“My purpose here is to affirm that the unitive state is a hidden path in itself, a movement in its own right that ultimately leads to no-self (no true-self and no-union). In short, the unitive state is the hidden path to no-self.”

Instead of the usual unlocalized centre of myself, there was nothing there, it was empty, and at the moment of seeing this there was a flood of quiet joy and I knew, finally I knew what was missing-it was my “self”.

The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication.

This search for perfection – which is a search for divinity – is nothing more than the failure to accept our existence the way it is.

Spiritual life is like a moving sidewalk. Whether you go with it or spend your whole life running against it, you’re still going to be taken along.

Since the moment of self-consciousness comes to a permanent end – and a new journey begins- is such a decisive stroke or milestone in the contemplative life.

To go beyond the self, beyond even its most intimate union with God, and this is where we enter yet another new life- a life best categorized, perhaps, as a life without a self.

The reflexive mechanism of the mind -or whatever it is that allows us to be self-conscious – is cut off or permanently suspended so the mind is ever after held in a fixed now moment out of which it cannot move in its uninterrupted gaze upon the Unknown

But this going-out is an upheaval, a complete turnabout of such proportions it cannot possibly be missed, under-emphasized, or sufficiently stressed as a major landmark in the contemplative life.

It can no longer be tested by any force or trial, nor moved by the winds of change, and at this point the self has obviously outworn its function; it is no longer needed or useful, and life can go on without it.

Rather, it is for the hardy who have been tried by fire and have come to rest in a tough, immovable trust in “that” which lies beyond the known, beyond the self, beyond union and even beyond love and trust itself

But coming home that day, walking downhill with a panorama of valley and hills before me, I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks.

When one is perfectly still-mind and body, silent and alone-there is no personality to speak of, thus personality is one’s unique way of expression, it is what others see and know of us, nothing more or deeper than that.

The onset of this second movement is characterized by the falling away of self and coming upon “that” which remains when it is gone.

When there is no longer a cyclone, there is no longer an eye. So the storms, crises and sufferings of life are a way of finding the eye.

I can only speculate why so little has been said of this breakthrough; in fact , I may never get over the silence on the part of writers who say nothing about this second movement.

This journey then, is nothing more, yet nothing less than a period of acclimating to a new way of seeing, a time of transition and revelation as it gradually comes upon “that” which remains when there is no self. this is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

I love black because it affirms, designs and styles. A woman in a black dress is a pencil stroke.

It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals.

We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.

Christianity affirms the value of each individual soul. Nazism denies it.

But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understand, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses.

Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.

Don’t surround yourself with people who just affirm you. Surround yourself with people who challenge you.