus on Nada Yoga – that is, meditation on the sound of silence. When you focus on the silence in the background, the Nada Sound, you find that it becomes incredibly ‘loud’. I once sat in a hospital that was very loud and quite frightening. I focused on the stillness and, to my surprise, the sound of silence was louder than the cacophony around me. We can hear the ‘still small voice’ if we listen.

Ajahn Amaro, Abbot of a Buddhist monastery, wrote a small booklet Inner Listening: Meditation on the sound of silence. In Buddhist practice the Nada Sound can be an object of meditation bringing our attention to the present moment. He also notes that awareness of the Nada Sound is present in many spiritual traditions – though it goes by many different names and is interpreted in different ways. Humankind, it seems, is naturally drawn to it, whether from the Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Christian or Hindu traditions. It’s an area that Quakers might find interesting given our tradition of silent worship.

So we can focus on silence and stillness. It can help to ground us in the present moment, and we can experience a shift to an experiential awareness of this still realm. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, tells us that life and, indeed, the Kingdom of God – or the Pure Land of the Buddha – is only available in the here and the now. We cannot live in the past or the future. This is obvious but forgotten by most of us most of the time. We don’t have to do formal meditation practice or sit in a Quaker Meeting to tune into the stillness and the present moment – though these are undoubtedly helpful practices. It’s there all the time. We just don’t notice it amid the ‘busyness’ of everyday life. The Kingdom of God is there – it’s just a perception shift that is needed. Perhaps this shift doesn’t happen permanently, but once we experience it, we can tune into it again. It exists. Buddhists might call it the ‘ground of our being’, Quakers may call it the ‘inner light’. It’s a spiritual discovery that happens without thought and that cannot be pinned down by language – it is an openness to the Spirit and of the Spirit. Once you have known it, the writings in the Bible and other spiritual traditions can suddenly make sense. ‘Knock and the door will be opened’ – the holy ground is present all around you, you just have to ‘step’ into awareness. The pearl of great price is there, but you may need a bit of grit to push you on your way.

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Comments

This is helpful. Multicultural thinking in a multi faceted world. Thank you

By nyinmodelek@btinternet.com on 3rd July 2020 - 7:49

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