We do well to remember that the metaphor of decluttering does not imply a clearly delineated succession of stages; for the clutter of the mind comes and goes and comes again, in a process much like keeping house or trying to keep our desks clear of heaped-up paper and notes.

This allows grace to loosen this ego-knot and opens the way to a more expansive, receptive, far less cluttered awareness.

must “know,” says Eckhart, “that the very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within.”17

Self-forgetful giving is likened to when we were yet uncreated.

Love makes us real. Love creates us and sustains us in the process of realizing who we already are.

The problem is not that God is absent but that God is so intimately present.

As John Chapman writes in his Spiritual Letters, “Progress will mean becoming more and more indifferent as to what state we are in.”

We go at these dualisms tooth and nail, and dualistically bludgeon them into what we triumphantly label “the non-dual.”

Psychology calls this object-permanence. Theology in its own proper way calls this presence-in-absence.