Love and suffering lead us toward the beginnings of a contemplative mind if we submit to them at all, and many of us do submit to them for a while. Too often, though, most of us soon return to dualistic inner argumentation and our old, tired judgments, trying to retake control. Most of us leave this too-naked garden of Adam and Eve and enter instead into the fighting and competing world of Cain and Abel. Then we “settle in the land of Nod [or wandering], East of Eden” (Genesis 4:16), before we find ourselves longing and thirsting for what we once tasted in Eden. Perhaps we need to wander for a
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