Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder, It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life of being. It is gratitude for awareness, for life, and for being. It is vivid awareness that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendant, and infinitely abundant Source.
In contemplation, we know beyond all knowing and un-knowing.
-- Thomas Merton