Waiting by the Door

“Tell me now, if Christ is the door, what should a person do once she has found it? Should she stand there waiting and not go in? Answering in your place, I say: yes, this is exactly what she should do…she must learn to be sensitive to the Spirit guiding her secretly in the depths of her heart and wait until the Spirit stirs and beckons her within…Lay hold of [contemplation], then, if you can; or rather I should say, if grace lays hold of you…For left to ourselves, we may proudly strain after contemplation, only to stumble in the end.”
—Privy Counsel, Ch. 16 (gender-inclusive text added)

This is one of the many paradoxes that lies in the background of everything the author of Privy Counsel teaches. We do all this work, but in the end, we do nothing. The work is done to us. This is why some authors distinguish between centering prayer and contemplation. One is the technique; the other is the fruit of the technique. They are not necessarily connected. We do not earn contemplative awareness, nor do we give it to ourselves. We dispose ourselves to receive it by letting go of all results and accepting everything just as it is. Like a Zen koan, the answer does not appear until we are content with no answer at all. Therein lies the mystery.