The following is an excerpt of a future project from Eyes Open Press called “The Snow Globe.” It is the opening part of a small book we hope to create and share with the seeking world…

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Quieting the soul is always an exercise of trust. It requires your fingers to loosen their grip on the cliff of reason as you hang there with that constant desire to pull yourself onto some alluring solid ground where everything is figured out. But to find inner quiet is let go of that pursuit and fall backwards. Somehow, in that freefall, things come together and the most solid ground of peace is discovered. The wind at your back hits you like an old friend from your deepest and most cherished childhood memories. And all is well.

This can happen for a few seconds at a time or it can extend into hours of peaceful reflection and awareness. But however long you embrace this inner quiet, you will always hear the same thing. Something undeniably beautiful.

You will hear the sound of harmony.

There is a deep harmony that runs underneath everything like a healing river winding in and out of the rocks of existence. This is a river that everyone walks through unaware, though we all consciously dip our foot into it from time to time. Some seek this river very intentionally; mystics and dreamers and the like. But each of one us is fully capable of encountering it. Sometimes it is in a moment of quiet by a fire or in looking up into a clear night sky. The harmony of everything sneaks up on you, refreshing your soul, and then seems to slink back behind the jagged rocks of life.

In all of this, there is another important exercise—the opening of the eyes of your heart. While quieting the soul is an exercise of faith, this one is more about hope; hope that reaches beyond our immediate vision in order to see something much deeper and truer. If you can open your inner eyes long enough, looking intently at the world around you, you will see something else of unspeakable beauty.

You will see innocence.

A glorious innocence that permeates everything around us.

We catch glimpses of it here and there. Perhaps in a warm encounter with a dear friend, or at the sight of a new blossom in the spring, or even in a touching video that strikes your heart as your scroll down your social media feed. There is something pure in this world, something tangibly innocent that at the same time can feel utterly elusive and incredibly easy to lose sight of.

Throughout the Theater

Imagine something for a moment. Picture yourself standing in the back of a theater filled with a large group of people who are obnoxiously loud and engaged in all kinds of fruitless arguments. The strife can be seen in every direction and perhaps a fist fight or two breaks out here and there. One attendee has their fingers in their ears and is shouting randomly like a three-year-old. It’s chaos.

But there’s a stage at the front of the theater and upon the stage is that most talented and inspiring orchestra in the world. They are playing music so transcendent that it heals the heart and lifts the mind to a different place. But of course, you must tune into it.

Many people, too many of us, stay stuck in the chaotic noises. Even when we try to focus and listen to the music, we end up in arguments with the noisemakers, trying to reason with them or perhaps pray them away. But when we learn to just move closer to the orchestra, the other noises naturally fade. And soon enough the orchestra pulls us in without any own effort of our own, whereas at first the task seemed impossible. But as this pulling occurs, the problems throughout the theater become distant and trivial. Soon, the music engulfs your soul and all the past annoyances and problems are rendered meaningless.

Now imagine a similar theater. But instead of a stage at the front, there’s a giant movie screen. Once again you’re in the back, but instead of an annoying crowd of people, there are these different sized televisions set up on stands all over the place. Each TV set is playing something different, but all have this in common: The images upon them are distasteful. They are either boring or ill-made, or filled with vile images. And they are VHS quality with antenna-like reception.

But that movie screen at the front is smooth and crisp. Its technology is state-of-the-art and upon its tightly woven fabric plays a film of unimaginable beauty with a capturing storyline of epic stature.

If your eyes are fixed to the static in the smaller television screens, you’ll miss the greater film in front of your eyes. But if you learn to focus in on the screen, its purity and message will overtake your heart and flood out the other screens.

The world around us is kind of like this. Quieting the soul and opening the heart are different ways to come in touch with the unspeakable beauty that surrounds us. A beauty can be summarized by these two these painfully glorious words:

Harmony and innocence.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, these realities are everywhere. But there’s a question we need to pose at this point:

Where does it come?

Where is the stage and screen?

Perhaps if we can find where this healing river is sourced, we can drink from it directly, instead of just dipping our foot into it from time to time, allowing it to haunt us with the allure of its touch. Perhaps there is a way to swim in its currents and discover new depths of its flow…