Christ filling the hearing, sight, touch, taste, and every sense

Origen

Divine wakefulness
with pure and naked intuition

Gregory of Nyssa

With the flash of one trembling glance, my mind
arrived at
THAT WHICH IS,
but I could not fix my gaze thereon

Augustine

Utter pureness,
myriad lightnings,
flashing forth,
beyond all being

Pseudo-Dionysius

The mind, gazing upon the universe of God's handiwork,
rapt by the divine and infinite light

Maximus the Confessor

The mind stolen from itself
by the ineffable sweetness
of the Word

Bernard of Clairvaux

Seeing truth
in purity
and simplicity

Richard of St. Victor

The alertness
which finds everything plain
and grasps it clearly
with entire apprehension

Hugh of St. Victor

Receiving the clarity of God
without any means;
a single nakedness
that embraces all things

Jan Van Ruysbroek

A blind feeling
of one's own being,
stretching unto God

The Cloud of Unknowing

The enlightening of the understanding, joined to the
joys of God's love

Walter Hilton

Right understanding,
with true longing, absolute trust,
and sweet grace-giving mindfulness

Julian of Norwich

Hanging
by God's thread
of pure Love

Catherine of Genoa

The secret of Christian contemplation
is that it faces us with Jesus Christ
toward our suffering world
in loving service and just action

Catherine of Siena

Finding God
in all things

Ignatius of Loyola

Awareness
absorbed and amazed

Teresa of Avila

The window of the soul
cleansed perfectly
and made completely transparent
by the divine light

John of the Cross

The pure, loving gaze
that finds God
everywhere

Brother Lawrence

The mind's loving, unmixed,
permanent attention
to the things of God

Francis de Sales

Seeing God in everything
and everything in God
with completely extraordinary clearness
and delicacy

Marie of the Incarnation

The pure, virgin awareness
of a little child
in the state of innocence

Thomas Traherne

Continual communion
through all things
by quite simply doing everything
in the presence of the Holy Trinity

Elizabeth of the Trinity

The world becoming luminous
from within
as one plunges
breathlessly
into human activity

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Seeing through exterior things,
and seeing God
in them

Thomas Merton

A continual condition
of prayerful sensitivity
to what is really going on

Douglas Steere

Looking deeply at life
as it is
in the very here and now

Thich Nhat Hanh

A long, loving look...

William McNamara

A long, loving look at the real

Walter Burghardt

Continually renewed immediacy

Thomas Kelly

Awakening to the presence of God in the human heart and in the universe which is around us... knowledge by love.

Dom Bede Griffiths