Flashback Montana
When we apprehend God through the medium of concepts, we see Him as an object separate from ourselves, as a being from whom we are alienated, even though we believe that He loves us and that we love Him. In contemplation this division disappears, for contemplation goes beyond concepts and apprehends God not as a separate object but as the Reality within our own reality, the Being within our being, the life of our life...
… Contemplation is a mystery in which God reveals Himself to us as the very center of our own most intimate self—intimior intimo meo as St. Augustine said. When the realization of His presence bursts upon us, our own self disappears in Him and we pass mystically through the Red Sea of separation to lose ourselves (and thus find our true selves) in Him…
… All the powers of the soul reach out in freedom and knowledge and love, and all converge again, and all are gathered together in one supreme act which is radiant with peace.
-Thomas Merton, The New Man
Flashback Montana
When we apprehend God through the medium of concepts, we see Him as an object separate from ourselves, as a being from whom we are alienated, even though we believe that He loves us and that we love Him. In contemplation this division disappears, for contemplation goes beyond concepts and apprehends God not as a separate object but as the Reality within our own reality, the Being within our being, the life of our life...
… Contemplation is a mystery in which God reveals Himself to us as the very center of our own most intimate self—intimior intimo meo as St. Augustine said. When the realization of His presence bursts upon us, our own self disappears in Him and we pass mystically through the Red Sea of separation to lose ourselves (and thus find our true selves) in Him…
… All the powers of the soul reach out in freedom and knowledge and love, and all converge again, and all are gathered together in one supreme act which is radiant with peace.
-Thomas Merton, The New Man