Bernadette Roberts was born in the United States in 1931. A former Carmelite nun, she has written many books chronicling her spiritual journey and life of contemplation.
Here, Bernadette Roberts shares an inspiring story of a profound shift in her way of seeing and knowing:
I was standing on a windy hillside looking down over the ocean when a seagull came into view, gliding, dipping, playing with the wind. I watched it as I’d never watched anything before in my life. I almost seemed to be mesmerized; it was as if I was watching myself flying, for there was not the usual division between us. Yet, something more was there than just a lack of separateness, “something” truly beautiful and unknowable. Finally, I turned my eyes to the pine-covered hills behind the monastery and still, there was no division, only something “there” that was flowing with and through every vista and particular object of vision. . . . What I had [originally] taken as a trick of the mind was to become a permanent way of seeing and knowing.
