Seek silence. Be aware of the silence. I’m talking about now, and I’m really talking about where you’ll find the Lord within you as your companion, as one who walks with you, who shows you the way.
If you lose track of the silence, then you’re losing track of the Lord. The voice stays constant, as in silence. It’s rare when it becomes something vocal and audible; I would certainly pay attention when it takes on that level of manifestation, but don’t demand or judge if the Lord is unheard or unseen and somehow is not present for you.
Some people wonder, “How do I follow the Lord who is unseen and unheard?” It’s as though that countenance has become you. If you look in the mirror to see the Lord, and you see yourself and say, “Oh, I guess the Lord’s not here,” you’re missing something. The invisibility and the inaudibility are upon you. When you look into the mirror, there’s the opportunity to somehow catch that presence. So be open to the presence of the Lord and, also, be open to it in whatever circumstance you find.
You can ask for guidance in this moment, in this day, and extend it out so you’re asking for today and for always. Why not? If you can get “always,” get it: like, “I’d like to follow you always.” You might get your prayer answered. Or it could be “From this moment on, I’m always following the Lord.”
Look for it in the simplicity. That means it’s present here and now in its fullness. The Lord will make itself known to you somehow, someway; that’s your faith and trust. And if you find that it’s just wide open, meaning either you’re seeing it in everything or you’re seeing it in nothing, that’s fine. You can still work with that.
You work with that however you do. If you just sit there and do nothing, then make it something, as best you can, in that the Lord would be with you. If it’s nothing, if you don’t know what to do, how about just enjoying yourself? How about just being at peace, chilling out, being neutral, letting go, with no demands?
“Oh,” you might say, “I want to know what to do.”
How about just not knowing what to do and being okay with that? That can be the way the Lord is leading you right now—that you don’t know what to do.
“The Lord would lead me into not knowing what to do?”
It could, as a way of keeping you in hold because you’re kind of impulsive when you do things. Like, you’ve gotten in a lot of trouble doing what you thought you knew you should do. But right now, you don’t know what to do, and that’s good. So, don’t do anything. Just sit there and enjoy your patience and acceptance until you do know what to do.
“How long am I going to have to sit there?”
Is that really important to you? Are you willing to wait on the Lord?
“I’m kind of impatient.”
That’s familiar, isn’t it? How about just giving the Lord your patience, paying the Lord your patience, trusting that when it’s time, when there clearly is something for you to do, it will be shown to you?
Just imagine your own existence and how often you’ve been waiting on the Lord, wanting to know the best thing for you to do. But you got impatient, and you went ahead and did something. You may have thought, “Well, at least I can do this,” even though you knew that really wasn’t in your best interests. You knew!
“Yeah, but it was the only thing I could see to do.”
How about nothing?
“I couldn’t see doing nothing. I’m too important to do nothing.”
Well, the Lord does a lot of it when there is no thing. And that’s what the Lord is, no thing. It’s in the space. It’s in the invisible, where it’s not seen, when it’s not heard. It’s in the no thing, the stillness.
If you learn how to be a companion to the silence, to the invisible, you’re a saint. The saints I know are companions of silence. They walk in silence. They act in silence. Do they make noise? Can you hear them? Sure, but that’s not the point. It’s in the silence that the truth is heard and revealed. If you consider the truth of what is being said here, you also would consider not doing a thing.
The truth is in the silence and then the nothingness. So when you act, when you express, you somehow move out of that truth. But always keep this in mind: you can never move out where the Lord does not keep you, does not hold you, does not go with you.
The ones known as the Friends, sometimes referred to as the Quakers (and it is not limited to the Quakers), are those who witness into the living Spirit, those are the friends. They listen first to the silence. The silence is who speaks.
And if you listen and you hear something, check to see if the voice of silence is in the words, if the invisible is in what you see. And the one in you that is that will know that.
Baruch Bashan.
