The Path of Silence … Realizing the universal

(by Paul Mulliner)

“Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence” — Rainer Maria Rilke

“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way.” — Albert Einstein


Our mission as human beings is to find and know the hidden, the universal soul.

The presence of the eternal, a timeless universal consciousness, unlimited, boundless and almost inexpressible, somehow touching all our lives, somehow weaving an extraordinary intelligence through life.

Something never seen, but always known inside the conscious silence.

Something always providing us with intuition, an inner poetry, a whisper in the wind that touches every star and every human life.

A poetry of insight helping us know the presence of the Source, generous and providential like sunlight in a summer garden.


Like intelligent and conscious light becoming life, universal consciousness is expressing itself as our living human form and providing us with conscious awareness.

And a new contemporary spirituality is emerging that recognizes universal consciousness as the primary element in the universe not matter.

We’re a spacious universal consciousness appearing as separate human beings.


Tuning in to this universal consciousness, the conscious silence inside us, helps us be more receptive to intuition.

Those sudden and spontaneous inner promptings from the universal that are often precisely appropriate and useful to our current circumstances.

That hunch we might get about whether a particular choice is appropriate, the sudden hint that something we’ve lost is in an unexpected place.


Intuition is the spontaneous and silent voice of the universal consciousness.

A universal consciousness trying to help us navigate our life.

Providing spontaneous insights and sudden inspirations that have helped human beings through the ages find new understanding and create new music and art.


We can’t see this universal field of consciousness and haven’t yet developed the sensitive tools required to make it visible, but we can make visual expressions of our intuitive impressions of this field.

We can reveal it with art.


Visual fields, arrays, webs and networks created with digital art tools can hint at the unseen, underlying connectedness that binds the universe together into one coherent whole.

Something hidden exists in all our lives, and with digital art software we can now make our intuitive realizations of this hidden universal consciousness visible.


“Artists allow us to see what we are unable to see, but somehow already know” — Rick Rubin


With art we can reveal our intuitions of the unseen, the underlying field of universal consciousness.


Art by the Author 2024, model photo Icons8 Unsplash, landscape photo Ricardo Gomez Angel, Unsplash

And for writers, intuitive poetry helps record the inner flow of insights and metaphor emerging from the universal source inside all of us, the eternal, the Tao.

We can see writing poetry as part of a personal journey of self discovery with spontaneous insights and sudden intuitions written down, maybe scribbled into a personal notebook.

We can allow our personal creativity to occupy a large and important space at the heart of our life.


Every day we can find time to pause, go deeper, and find the inner center of ourselves.

Know an inner connection to the conscious universe.

Realize the importance of a life centered around our own inner journey.

A life that has plenty of time and space for silence and inner healing.

A life with a conscious inner center.


Rather than creating consciousness, our human brain can be thought of as an antenna tuning in to universal consciousness.

A universal consciousness we can become more aligned to, in sync with, when we focus our attention inwardly, into the deep inner core of ourselves.

A universal consciousness the Native American Lakota and Algonquin referred to as the Great Mystery or Great Spirit and many other traditions through the centuries have created their own names and descriptions.


Art by the Author 2022, model photo Myron Edwards Unsplash

“We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home” — Australian Aboriginal Proverb


We’re living in a time when insights from the ancient intuitive wisdom traditions Taoism, Buddhism and the Hindu Vedanta, among others, are being joined with insights from the front edge of science to create a new synthesis, a new worldview fit for the 21st century.

The new worldview isn’t a completely new way of seeing, but rather an evolution of pre-modern wisdom traditions that accepts and values the many new insights now emerging from science.

For nearly a century, researchers in physics have known all the ‘material stuff’ in our universe to be clusters of tiny wave patterns in a field of nonlocal cosmic energy.

In more recent decades they’ve discovered the exquisite interwoven orchestration of cell biochemistry, revealing the presence of an extraordinary intelligence throughout the universe.


Art by the Author 2024: model photo Candice Picard, landscape photo Les Argonautes, both Unsplash

Our inspirations and insights emerge from an inexpressible source inside all of us, the universal consciousness.

A universal consciousness trying to help us navigate our life.


“The Tao is nowhere to be found. Yet it nourishes all things and brings them to fulfilment” — Tao Te Ching 41


“That which cannot be seen is called invisible.
That which cannot be heard is called inaudible.
That which cannot be held is called intangible.

By intuition you can see it, hear it, and feel it.

Then the unseen, unheard and untouched
are present as one.”

— from the Tao Te Ching 14th verse
translation/ interpretation by Wayne Dyer


We’re the living expressions of a universal consciousness that’s transforming itself into the precisely orchestrated biochemistry of our bodies, allowing us to live life as a human being.

A universal consciousness that has an extraordinary intelligence, not only orchestrating the astonishing complexity of the biochemistry of our body, but also bringing us intuition.


When we’re born, the conscious universe becomes a human being.

And every day we can find time to pause, pay attention to the silence inside us, and realize an inner connection to the conscious universe.

We can let our thinking dissolve away, and become aware of the silence of universal consciousness inside us.

We can focus our attention in this conscious silence and become more tuned in to the universal consciousness.

And we can more clearly sense the helpful intuitive insights and inspirations it’s always creating inside us.


Paul Mulliner 2024


From: https://thetaoist.online/the-path-of-silence-45437eba7024

Cover image: Mandala Art by the Author 2019


Making the Tao Visible… with intuitive art

(by Paul Mulliner)

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way — Albert Einstein

Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence — Rainer Maria Rilke

The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear — Rumi

Intuition is the spontaneous and silent voice of the hidden, the universal and eternal, the Tao.

A sudden inner prompting from the universal consciousness that’s often precisely appropriate and useful to our current circumstances.

That hunch we might get about whether a particular choice is appropriate, the sudden hint that something we’ve lost is in an unexpected place.


Spontaneous insights and sudden inspirations have helped human beings through the ages find new understanding and create new music and art.

And realize breakthroughs improving the quality of their life, making crucial change happen.

Despite the apparent chaos we can see happening around us, the underlying clarity and pragmatic wisdom of universal consciousness always remain available.

We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing, a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all — Plotinus

Our inspirations and insights emerge from an inexpressible source inside all of us, the universal consciousness.

A universal consciousness trying to help us navigate our life.


Something hidden, and almost inexpressible exists in all our lives, and with digital art software, we can now make our intuitive realizations of this hidden universal consciousness visible.

Artists allow us to see what we are unable to see, but somehow already know — Rick Rubin

With art, we can reveal our intuitions of the unseen, the underlying field of universal consciousness.

Art by the Author 2024, model photo icons8 Unsplash, landscape photo Ricardo Gomez Angel Unsplash

For writers, intuitive poetry helps record the inner flow of insights and metaphors emerging from the universal source inside all of us, the eternal, the Tao.

We can see writing poetry as part of a personal journey of self-discovery with spontaneous insights and sudden intuitions written down, maybe scribbled into a personal notebook.

We can allow our personal creativity to occupy a large and important space at the heart of our lives.

Art by the Author 2023, model photo Fleur Kaan, landscape photo Brigitta Schneiter, both on Unsplash

Immersing ourselves in silence helps us temporarily dissolve our ego and realize we’re participants in a conscious and intelligent universe.

The Tao is nowhere to be found. Yet it nourishes all things and brings them to fulfilment — Tao Te Ching 41

That which cannot be seen is called invisible.
That which cannot be heard is called inaudible.
That which cannot be held is called intangible.

By intuition you can see it, hear it, and feel it.

Then the unseen, unheard and untouched
are present as one.

— from the Tao Te Ching 14th verse
translation/ interpretation by Wayne Dyer

We’re living in a time when insights from the ancient intuitive wisdom traditions of Taoism, Buddhism, and the Hindu Vedanta, among others, are being joined with insights from the front edge of science to create a new synthesis, a new worldview fit for the 21st century.

A new contemporary spirituality, inspired by these traditions and emerging from meditation practice, is becoming increasingly in sync with insights from the latest scientific research.


And it’s now time in our long cultural evolution as human beings to bring our analytical science and intuitive spirituality together.

And recognize that consciousness is the primary element in the universe, not matter.


Our view of reality, our worldview, is often shaped by our preconceptions and assumptions, and can sometimes be an unconscious prism through which we see the world.

The worldview that so characterized the 20th century has entered deep into mainstream thinking and acts as a sort of foundational myth, a way of structuring and filtering reality.


Positive change is possible, but the most fundamental and difficult change needed is a change in our awareness, a change in the way we see the world, each other, and our planet.

And this change can begin to happen when we tune in to the conscious silence inside us and find for ourselves the intuitive realization that it’s everywhere, inside all of us.


We’re a universal consciousness knowing what it is to be a human being.

A universal consciousness the Native American Lakota and Algonquin referred to as the Great Mystery or Great Spirit and many other traditions through the centuries have created their own names and descriptions.

Art by the Author 2022, model and landscape photo Unsplash

We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home — Australian Aboriginal Proverb

The new worldview isn’t a completely new way of seeing, but rather an evolution of pre-modern wisdom traditions that accepts and values the many new insights now emerging from science.

For nearly a century, researchers in physics have known all the ‘material stuff’ in our universe to be clusters of tiny wave patterns in a field of nonlocal cosmic energy.

In more recent decades they’ve discovered the exquisite interwoven orchestration of cell biochemistry, revealing the presence of an extraordinary intelligence throughout the universe.

Art by the Author 2024: model and landscape photo Unsplash

When we’re born, the conscious universe becomes a human being.

And though we don’t get much time to be human, every day we can find time to pause, pay attention to the silence inside us, and realize an inner connection to the conscious universe.


Every moment we’re choosing what we pay attention to.

We’re choosing where to focus our attention.

Social media is very carefully designed to engage our attention, to hold our gaze, and to maximize the time we spend focusing our attention on a constant stream of new images and text.

We can choose however, to sometimes focus our attention on the conscious space and silence inside us.

Away from our screens and our thoughts and into now, the present moment.


The universal consciousness has an extraordinary intelligence, not only orchestrating the astonishing complexity of the biochemistry of our body, but also bringing us intuition.

And when we pay attention to the conscious silence inside us, we help intuition flourish in our life.


We’re born into an enduring universal consciousness that’s always here, throughout the birth and death of all of us.

We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden — Seneca

And we can choose to pay attention to the conscious silence inside us.

An inner conscious space, a healing time away from our life in the world.

Our conscious inner center, woven into consciousness throughout the universe.


Paul Mulliner 2024

Source: https://medium.com/a-little-stoic-wisdom/making-the-tao-visible-4130fe1fb932

Art on the cover: Paul Mulliner