Landscape is the most ancient presence here on earth. It’s been millions of years that the winds, the oceans and the rocks have been in conversation, changing and transforming our landscape and land, but it is when the human face appeared that their conversations were truly appreciated – and recognized in their “awesomeness”.

We can imagine that the oceans became silent and the winds became still when the human face first appeared. The human face is one of the most amazing things in creation. It is a threshold, looking out at the outer world, but it is also looking in, into the inner world and one that brings those two worlds together. In the human face, the anonymity of the universe suddenly becomes intimate, because the human face is the point of intimacy. An unknown world desperately begs us to bring its majesty and beauty to voice and image.

The powers of nature that shape our landscape are the same that have shaped and formed your body out of the clay of the earth. And nature, through your body’s clay, is finding a form and shape that it had never found before.

It is a great privilege to come out into the light from the earth. But it is also a great responsibility to allow things never before known to come to expression. Things that can come into light and take shape in no other individual except each of us.

There is a great rush to express ourselves but sometimes the quality of what is actually expressed is immensely repetitive and superficial. One of the things that you begin to notice when you befriend silence, is just how much superficial chatter surfaces in the mind.
But once you begin to realize that, then you can move into deeper silence within yourself.

Each soul has its own shape, each one of us is cut into a different form. Each one of us is unique, with a unique destiny. Everyone is a mystery, and holds the mystery of the universe. We are all unique, a uniqueness that can be shown and given freely, when it is not being covered over with ideas, or ideals or appropriated by the ego’s motives. It is so wonderful when we can allow ourselves to move through life freely in the celebration of what we bring to it, instead of being limited by the ego’s idea of what we should” be.

Spontaneity: a great spiritual gift

To be spontaneous is to be free of the clutches of our concept of self. Our concept of self is born out of fear and pain and things that frighten and trouble us. Like the shell of the hermit crab, it is a hard shell of compensation that we pull around, and hide under, and are weighed down by.

Yet, behind each face is something new, yet eternal. Behind the facade of our normal lives there is an eternal kind of destiny finding its way and opening us up and opening us out. It has breadth and depth and excitement to it. It is the awakening of the human spirit so that our soul can live. 

Living with Soul

We often remain outcasts from our own souls. Our intention today is to simply see through and beyond our own filters, distortions, and delusions. In today’s meditation, we will use the power of silence to sink into a deeper and truer vantage point than the one provided by thought. We will attempt to allow our consciousness to sink below the mirage, smoke and mirrors created by our concept of self.

The Exercise: The Miracle of the Human Face

To do so, we will look into another’s face in complete silence, to allow all sense of separation to dissolve, to see their face as a reflection of your own face. It is a magical experience of the depth of connection that can arise through the power of silence and the miracle of the human face.

1. Find someone with whom to do this meditation
2. The meditations itself is 10 minutes long. Be sure that you are in a situation where you will be uninterrupted, totally without distractions, calls, and emails. You can, if you want, set a timer for 12 minutes to allow to a 2 minute experience to continue after the meditation has finished. You and your partner may also agree on more time. 
3. Play the meditation as you both sit across from each other – either in person or online.