Being-with someone unconditionally, just-here-now, the Beloved is communicating with the other, for Presence speaks through your presence. You need feel no obligation to correct or instruct. This may arise, but may not. Love is this Beloved within you each. Trust that Presence, not your mind, not the mind of the other. Simply allow yourself to see and know the other is not what your eyes see, but what your Heart comes to know in Silence. The Silence is the Presence, the Silence remains regardless of what is said or not said. Nothing need be done or not-done. This is Love whispering heart with heart, "Come, meet me."
*Arem Nahariim-Samadhi
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Recently, I took some apples with me on a visit to my family. My dad tried one and talked about how tasty the apple was. I remembered that the reason was ripeness. I had bought the apples many days before and had eaten one, but it was not as tasty. Like much of mass produced, too-early-picked fruit in our grocery stores, the apples were hard and needed more time for the ripening process. When my dad and I ate two of them later, they had had time to ripen more. I did not have to ripen them, only provide a conducive environment.
Spiritually, we need to be aware of and honor the ripening process when offering spiritual presence and work with persons, as well as honoring that process within ourselves. As a Chaplain, I can work with one person and feel a matured readiness to receive and respond at a level below merely surface. I can see someone else, and there is no observable readiness to allow at that under-surface process of receptivity and response.
This same ripening and readiness applies to us, also: we cannot force readiness. We can provide conditions to encourage and support the process. Sometimes, simply being with someone and not judging the person - being-with without an agenda but to be-with - is a condition that can encourage one to move closer to receiving a more indepth receptivity and response to Life, to Grace. And, again, this applies to us - we can show ourselves the compassion in being-with ourselves nonjudgmentally. This being-with nonjudgmentally is spiritual contemplation in an ironic act of non-doing that is a subtle, powerful doing, is prayerfulness, is the play of Presence, the silent dance of Grace.
