The actually loved and known

The contemplative life is not in fact about ideas at all, really. It is far more practical, even down-to-earth, than that. In a sense, the contemplative doesn’t care about constructing a metaphysical framework. What happens is merely experience. When a person enters the stillness of “awakened” consciousness, the rigid boundaries of the self drop away. The immediate, felt reality of that state is precisely one of mutual indwelling. In that state, we don’t look at nature; we are in nature, and nature is in us. We don’t so much sympathise with another person’s suffering as we experience our existence as continuous with theirs. Charles Williams’ coinherence becomes simply a description of what it actually feels like when the ego’s filtering mechanism relaxes – when Huxley’s doors of perception drift open of themselves. All that we are consists in our relationship with all that is; not in an abstract sense, but in vital, lived reality. When the boundaries of the self are fully defended,…