One area where we probably often have the chance to be aware of our duplicity is in our speech. We talk so much. How much of what we say do we mean? How much of what we mean do we say? How much does what we say really mean? Suppose one undertook the discipline, well known in monastic tradition, of speaking only what one knew was GIVEN to one to speak? How quiet our homes, our dining rooms, even our churches and places of worship would be. Our society plays very loose with words, with talk; but there is little silence, and silence is where meaning comes from.
Contact with the Divine Beloved is never complete until some other human being feels more loved and cherished as a result of its contact. Further, as all who have ever communed with the Beloved have discovered, the more deeply you encounter the Divine Lover, the more sensitively you feel the agony of the world; the more you are called to care more, feel more and think more deeply about decay in the social and moral order. You live in a state of radical empathy with all those in need. You are transparent to the agony of the world. Together with the Beloved, you must reach out to allay this suffering, or to do what you can in the light of the perspective of grace and the energy of spiritual partnership.