Mani Wall, prayer stones en route to Lamayuru, Ladakh, 1983. Image credit: A. Edelstein
This meditation is from the forthcoming 24-part audio series of guided meditations, inspired by passages from some of the great spiritual mystics, ancient and modern.
A Breeze Passes
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“A breeze passes in the night. When did it spring up? Whence does it come? Whither is it going? NO man knows. No one can compel the spirit, the gaze or the light of God to descend upon him.
On some given day a man suddenly becomes conscious that he is alive to a particular perception of the divine spread everywhere about him. Question him. When did this state begin for him? He cannot tell. All he knows is that a new spirit has crossed his life.
‘It began with a particular and unique resonance which swelled each harmony, with a diffused radiance which haloed each beauty. All the elements of psychological life were in turn affected; sensations, feelings, thoughts. Day by day they became more fragrant. More coloured, more intense by means of an indefinable thing-the same thing. Then the vague note, and fragrance, and light began to define themselves. And then, contrary to all expectation and all probability, I began to feel what was ineffably common to all things. The unity communicated itself to me by giving me the gift of grasping it. I had in fact acquired a new sense, the sense of a new quality or of a new dimension. Deeper still: a transformation had taken place for min the very perception of being. Thenceforward being had become. In some way. Tangible and savorous to me; and as it came to dominate all the form which it assumed, being itself began to draw me and to intoxicate me.’”
Chardin, Pierre. The Divine Milieu; an Essay on the Interior Life. New York: Harper, 1960. 108.