Some days I just want to recoil. I don’t want to be unconditionally present with anyone. I want expediency! I want compliance! I want control! There are days that I feel like I have grown. There are other days where I wonder if the sensation of motion is like you have when you reach for something without taking a step.

Is growing a matter of leaping past my known place? Is it swift and strategic, or is it as Rilke suggests, being something that I just live into? Synchronicity would be nice.

The young writer Keats captured a flavor of our present when he wrote: “Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they have proved upon our pulses; we read fine things but never feel them to the fullest until we have gone the same steps as the author.” These words reflect the hunger of our own hearts; not the hunger for an explained meaning, but the hunger for actual experience. We want things proved upon our pulses. In everyone there is the desire for greatness however subjectively explained, but very few seem to do what is necessary to experience a life where the pulse of beauty, love, and depth of meaning resonates deeply within. Everyday, our history fades a little bit more, and we become once again active in trying to make our hopes come true. The ringing sounds of our life can linger, but an essential melody may never come.

What are the needs for us to realize an expanding experience where we realize more of who we are? What are the essentials of moving beyond self-centeredness, or mere transactional relationships where usery is the norm? How do we build days that accentuate an ubiquitous beauty that is only seen by those who foster an inner aperture that stays focused on the deep spiritual truths? It seems that we live lives that no longer have time for the upkeep necessary for these types of experiences. The quiet errosion is missed in the hurry of our seeming essential activity. Yet in all of this, our lives are lived, and the experiences we say we crave, are never proved upon our pulses. For too many, life is written in sand.

Life is best when we listen to the deep places within our own selves. The essence of greatness is discovered in the place where silence leads us. Silence moves past motion and reintroduces us to our core principles, our identity, our loves, and our voice. From these foundations faithfully tended, we position ourselves in the center where life springs ever new, and very much our own.