Home > Topic > The very ground
1 " Being born in a place is only one way to belong, nor do you have to die there....I knew at once that Magdala was home because I felt sighted there again, second sighted. It was not only the spring. In time everything spoke.When birds rose into the air, I could read the pattern of their wings, and the path the wind made on the water carried messages. The very ground said make a path here, plant herbs there. These vine are not dead. Tend them and they'll bear fruit again. Ancient trees offered shelter and wisdom as well as olives. And there were certain rocks that could absorb fatigue or agitation, leaving me refreshed and calm. "
― , The Passion of Mary Magdalen (Maeve Chronicles, #2)
2 " For the nearer everything is unto unpassionateness, the nearer it is unto power. And as grief doth proceed from weakness, so doth anger. For both, both he that is angry and grieveth, have received a wound, and cowardly have as it were yielded themselves unto their affections... For it was ordained unto holiness and godliness, which specially consist in an humble submission to God and His providence in all things; as well as unto justice: these also being part of those duties, which as naturally sociable, we are bound unto; and with without which we cannot happily converse one with another: yea and the very ground and fountain indeed of all just actions. "
3 " Solitude is very different from a ’time-out’ from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other. "
― Henri J.M. Nouwen
4 " The secret of enlightenment is the absolute, unequivocal conviction that it exists.What does that mean? It means you have discovered an unshakable confidence in the fact of nonduality—in the perennial mystical revelation that IT IS . . . and I AM THAT. A confidence in that which can never be seen or known is the very ground of the enlightened state. Being is ungraspable, it’s unknowable, it’s ever elusive, and yet it is the only place you can find true confidence in life. Why? Because it is the very source of life itself.The conscious experience of Being, which is what enlightenment is, has always been the ultimate answer to the most fundamental spiritual questions: Who am I? and Why am I here? Those who have tasted enlightened awareness find that in that experience, any trace of existential doubt and all the questions that go along with it instantaneously disappear. It’s not even that they are answered, but rather, the questions lose their meaning. When you locate the nonrelative, or absolute, nature of consciousness in the depths of your own self, it is experienced as a clarity that is empty of content; a weightiness that is full of nothing in particular; a profound knowing that dissolves all questions. In that questionless state, you find yourself profoundly rooted and radically free, supported by an absolute confidence in the knowing of no-thing that changes everything. The experience of that empty ground is the answer—the one answer that always liberates each and every one of us. You simply know, unequivocally, before thought, that I am. That’s the only answer: I AM. There is no why. "
― Andrew Cohen , Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening
5 " George Foreman looks as if he might have organically appeared out of the very ground around the church. "
― , Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts
6 " My heart was on the verge, if not of explosion than of collapse, hurtling to an inward oblivion, sucking down with it the very ground I stood on. "
7 " You expect certain things to always be there, like the bakery on the corner, or the boy you grew up with. But when the very ground can eat you alive without warning, what's to say the ocean won't dry up? Or the stars won't suddenly shut off? Nothing is forever. "
― Stacey Lee, Outrun the Moon
8 " In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them. "
― Louise Penny , Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #6)
9 " It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered in the hopeless chill of such a task. "
― Joseph Conrad
10 " When I go to Indian reservations in the West, and especially to the Pine Ridge Reservation, I sometimes feel unsure where to put my foot when I open the car door. The very ground is different from where I usually stand. There are fewer curbs, fewer sidewalks, and almost no street signs, mailboxes, or leashed dogs. "
11 " Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other. "