In the stillness of meditation, free from concepts, free from prejudices, we are able, as Father John said, to enter the experience directly. We are no longer trying to experience the experience, which is how most of us get so messed up. We get into something, then we start wanting to watch it, analyse it; we want to be in control of it; we want to be able to use it: to experience the experience. What we are learning in meditation, through the utterly simple practice of stillness and of letting go of all thoughts, is that we are able to enter into the experience of being as a whole person, and therefore, the experiences that happen don’t matter.
(Aspects of Love 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB )