All my prideful efforts have come to nothing—there is no doubt of that. And yet within these failed attempts, there is a pure striving of yours that cannot fail. How far that luminous striving has brought me toward you, I cannot say.
There are moments when all becomes suffused with you, when no difference remains between you and me—my knowledge, my love, my desire, all merge into one with you. Is it not in such moments that I glimpse the success of your striving? Then why do I lose that state again? You say I lose it, yes, but in you it remains forever. What gain is that for me? Your storehouse brims with grain, and yet I starve from hunger. What good does this do me?
What I desire is for that grain stored in you to come forth and nourish me in my daily life. I wish to cease my striving, for it accomplishes nothing. Yet if I cease, I know not how to live, how to spend my days. I cannot halt my effort—you are working within it. The mistake lies only in believing it to be mine alone. That very error is what undoes everything.
I long to lean upon your causeless grace. How many times have I sought shelter in that grace with empty hands, yet I cannot maintain that emptiness. Though I cannot hold it, your grace does not abandon me—unknowingly, it carries me toward fulfillment. And yet at times the sting of failure becomes unbearable, and I yearn for this suffering to end somehow. There seems no way for pain to cease save through success itself.
Life itself dwells within your eternal nature, where failure has no place, where ruin cannot touch. Your eternal nature... ah! This is the eternal dwelling, where I dwell each moment and shall dwell forever. This is your loving breast, your embrace. Who would tear me from this bosom, this encircling arm? The soul within me desires no such thing.
Seated in my innermost chamber, you speak ceaselessly of infinite, eternal love. In every pulse of my being I perceive your tender devotion. And yet I wander from that sanctuary again and again, venturing so far that I can no longer hear your call. I wish to abandon this restlessness, this endless wandering, and surrender entirely to your grace. For that grace will never forsake me, never lead me toward destruction.
See where my unbridled desire has brought me. I have frozen in terror at the shadow of this ruin. I wish to take shelter in your safe embrace. Tell me plainly — will you shelter me or not? I long to hear your words of assurance. In all my striving, I wish to perceive your causeless grace — that grace which, immovable and certain, will bind me to you in eternal union.