Quotes about Awakening

It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer.

Contemplation, on the contrary, is the experiential grasp of reality as subjective, not so much "mine" (which would signify "belonging to the external self") but "myself" in existential mystery. Contemplation does not arrive at reality after a process of deduction, but by an intuitive awakening in which our free and personal reality becomes fully alive to its own existential depths, which open out into the mystery of God.

This implies that all truly serious and spiritual forms of religion aspire at least implicitly to a contemplative awakening both of the individual and of the group.

If it is awakened, it communicates a new life to the intelligence in which it lives, so that it becomes a living awareness of itself: and this awareness is not so much something that we ourselves have, as something that we are. It is a new and indefinable quality of our living being.

Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening

But in the actual experience of contemplation all other experiences are momentarily lost. They "die" to be born again on a higher level of life.

True gratitude and hypocrisy cannot exist together. They are totally incompatible. ... We cannot be satisified to make a mental note of things which God has done for us and then perfunctorily thank him for favors recieved. ... Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful man knows that God is good, not by hearsay, but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

Listening to Jeremiah is one hell of a way to get your blood going in the morning; it puts caffeine to shame.

By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result

Whoever looks from inside knows that everything is new.

It was an election year and there was reason for concern over the turn of events. The country was waking up. The wave of discontent that was stirring the people was beginning to strike at the heart of that oligarchic society.

To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night. From his watchtower in the skies, Til the dappled dawn doth rise.