An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation

God cannot be an object of awareness, for God would then not be God.

Through the medicine of grace, the eye of our heart is healed by the gradual removal of the lumber of mental clutter, “the plank in our eye” that obscures the radiance of the heart. This radiance is a ray of God’s own light.

at some moment, when we spontaneously stopped looking at ourselves as objects of fascination, we cease using the practice of contemplation as a means of controlling any aspect of our progress in contemplation. Each time we sit, it is as though for the very first time and we are too innocent to expect anything at all.

If we experience a longing for God, Truth, Beauty, Happiness, the Peace and Silence that have no opposite, then we have in some hidden way known God, and for this hidden knowledge to have taken place, God must first have known us in some hidden way. Our very longing for God is a response to having already been touched and embraced by God. Desire is

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

this “stacked up” head–heart split is not what St. Diodochos means when he says “enlightened by the Holy Spirit in the inner shrine of our heart.” In Judeo-Christian tradition “heart” intends the unifying, grounding, center of the human person. The heart in this deep sense permits no “stacked up” dualisms, which shape our culture and our lives.48 L

The sheer generosity of receptive mind continues its expanse, an expanse generous enough to cradle in its arms the joys and burdens of a lifetime. Pain still hurts. Joy still gladdens. Despair still flattens. But we are less demanding that the present moment—whether pain, boredom, or bliss—be other than it happens to be.

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

What we alone can do we cannot do alone.