@SophiaCycles Echoes here of Kabir's, "Be a slave to intensity," and also, universalist understanding of what contemplatives refer to as the stillness and silence of no self.
@SophiaCycles 5/ Needs be said, even as the illumination born of inwardly 'silencing down’ is profound in itself, avant-garde contemplatives tend to emphasize an 'eyes-open approach'. Hakuin: "Zen practice pursued within activity is a million times superior to that pursued in tranquility."
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As we go through life, we tune ourselves to our surroundings in a modulating flow of focus. Sometimes we are completely wrapped up in our inner world of thoughts. Later we may be directed outwards, unthinkingly absorbed in fascinated observation of external events. The mode we call sacred is one where inner focus and outer focus are balanced and blended, a reciprocal mirroring of idea and sentiment from within and imagery and sensation from without. A waking trance state, ripe with knowledge. This knowledge seems to come to us from a wise source which calls us home. When we go into any activity, work or play, if we really put ourselves into it, not holding back even one percent, doing it with complete faith and determination and throwing ourselves into it, then we disappear. Then in our very movement there is stillness, peace of mind. When we are totally engaged, we are completely still within the activity. There is complete silence and in that silence there is no self, no I.