"Our first task, in the realization of our own vocation and in the expansion of the kingdom among our contemporaries, is to find our own spirit because this is our life-line with the Spirit of God.  In doing so, we come to realize that we participate in the divine progression and that we share the dynamic essence of God’s still point: harmony, light, joy and love.  To fulfil this destiny we are called to transcendence, to that continuous state of liberty and perpetual renewal, that complete passing into the other.  In our meditation we begin to enter this state by our renunciation of words, images, thoughts and even self-consciousness, everything which is in itself contingent, ephemeral, tangential.  In meditation we must have the courage to attend solely to the Absolute, the abiding and the central.  To find our own spirit, we must be silent and allow our spirit to emerge from the darkness to which it has been banished.  To transcend we must be still.  The stillness is our pilgrimage…"

-- John Main OSB, Word Into Silence