Or else, we are faced with a neutral theme which does not require—and is not even compatible with—devotion arising from the depth, but which holds a legitimate place in the outward order of our daily life or is legitimately proposed to us by circumstances. Then, again, we shall remain recollected by maintaining an essential, a superactual, connection with God and with the real center of our being. Far from exhausting ourselves in that peripheral concern and in spite of concentrating on it in the required measure, with our integral personality we dwell in another region. While we are attending, technically and intellectually, to the task in question, our awareness of God continues to resound in our soul like an unending melody.

This phenomenon of a superior motif resounding in the background, while the foreground is filled by peripheral interests, also occurs within the context of purely creaturely things. A great love, for instance, which inspires our heart and lends wings to our whole existence, is likely to resound with its melody throughout our external occupations; it never allows our soul to be dulled by the wear and tear of our daily routine, nor silences the voice of our deeper personality.

However conscientiously we may be attending to an outward task, we remain in the world of the beloved one. Our love of that person, not the activity of the moment, colors the atmosphere in which our soul is moving. At every moment it is present to our mind (however discreetly) that what we are just doing is not the real thing that fills and guides us; that we are not centered in this petty, peripheral section of our life but continue dwelling in the depth.

The same is true of the recollected person with reference to God and to the ultimate meaning of his life. He always keeps on the superactual level of wakefulness; amidst the welter of his outward activities he dwells in the world of God. His momentary concentration on a peripheral object never results in a submersion of the essential and valid thing.