When one is perfectly still-mind and body, silent and alone-there is no personality to speak of, thus personality is one’s unique way of expression, it is what others see and know of us, nothing more or deeper than that.
BERNADETTE ROBERTSThe truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication.
More Bernadette Roberts Quotes
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This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.
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It can no longer be tested by any force or trial, nor moved by the winds of change, and at this point the self has obviously outworn its function; it is no longer needed or useful, and life can go on without it.
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But coming home that day, walking downhill with a panorama of valley and hills before me, I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks.
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The assumption that the egoless condition, or union of self and God, is man’s final goal and ultimate destiny is a great mistake.
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The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication.
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Since the moment of self-consciousness comes to a permanent end – and a new journey begins- is such a decisive stroke or milestone in the contemplative life.
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…a point is reached where the self is so completely aligned with the still-point that it can no longer be moved, even in its first movements, from this center.
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Instead of the usual unlocalized centre of myself, there was nothing there, it was empty, and at the moment of seeing this there was a flood of quiet joy and I knew, finally I knew what was missing-it was my “self”.
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The onset of this second movement is characterized by the falling away of self and coming upon “that” which remains when it is gone.
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To be forgiven is not enough; we must put an end to the very need to be forgiven.
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This journey then, is nothing more, yet nothing less than a period of acclimating to a new way of seeing, a time of transition and revelation as it gradually comes upon “that” which remains when there is no self. this is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss.
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But this going-out is an upheaval, a complete turnabout of such proportions it cannot possibly be missed, under-emphasized, or sufficiently stressed as a major landmark in the contemplative life.
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To go beyond the self, beyond even its most intimate union with God, and this is where we enter yet another new life- a life best categorized, perhaps, as a life without a self.
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When there is no longer a cyclone, there is no longer an eye. So the storms, crises and sufferings of life are a way of finding the eye.
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Rather, it is for the hardy who have been tried by fire and have come to rest in a tough, immovable trust in “that” which lies beyond the known, beyond the self, beyond union and even beyond love and trust itself
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