At first that seems strange. It feels unnatural, it feels difficult, it feels impossible to take the attention off your thoughts. But then you discover that you can. And the word ‘conversion’ means literally in the Latin, ‘to turn with’ – con meaning ‘with’, versere ‘to turn’. So we come to realise that this conversation is actually also a communion. It is not something we’re doing in isolation. We have to make our own commitment, we have to persevere ourselves and come back when we have failed. But it is actually not a lonely process. Even though we have to go into the desert at times, it is not about isolation. It is about communion. Because what we are turning towards always, if we turn towards God, and turn towards the other, if we turn towards the person we’re with, then we are turning towards this reality of undivided consciousness. ‘May they be one as you Father and I are one. You in me and I in them, may they be perfectly one.’ (Jn 17:21) So at the heart of this in the Christian vision is the realisation, the discovery, the breakthrough into this field of undivided consciousness, of oneness, of simplicity.
(The Art of Waiting by Laurence Freeman OSB)
