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OK, last one from me, if you're still up for it.
There is nothing that you can claim, nothing that you can demand, nothing that you can take. And as soon as you try to take something as if it were your own-- you lose your [innocence]. The angel with the flaming sword stands armed against all selfhood that is small and particular, against the "I" that can say "I want..." "I need..." "I demand..." No individual enters Paradise, only the integrity of the Person.
Only the greatest humility can give us the instinctive delicacy and caution that will prevent us from reaching out for pleasures and satisfactions that we can understand and savor in this darkness. The moment we demand anything for ourselves or even trust in any action of our own to procure a deeper intensification of this pure and serene rest in [God], we defile and dissipate the perfect gift that [He] desires to communicate to us in the silence and repose of our own powers.
If there is one thing we must do it is this: we must realize to the very depths of our being that this is a pure gift of [God] which no desire, no effort and no heroism of ours can do anything to deserve or obtain. There is nothing we can do directly either to procure it or to preserve it or to increase it. Our own activity is for the most part an obstacle to the infusion of this peaceful and pacifying light, with the exception that [God] may demand certain acts and works of us by charity or obedience, and maintain us in deep experimental union with [Him] through them all, by [His] own good pleasure, not by any fidelity of ours.
At best we can dispose ourselves for the reception of this great gift by resting in the heart of our own poverty, keeping our soul as far as possible empty of desires for all the things that please and preoccupy our nature, no matter how pure or sublime they may be in themselves.
And when [God] reveals [Himself] to us in contemplation we must accept [Him] as [He] comes to us, in [His] own obscurity, in [His] own silence, not interrupting [Him] with arguments or words, conceptions or activities that belong to the level of our own tedious and labored existence.
We must respond to [God]'s gifts gladly and freely with thanksgiving, happiness and joy; but in contemplation we thank [Him] less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. ... It is our emptiness in the presence of the abyss of [His] reality, our silence in the presence of [His] infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which [His] light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises [Him]. It is this that causes love of [God] and wonder and adoration to swim up into us like tidal waves out of the depths of that peace, and break upon the shores of our consciousness in a vast, hushed surf of inarticulate praise, praise and glory!