Thomas Merton: one awareness

The life of contemplation implies two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and second, awareness of the answer.

Though these are two distinct and enormously different levels, yet they are in fact an awareness of the same thing.

The question is, itself, the answer. & we ourselves are both. But we cannot know this until we have moved into the 2nd kind of awareness.

We awaken, not to find an answer absolutely distinct from the question, but to realize that the question is its own answer.

And all is summed up in one awareness—not a proposition, but an experience: "I AM."




Thomas Merton