For further reflection:

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Below are some of the quotes from the talk, and some additional quotes, for you to reflect on further:

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Matthew 16:25,26

"Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?"

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In her book "The Grace in Dying" Kathleen Dowling Singh wrote:

"What I have observed in these deaths ... is profound, transcendent, and extraordinary. By and large, people die in solemnity, peace, and transformed consciousness, radiating energy that can only be described as spiritual. Death, as no other moment we encounter in life, announces itself in resplendent silence." ... "the time of dying effects a transformation from perceived tragedy to experienced grace. ... Dying offers the possibility of entering the radiance, the vastness, of our Essential Nature."

One of the people she journeyed with said to her: "I realized about halfway through this [terminal illness] that I’m not in control, and my body sure isn’t. It’s in the hands of something far greater than me. And that’s what I’m staying connected with.”

Kathleen Dowling Singh's unequivocal reassurance is: "Dying is safe. You are safe. Your loved one is safe." 

 

As he was nearing his own death Fr Thomas Keating wrote a number of poems, and in one of these he wrote:

In the transition from death

To eternal life,

The silence of pre-existence

Bursts into boundless joy.

 

Meister Eckhart:

“If you want the kernel, you must break the shell.” 

 

 

Rumi: 

"This that is tormented and very tired, tortured with restraints like a madman, this heart.

Still you keep breaking the shell to get the taste of its kernel!"

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"Here's the new rule: break the wineglass, and fall toward the glassblower's breath." 

 

Richard Rohr wrote recently after an 8 day retreat:

“I believe only the contemplative mind can allow transformation at the deepest levels and help us rest in the awareness of God’s loving presence.”

 

Martin Laird:

"We progress in overcoming the illusion of separation from God when we learn how to deal with the barrage of thoughts that pummels us into misery."

 

Richard Rohr:

“I’m convinced that the root of our divisions can only be overcome by a unitive consciousness at every level: personal, relational, social, political, cultural, and spiritual.”

 

From one of Thomas Keating's final poems that he wrote before his death:

Our true nature is stillness,

The Source from which we come. . . . .

The deep listening of pure contemplation

Is the path to stillness.

All words disappear into It,

And all creation awakens to the delight of

Just Being.”

 

Thomas Kelly:

“Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continually return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life.”

 

 

Eckhart Tolle:

"Some people get angry when they hear me say that problems are illusions. … The collective disease of humanity is that people are so engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms, so absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the Essence, that which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought. They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny. Eternity is the living reality of who you are."

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