From New Seeds of Contemplation:

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. And we ourselves are both. But we cannot know this until we have moved into the second kind of awarenessness. 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 on awareness - not a proposition, but an experience: “I AM.”

Thomas Merton, p. 4

A Community of Symphony

Loved this quote from the book “Living the Questions - Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer:”

From Chapter Four - Opening Space for the Inner Life

Part of the magic of music is that it synchronizes the participants into one whole. The field of neuroscience today is helping us understand why and how this happens. According to William Benzon, “for individuals sharing a common musical culture, there is a strong and systematic similarity between the tonal flow of music and its neurophysiological substrates that allows a tight coupling between the brains of those individuals. While participating in music those individuals constitute a community of symphony.” Benzon goes so far as to say that such practice is essential: “When we deliberately coordinate our nervous systems with each other-this is when we become human.” He came to the conclusion that Descartes and others who begin with individuals and the rational mind as the basic building block of reality and philosophy were wrong. He did not begin his research with this thesis. Rather, he says, “it was forced on me as I thought about how people make music in groups. I do not believe that you can understand human community by starting with individuals and trying to derive interaction and community from rational self-interest.”