Spirituality's highest purpose is to touch a mystery beyond words, which is perceived only in silence and solitude. Listening within the silence puts one in touch with the energy, vibration, and spiritual forces that are at the heart of creation. The realms are real and can only be reached by a quiet mind and practice. The Grandmothers believe we must return to the inner spirit and the spirit of all things, which we have abandoned while looking elsewhere for happiness.
At a conference on the Iranian poet Hafez I attended recently, one of the older Persian speakers suddenly leaned forward to the audience and said, "Make your work The Face of the Beloved, and let what you create be her lashes, her mole, her lips." To do that would mean carrying all these gifts, letting the radiance of the World beyond the world shine into each cottage door you come to. Doing so requires both huge strength and the capacity for a kind of visible luminosity, an active principle that can only be born from a great stillness.