I came across this in a book on Thomas Merton’s theology of the self.*
If, like the mystics of the Orient, you succeed in emptying your mind of every thought and every desire, you may indeed withdraw into a corner of yourself and concentrate everything within you upon the imaginary point where your life springs out of God; yet you will not find God.
This is from Seeds of Contemplation, very early Merton, and before he had much experience of the apophatic tradition and of Buddhist meditation. He is making an anti-Pelagian point and it is quite true that nothing we can ever do can bring about an experience of God. This is not to say, however, that this ‘imaginary point’ in the void, as Merton puts it, should not be striven for, should not be a goal in meditation. There is a distinction between ‘an encounter with God’ and ‘an experience of God’. The encounter with God occurred at the moment of conception and God has never ceased to be with us. It is not within our ability, however, to experience this reality. Many never experience it, some have glimpses of the transcendent from time to time, while a few do come to know the reality of God’s presence within. The whole point of sitting in darkness, at the limit of our senses, intellect and understanding, is to wait on God, as Simone Weil puts it. It is to make an offer of our whole being, an act of faith which has, apparently, nothing to support it. It also brings home to us that God is the Mysterium Tremendum, the Wholly Other.
* Carr, Anne E., A Search for Wisdom and Spirit: Thomas Merton’s Theology of the Self, Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame Indiana, 1988 p. 15