Second, once we have crossed this threshold of realizing we are not the mind-stream of thoughts and feelings, we find the tensions of life easier to live through. Our interiority is not so cramped; indeed it is a vast and spacious flow.

God in Christ has taken into Himself the brokenness of the human condition. Hence, human woundedness, brokenness, death itself are transformed from dead ends to doorways into Life.

The peace will indeed come, but it will be the fruit, not of pushing away distractions, but of meeting thoughts and feelings with stillness instead of commentary. This is the skill we must learn.

Crossing the Third Doorway we encounter the ineffable. It is ineffable because it is neither an “it” nor a “what.” It is nothing that can be grasped by thoughts, feelings, words. Language wilts. The prayer word opens. It reveals not another object of awareness, but the groundless ground that is the core of all being. This typically registers to the

this is the essence of liberating integration: allowing into awareness what was previously kept out of awareness.

In order for humility to mature it must blossom into self-forgetfulness.

We must long for truth, freedom, loving communion with the silent depths of God.

“the silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind.”

A large part of the struggle with fear is actually an inability to experience fear directly.