All images by Folkert Gorter

There is a quiet space in the morning that I love.

My home sits on a low mountain ridge, and there are all kinds of birds that make their homes in the trees that surround my house. In the very early morning, their waking calls and busyness create a sudden contrast to the relative stillness I was saturated in. The contrast makes the stillness dramatic and loud. It echoes with other contrasts in the house; the soft humming from the fridge and the fan in the living room as I move into the kitchen. Because of the contrast, the stillness becomes so available to my senses. My whole being rejoices and lingers with that stillness, being seduced by the quiet, as I wander to the kettle for the first cup of tea.

My mind says, “Do some e-mails, stretch, make a good breakfast, or maybe you could get a workout in.” But my heart says, “Shhh… be in this quiet place and just listen.”

At first, the quiet opens up my subtle senses. I can feel the life force, all this morning energy, a flow of something gorgeously alive, waking into the day. Then my own breath and heartbeat become the dominant life, become obvious.

Next comes a luscious wave of stillness. Something beckons me in, a sweet soft bliss wooing me. It’s something gossamer, delicate, gold colored. It entrances me. I follow it with my awareness and everything is gold colored. My awareness expands to include the golden pulse of life everywhere. I feel the life force inside the birds, the pulse of sap in the trees, the mountain my home is sitting on is breathing. The wood my house is made of is settling and shifting and settling again, in these tiny, tiny movements.

Behind the life force I can sense the love. I can sense the way it is all immensely loved, and there is vastness busy awing over all of it. The love, the gold, the stillness in the perfection of the morning.

Ever so gently, I start to lose my own edges as my heart seems to take over the world.  I start to lose a sense that it’s my heart at all; it just seems to be the world’s heart. And if I still felt separate and solid, I might cry for the beauty—a beauty that there are no words for, yet is touching me so deeply. Loving the life of everything. But I am not here anymore, it’s just the pulse of life. It’s just the world, alive, eternally alive, bathing in bliss.

And then, in a breath, I am back again. The world heart feels like my heart again, and the tea beside me is cold, and it’s time to greet my students into the day.

The heart of the world is not lost though. The Oneness that rejoices in all the contrast loves all this diversity at play. It loves the forms, loves the activity and business of the day. Because we are essentially this one heart, we are fundamentally free to enjoy the contrast. We are free to reject, and free to enjoy. We will always have freedom as our fundamental nature. To have freedom means we have infinite choice, and contrast is how you perceive those choices. So what do you choose? Will you follow the noise? Will you follow the voices in your head telling you to get on with it, get going? Or will you choose to follow the silence one morning because… well, because you can?

—XK