To live a contemplative life is to be open enough to see, free enough to hear, real enough to respond. It is a life, and so it has its own rhythms of darkness, of dying-rising. Simply enough, it is a live of grateful receptivity, or wordless awe, of silent simplicity.
We ourselves possess Beauty when
we are true to our own being; ugliness
is in going to another order;
knowing ourselves, we are beautiful;
in self-ignorance, we are ugly.