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Contemplation is receptive, though not passive, for receptivity is active openness in Love and to Love. Receptivity transforms the felt-need to control, grasp, and make something happen. In contemplation there is Nothing: Nothing to control, Nothing to grasp, Nothing to make happen. For Nothingness is Everything, Emptiness is Fullness, Everywhere is Here, and Always is Now. In receptive openness, all arises and dissolves, simply and wonderfully, because that is the nature of everything. One does not have to become present, either, for she is awakened to already-eternally-being-present. No longer does the contemplative esteem reality based on personal preferences, for all the facts of her life are surrendered to the one Fact, her reality to the one Reality, and her purpose to the one Purpose. She is consumed and being consumed in the Fire of Love and, thus, she is most alive and being made more alive. In this simplified, simplifying Activity of contemplation, she rests, for there are no expectations, no demands, no ought to, no should do, no memory, no anticipation, only Nothing.
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In this bright Darkness, this florid Desert of the Soul, this astonishingly diversified Singularity, she is gentled to live gently. Contemplation is, then, the Garden of Eden, the Place of Always-Already Delight. She sees this Garden as Delight, for no longer is Delight a matter of personal emotional states that arise and dissolve. Personal emotional states arise from One Energy and dissolve into the One Energy. Contemplation, then, is not an escape from the world, for there is Nowhere from which to escape; Heaven is Now, Here, inside, all around, beyond inside and outside, for you are in God and God is in you! Or succinctly, friends, Contemplation is simply a loving gaze, without any need to add to that Look, regardless of what passing forms arise within the Look. And, surprisingly, when you look with this Look, that Look is looking back, with the same adoring gaze. You discover, in this All-Pervading Awareness, YOU ARE BLISSFULLY ADORED!
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