Contemplation is the awareness and realization, even in some sense experience, of what each Christian obscurely believes: “It is now no longer that I live, but Christ lives in me.”

… It is awakening, enlightenment and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God’s creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life.–Thomas Merton

From New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton (New Directions Books 1961,  p. 5)