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I Can Depend Less And Less On My Own Power And Sense Of Direction...it Is So Strange To Advance Backwards And Get Where You Are Going In A Totally Unexpected Way

-Thomas Merton

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I Can Depend Less

Thomas Merton

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I Can Depend Less And Less On My Own Power And Sense Of Direction...it Is So Strange To Advance Backwards And Get Where You Are Going In A Totally Unexpected Way

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What Is The Use Of Praying If At The Very Moment Of Prayer, We Have So Little Confidence In God That We Are Busy Planning Our Own Kind Of Answer To Our Prayer?

Merely To Resist Evil With Evil By Hating Those Who Hate Us And Seeking To Destroy Them, Is Actually No Resistance At All. It Is Active And Purposeful Collaboration In Evil That Brings The Christian Into Direct And Intimate Contact With The Same Source Of Evil And Hatred Which Inspires The Acts Of His Enemy. It Leads In Practice To A Denial Of Christ And To The Service Of Hatred Rather Than Love.

There Is Always A Temptation To Diddle Around In The Contemplative Life, Making Itsy-bitsy Statues.

Contemplative Life

The Mission Of Christian Humility In Social Life Is Not Merely To Edify, But To Keep Minds Open To Many Alternatives. The Rigidity Of A Certain Type Of Christian Thought Has Seriously Impaired This Capacity, Which Nonviolence Must Recover.

Do Not Be Too Quick To Condemn The Man Who No Longer Believes In God: For It Is Perhaps Your Own Coldness And Avarice And Mediocrity And Materialism And Selfishness That Have Chilled His Faith.

Let Me Rest In Your Will And Be Silent. Then The Light Of Your Joy Will Warm My Life. Its Fire Will Burn In My Heart And Shine For Your Glory. This Is What I Live For. Amen, Amen.

It Is By The Holy Spirit That We Love Those Who Are United To Us In Christ. The More Plentifully We Have Received Of The Spirit Of Christ, The More Perfectly We Are Able To Love Them: And The More We Love Them The More We Receive The Spirit. It Is Clear, However, That Since We Love Them By The Spirit Who Is Given To Us By Jesus, It Is Jesus Himself Who Loves Them In Us.

God Has Brought Me To Kentucky...the Precise Place He Has Chosen For My Sanctification.

It's A Risky Thing To Pray And The Danger Is That Our Very Prayers Get Between God And Us. The Great Thing In Prayer Is Not To Pray, But To Go Directly To God. . . . The Fact Is, Though, That If You Descend Into The Depths Of Your Own Spirit And Arrive Somewhere Near The Center Of What You Are, You Are Confronted With The Inescapable Truth That, At The Very Root Of Your Existence, You Are In Constant And Immediate Contact With The Infinite Power Of God.

The Monk In Hiding Himself From The World Becomes Not Less Than Himself, Not Less Of A Person, But More Of A Person, More Truly And Perfectly Himself: For His Personality And Individuality Are Perfected In Their True Order, The Spiritual, Interior Order.

Death Is Someone You See Very Clearly With Eyes In The Center Of Your Heart: Eyes That See Not By Reacting To Light, But By Reacting To A Kind Of A Chill From Within The Marrow Of Your Own Life.

Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity.

And Of Course Most Non-catholics Imagine That The Church Is Immensely Rich, And That All Catholic Institutions Make Money Hand Over Fist, And That All The Money Is Stored Away Somewhere To Buy Gold And Silver Dishes For The Pope And Cigars For The College Of Cardinals.

Yet It Is In This Loneliness That The Deepest Activities Begin. It Is Here That You Discover Act Without Motion, Labor That Is Profound Repose, Vision In Obscurity, And, Beyond All Desire, A Fulfillment Whose Limits Extend To Infinity.

The Closer We Are To God, The Closer We Are To Those Who Are Close To Him.

Every Other Man Is A Piece Of Myself, For I Am A Part And A Member Of Mankind.

The Degradation Of The Sense Of Symbol In Modern Society Is One Of Its Many Signs Of Spiritual Decay.

I Am Earth, Earth My Heart's Love Bursts With Hay And Flowers. I Am A Lake Of Blue Air In Which My Own Appointed Place Field And Valley Stand Reflected

The Devil Is No Fool. He Can Get People Feeling About Heaven The Way They Ought To Feel About Hell. He Can Make Them Fear The Means Of Grace The Way They Do Not Fear Sin. And He Does So, Not By Light But By Obscurity, Not By Realities But By Shadows; Not By Clarity And Substance, But By Dreams And The Creatures Of Psychosis. And Men Are So Poor In Intellect That A Few Cold Chills Down Their Spine Will Be Enough To Keep Them From Ever Finding Out The Truth About Anything.

It Is My Belief, That We Should Not Be Too Sure Of Having Found Christ In Ourselves Until We Have Found Him Also In That Part Of Humanity That Is Most Remote From Our Own.

Contemplation In The Age Of Auschwitz And Dachau, Solovky And Karaganda Is Something Darker And More Fearsome Than Contemplation In The Age Of The Church Fathers. For That Very Reason, The Urge To Seek A Path Of Spiritual Light Can Be A Subtle Temptation To Sin. It Certainly Is Sin If It Means A Frank Rejection Of The Burden Of Our Age, An Escape Into Unreality And Spiritual Illusion, So As Not To Share The Misery Of Other Men.

There Is A Subtle But Inescapable Connection Between The "sacred" Attitude And The Acceptance Of One's In Most Self.

To Become Attached To The Experience Of Peace Is To Threaten The True And Essential And Vital Union Of Our Soul With God Above Sense And Experience In The Darkness Of A Pure And Perfect Love.

Stop Asking Yourself Questions That Have No Meaning. Or If They Have, You'll Find Out When You Need To -- Find Out Both The Questions And The Answers.

Art Is Not An End In Itself. It Introduces The Soul Into A Higher Spiritual Order, Which It Expresses And In Some Sense Explains.

A Superficial Freedom To Wander Aimlessly Here Or There, To Taste This Or That, To Make A Choice Of Distractions, Is Simply A Sham. It Claims To Be A Freedom Of "choice" When It Has Evaded The Basic Task Of Discovering Who It Is That Chooses.

Love Is The Door To Eternity.

In Humility Is The Greatest Freedom. As Long As You Have To Defend The Imaginary Self That You Think Is Important, You Lose Your Peace Of Heart.

It Is The Will Of God That We Live Not Only As Rational Beings, But As "new Men" Regenerated By The Holy Spirit In Christ. It Is His Will That We Reach Out For Our Inheritance, That We Answer His Call To Be His Sons. We Are Born Men Without Our Consent, But The Consent To Be Sons Of God Has To Be Elicited By Our Own Free Will.

Show Us Your Christ, Lady, After This Our Exile, Yes: But Show Him To Us Also Now, Show Him To Us Here, While We Are Still Wanderers.

The Imagination Should Be Allowed A Certain Amount Of Time To Browse Around.

I Can Depend Less And Less On My Own Power And Sense Of Direction...it Is So Strange To Advance Backwards And Get Where You Are Going In A Totally Unexpected Way

When I Pray For Peace, I Pray Not Only That The Enemies Of My Own Country May Cease To Want War, But Above All That My Country Will Cease To Do The Things That Make War Inevitable.

Faith Is A Light Of Such Supreme Brilliance That It Dazzles The Mind And Darkens All Its Visions Of Other Realities, But In The End When We Become Used To The New Light, We Gain A New View Of All Reality Transfigured And Elevated In The Light Itself.

The Desire To Kill Is Like The Desire To Attack Another With An Ingot Of Red -hot Iron: I Have To Pick Up The Incandescent Metal And Burn My Own Hand While Burning The Other. Hate Itself Is The Seed Of Death In My Own Heart, While It Seeks The Death Of The Other.

For Now, Oh My God, It Is To You Alone That I Can Talk, Because Nobody Else Will Understand. I Cannot Bring Any Other Man On This Earth Into The Cloud Where I Dwell In Your Light, That Is, Your Darkness, Where I Am Lost And Abashed. I Cannot Explain To Any Other Man The Anguish Which Is Your Joy Nor The Loss Which Is The Possession Of You, Nor The Distance From All Things Which Is The Arrival In You, Nor The Death Which Is The Birth In You Because I Do Not Know Anything About It Myself And All I Know Is That I Wish It Were Over - I Wish It Were Begun.

I Would Call The Attention Of The Reader To The Difference Between "reason" And "reasoning." Reason Is A Light, Reasoning A Process. Reason Is A Faculty, Reasoning An Exercise Of That Faculty. Reasoning Proceeds From One Truth To Another By Means Of Argumentation. This Generally Involves The Whole Mind In Labor And Complexity. But Reason Does Not Exist Merely In Order To Engage In Reasoning. The Process Is A Means To An End. The True Fulfillment Of Reason As A Faculty Is Found When It Can Embrace The Truth Simply And Without Labor In The Light Of Single Intuition.

In The Last Analysis, The Individual Person Is Responsible For Living His Own Life And For 'finding Himself.' If He Persists In Shifting His Responsibility To Somebody Else, He Fails To Find Out The Meaning Of His Own Existence.

Self Improvement

After All, What Is Your Personal Identity? It Is What You Really Are, Your Real Self. None Of Us Is What He Thinks He Is, Or What Other People Think He Is, Still Less What His Passport Says He Is. And It Is Fortunate For Most Of Us That We Are Mistaken. We Do Not Generally Know What Is Good For Us. That Is Because, In St. Bernard's Language, Our True Personality Has Been Concealed Under The 'disguise' Of A False Self, The Ego, Whom We Tend To Worship In Place Of God.

Love Winter When The Plant Says Nothing.

Lovely Morning! How Lovely Life Can Be!

Violence Is Not Completely Fatal Until It Ceases To Disturb Us.

I Came With The Notion Of Perhaps Saying Something For Monks And To Monks Of All Religions Because I Am Supposed To Be A Monk. ... My Dear Brothers, We Are Already One. But We Imagine That We Are Not. And What We Have To Recover Is Our Original Unity. What We Have To Be Is What We Are

The Gate Of Heaven Is Everywhere.

Gates Of Heaven

Creation Was Given To People As A Clean Window Through Which The Light Of God Could Shine Into People's Souls. Sun And Moon, Night And Day, Rain, Sea, The Crops, The Flowering Tree, All These Things Were Transparent. They Spoke To People Not Of Themselves But Only Of Him Who Made Them. Nature Was Symbolic. But The Progressive Degradation Of Humans Led Them Further And Further From This Truth. Nature Became Opaque.

Despair Is The Absolute Extreme Of Self-love. It Is Reached When A Person Deliberately Turns His Back On All Help From Anyone Else In Order To Taste The Rotten Luxury Of Knowing Himself To Be Lost

One Of The First Things To Learn If You Want To Be A Contemplative Is To Mind Your Own Business. Nothing Is More Suspicious, In A Man Who Seems Holy, Than An Impatient Desire To Reform Other Men.

Mind Your Own Business

At The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Illusion, A Point Of Pure Truth, A Point Or Spark Which Belongs Entirely To God, Which Is Never At Our Disposal, From Which God Disposes Of Our Life, Which Is Inaccessable To The Fantasies Of Our Own Mind Or The Brutalities Of Our Own Will. This Little Point Of Nothingness And Of Absolute Poverty Is The Pure Glory Of God In Us.

For Me To Be A Saint Means To Be Myself. Therefore The Problem Of Sanctity And Salvation Is In Fact The Problem Of Finding Out Who I Am And Of Discovering My True Self.

We Must Be True Inside, True To Ourselves, Before We Can Know A Truth That Is Outside Us. But We Make Ourselves True Inside By Manifesting The Truth As We See It.

What Is 'grace'? It Is God's Own Life, Shared By Us. God's Life Is Love. Deus Caritas Est. By Grace We Are Able To Share In The Infinitely Selfless Love Of Him Who Is Such Pure Actuality That He Needs Nothing And Therefore Cannot Conceivably Exploit Anything For Selfish Ends. Indeed, Outside Of Him There Is Nothing, And Whatever Exists Exists By His Free Gift Of Its Being, So That One Of The Notions That Is Absolutely Contradictory To The Perfection Of God Is Selfishness.

There Is Only One Problem On Which All My Existence, My Peace, My Happiness Depend: To Discover Myself In Discovering God. If I Find Him I Will Find Myself And If I Find My True Self I Will Find Him.

I Have Only One Desire, And That Is The Desire For Solitude-to Disappear Into God, To Be Submerged In His Peace, To Be Lost In The Secret Of His Face.

Love Seeks One Thing Only: The Good Of The One Loved. It Leaves All The Other Secondary Effects To Take Care Of Themselves. Love, Therefore, Is Its Own Reward.

Do Not Be One Of Those Who, Rather Than Risk Failure, Never Attempts Anything.

Peace Cannot Be Built On Exclusivism, Absolutism, And Intolerance. But Neither Can It Be Built On Vague Liberal Slogans And Pious Programs Gestated In The Smoke Of Confabulation. There Can Be No Peace On Earth Without The Kind Of Inner Change That Brings Man Back To His "right Mind." P. 31

We Stumble And Fall Constantly, Even When We Are Most Enlightened.

It Is A Glorious Destiny To Be A Member Of The Human Race, Though It Is A Race Dedicated To Many Absurdities And One Which Makes Many Terrible Mistakes.

It Is In Deep Solitude That I Find The Gentleness With Which I Can Truly Love My Brothers. The More Solitary I Am, The More Affection I Have For Them. It Is Pure Affection, And Filled With Reverance For The Solitude Of Others. Solitude And Silence Teach Me To Love My Brothers For What They Are, Not For What They Say.

I Am Willing To Admit That Some People Might Live There For Years, Or Even A Lifetime, So Protected That They Never Sense The Sweet Stench Of Corruption That Is All Around Them - The Keen, Thin Scent Of Decay That Pervades Everything And Accuses With A Terrible Accusation The Superficial Youthfulness, The Abounding Undergraduate Noise, That Fills Those Ancient Buildings.

The True Contemplative Is One Who Has Discovered The Art Of Finding Leisure Even In The Midst Of His Work, By Working With Such A Spirit Of Detachment And Recollection That Even His Work Is A Prayer

Love Is...like A Spring Coming Up Out Of The Ground Of Our Own Depths. "i Am Gift." All That I Am Is Something That's Given, And Given Freely. Being Doesn't Cost Anything. There's No Price Tag, No Strings Attached.

What Do I Mean By Loving Ourselves Properly? I Mean First Of All, Desiring To Live, Accepting Life As A Very Great Gift And A Great Good, Not Because Of What It Gives Us, But Because Of What It Enables Us To Give To Others.

When You Expect The World To End At Any Moment, You Know There Is No Need To Hurry. You Take Your Time, You Do Your Work Well.

God Must Be Allowed The Right To Speak Unpredictably.... We Must Find Him In Our Enemy, Or We May Lose Him Even In Our Friend. We Must Find Him In The Pagan Or We Will Lose Him In Our Own Selves, Substituting For His Living Presence An Empty Abstraction.

When We Are Alone On A Starlit Night, When By Chance We See The Migrating Birds In Autumn Descending On A Grove Of Junipers To Rest And Eat; When We See Children In A Moment When They Are Really Children, When We Know Love In Our Own Hearts; Or When, Like The Japanese Poet, Basho, We Hear An Old Frog Land In A Quiet Pond With A Solitary Splash - At Such Times The Awakening, The Turning Inside Out Of All Values, The "newness," The Emptiness And The Purity Of Vision That Make Themselves Evident, All These Provide A Glimpse Of The Cosmic Dance.

The Reality That Is Present To Us And In Us: Call It Being...silence. And The Simple Fact That By Being Attentive, By Learning To Listen (or Recovering The Natural Capacity To Listen) We Can Find Ourself Engulfed In Such Happiness That It Cannot Be Explained: The Happiness Of Being At One With Everything In That Hidden Ground Of Love For Which There Can Be No Explanations.... May We All Grow In Grace And Peace, And Not Neglect The Silence That Is Printed In The Center Of Our Being. It Will Not Fail Us.

A Bad Book About The Love Of God Remains A Bad Book.

The Whole Aim Of Zen Is Not To Make Foolproof Statements About Experience, But To Come To Direct Grips With Reality Without The Mediation Of Logical Verbalizing.

Our Job Is To Love Others Without Stopping To Inquire Whether Or Not They Are Worthy. That Is Not Our Business And, In Fact, It Is Nobody's Business. What We Are Asked To Do Is To Love, And This Love Itself Will Render Both Ourselves And Our Neighbors Worthy.

I Suppose What Makes Me Most Glad Is That We All Recognize Each Other In This Metaphysical Space Of Silence And Happening, And Get Some Sense, For A Moment, That We Are Full Of Paradise Without Knowing It.

In The Devil's Theology, The Important Thing Is To Be Absolutely Right And To Prove That Everybody Else Is Absolutely Wrong.

The Beginning Of Love Is The Will To Let Those We Love Be Perfectly Themselves.

Unconditional Love

The Greatest Need Of Our Time Is To Clean Out The Enormous Mass Of Mental And Emotional Rubbish That Clutters Our Minds

If Our Life Is Poured Out In Useless Words, We Will Never Hear Anything, Never Become Anything, And In The End, Because We Have Said Everything Before We Had Anything To Say, We Shall Be Left Speechless At The Moment Of Our Greatest Decision.

To Be Grateful Is To Recognize The Love Of God In Everything He Has Given Us - And He Has Given Us Everything. Every Breath We Draw Is A Gift Of His Love, Every Moment Of Existence Is A Grace, For It Brings With It Immense Graces From Him. Gratitude Therefore Takes Nothing For Granted, Is Never Unresponsive, Is Constantly Awakening To New Wonder And To Praise Of The Goodness Of God. For The Grateful Person Knows That God Is Good, Not By Hearsay But By Experience. And That Is What Makes All The Difference.

Self-conquest Is Really Self-surrender. Yet Before We Can Surrender Ourselves We Must Become Ourselves. For No One Can Give Up What He Does Not Possess.

We Are Not At Peace With Others Because We Are Not At Peace With Ourselves, And We Are Not At Peace With Ourselves Because We Are Not At Peace With God

And That Is Why The Man Who Wants To See Clearly, Before He Will Believe, Never Starts On The Journey.

To Be Truly Catholic Is Not Merely To Be Correct According To An Abstractly Universal Standard Of Truth, But Also And Above All To Be Able To Enter Into The Problems And The Joys Of All, To Understand All, To Be All Things To All.

To Be Unknown To God Is Altogether Too Much Privacy.

You Cannot Be A Man Of Faith Unless You Know How To Doubt.

Ash Wednesday Is Full Of Joy...the Source Of All Sorrow Is The Illusion That Of Ourselves We Are Anything But Dust.

The Man Who Lives In Division Is Living In Death. He Cannot Find Himself Because He Is Lost; He Has Ceased To Be A Reality. The Person He Believes Himself To Be Is A Bad Dream.

By My Monastic Life And Vows I Am Saying No To All The Concentration Camps, The Aerial Bombardments, The Staged Political Trials, The Judicial Murders, The Racial Injustices, The Economic Tyrannies, And The Whole Socioeconomic Apparatus Which Seems Geared For Nothing But Global Destruction In Spite Of All Its Fair Words In Favor Of Peace.

The Biggest Human Temptation Is... To Settle For Too Little.

O God, Teach Me To Be Satisfied With My Own Helplessness In The Spiritual Life. Teach Me To Be Content With Your Grace That Comes To Me In Darkness And That Works Things I Cannot See. Teach Me To Be Happy That I Can Depend On You. To Depend On You Should Be Enough For An Eternity Of Joy. To Depend On You By Itself Ought To Be Infinitely Greater Than Any Joy Which My Own Intellectual Appetite Could Desire.

It Seems To Me That The Darkness That Has Troubled You ... Comes From One Very Serious Source. Without Wanting To Be In Conflict With The Truth And With The Will Of God, We Are Actually Going Against God's Will And His Teaching.

Finally I Am Coming To The Conclusion That My Highest Ambition Is To Be What I Already Am. That I Will Never Fulfill My Obligation To Surpass Myself Unless I First Accept Myself, And If I Accept Myself Fully In The Right Way, I Will Already Have Surpassed Myself.

...love Triumphs, At Least In This Life, Not By Eliminating Evil Once For All, But By Resisting And Overcoming It Anew Every Day.

This Is The Crucifixion Of Christ: In Which He Dies Again And Again In The Individuals Who Were Made To Share The Joy And Freedom Of His Grace, And Who Deny Him.

Crucifixion Of Christ

We Have The Choice Of Two Identities: The External Mask Which Seems To Be Real...and The Hidden, Inner Person Who Seems To Us To Be Nothing, But Who Can Give Himself Eternally To The Truth In Whom He Subsists. (295)

Even The Darkest Moments Of The Liturgy Are Filled With Joy, And Ash Wednesday, The Beginning Of The Lenten Fast, Is A Day Of Happiness, A Christian Feast.

It Is In The Ordinary Duties And Labors Of Life That The Christian Can And Should Develop His Spiritual Union With God.

There Were Only A Few Shepherds At The First Bethlehem. The Ox And The Donkey Understood More Of The First Christmas Than The High Priests In Jerusalem. And It Is The Same Today.

To Those Who Have No Personal Experience Of This Revolutionary Aspect Of Christian Truth, But Who See Only The Outer Crust Of Dead, Human Conservatism That Tends To Form Around The Church The Way Barnacles Gather On The Hull Of A Ship, All This Talk About Dynamism Sounds Foolish.

If It So Happened That I Had Once Written A Best-seller, This Was A Pure Accident, Due To Inattention And Naivete, And I Would Take Very Good Care Never To Do The Same Again. If I Had A Message For My Contemporaries, I Said, It Was Surely This: Be Anything You Like, Be Madmen, Drunks, And Bastards Of Every Shape And Form, But At All Costs Avoid One Thing: Success.

We Cannot Possess The Truth Fully Until It Has Entered Into The Very Substance Of Our Life By Good Habits, And By A Certain Perfection Of Moral Activity.

For If I Am To Love Truly And Freely, I Must Be Able To Give Something That Is Truly My Own To Another. If My Heart Does Not First Belong To Me, How Can I Give It To Another?

The Deepest Level Of Communication Is Not Communication, But Communion. It Is Wordless. It Is Beyond Words, And It Is Beyond Speech, And It Is Beyond Concept. Not That We Discover A New Unity. We Discover An Older Unity. My Dear Brothers [and Sisters], We Are Already One. But We Imagine That We Are Not. And What We Have To Recover Is Our Original Unity. What We Have To Be Is What We Are.

The Sacred Attitude Is, Then, One Of Deep And Fundamental Respect For The Real In Whatever New Form It May Present Itself.

Peace Demands The Most Heroic Labor And The Most Difficult Sacrifice.

For Although God Is Right With Us And In Us And Out Of Us And All Through Us, We Have To Go On Journeys To Find Him.

In Order To Find God In Ourselves, We Must Stop Looking At Ourselves, Stop Checking And Verifying Ourselves In The Mirror Of Our Own Futility, And Be Content To Be In Him And To Do Whatever He Wills, According To Our Limitations, Judging Our Acts Not In The Light Of Our Own Illusions, But In The Light Of His Reality Which Is All Around Us In The Things And People We Live With.

The Christian Life, And Especially The Contemplative Life, Is A Continual Discovery Of Christ In New And Unexpected Places.

Contemplative Life

True Happiness Is Found In Unselfish Love, A Love Which Increases In Proportion As It Is Shared.

Happiness And Love

The True Inner Self Must Be Drawn Up Like A Jewel From The Bottom Of The Sea, Rescued From Confusion, From Indistinction, From Immersion In The Common, The Nondescript, The Trivial, The Sordid, The Evanescent.

We Are Obliged To Love One Another. We Are Not Strictly Bound To "like" One Another.

Love One Another

Happiness Is Not A Matter Of Intensity But Of Balance And Order And Rhythm And Harmony.

Instead Of Hating The People You Think Are War-makers, Hate The Appetites And Disorder In Your Own Soul, Which Are The Causes Of War. If You Love Peace, Then Hate Injustice, Hate Tyranny, Hate Greed - But Hate These Things In Yourself, Not In Another.

How Can I Be Sincere If I Am Constantly Changing My Mind To Conform With The Shadow Of What I Think Others Expect Of Me?

If A Man Is To Live, He Must Be All Alive, Body, Soul, Mind, Heart, Spirit.

Curiously, The Most Serious Religious People, Or The Most Concerned Scholars, Those Who Constantly Read The Bible As A Matter Of Professional Or Pious Duty, Can Often Manage To Evade A Radically Involved Dialogue With The Book They Are Questioning.

Be Still: There Is No Longer Any Need Of Comment. It Was A Lucky Wind That Blew Away His Halo With His Cares, A Lucky Sea That Drowned His Reputation.

The Gift Of Love Is The Gift Of The Power And Capacity To Love, And Therefore, To Give Love With Full Effect Is Also To Receive It. So Love Can Only Be Kept By Being Given Away, And It Can Only Be Given Perfectly When It Is Also Received.

Law Of Attraction

Contemplation Is Life Itself, Fully Awake, Fully Active, And Fully Aware That It Is Alive. It Is Spiritual Wonder. It Is Spontaneous Awe At The Sacredness Of Life, Of Being. It Is Gratitude For Life, For Awareness, And For Being. It Is A Vivid Realization Of The Fact That Life And Being In Us Proceed From An Invisible, Transcendent, And Infinitely Abundant Source.

If You Have Love You Will Do All Things Well.

To Be Ordinary Is Not A Choice: It Is The Usual Freedom Of Men Without Visions.

Others Can Give You A Name Or A Number, But They Can Never Tell You Who You Really Are. That Is Something You Yourself Can Only Discover From Within.

You Are Made In The Image Of What You Desire.

Spiritual Awakening

I Have Learned That One Cannot Truly Know Hope Unless He Has Found Out How Like Despair Hope Is.

The Whole World Has Risen In Christ... If God Is 'all In All,' Then Everything Is In Fact Paradise, Because It Is Filled With The Glory And Presence Of God, And Nothing Is Any More Separated From God.

The Humble Person Receives Praise The Way A Clean Window Takes The Light Of The Sun. The Truer And More Intense The Light Is, The Less You See Of The Glass.

To Be Risen With Christ Means Not Only That One Has A Choice And That One May Live By A Higher Law - The Law Of Grace And Love - But That One Must Do So. The First Obligation Of The Christian Is To Maintain Their Freedom From All Superstitions, All Blind Taboos And Religious Formalities, Indeed From All Empty Forms Of Legalism.

The Silence Of The Spheres Is The Music Of A Wedding Feast. The More We Persist In Misunderstanding The Phenomena Of Life, The More We Analyze Them Out Into Strange Finalities And Complex Purposes Of Our Own, The More We Involve Ourselves In Sadness. But It Does Not Matter Much Because No Despair Of Ours Can Alter The Reality Of Things, Or Stain The Joy Of The Cosmic Dance Which Is Always There.

Place No Hope In The Feeling Of Assurance, In Spiritual Comfort. You May Well Have To Get Along Without This. Place No Hope In The Inspirational Preachers Of Christian Sunshine, Who Are Able To Pick You Up And Set You Back On Your Feet And Make You Feel Good For Three Or Four Days-until You Fold Up And Collapse Into Despair. Self-confidence Is A Precious Natural Gift, A Sign Of Health. But It Is Not The Same Thing As Faith. Faith Is Much Deeper, And It Must Be Deep Enough To Subsist When We Are Weak, When We Are Sick, When Our Self-confidence Is Gone, When Our Self-respect Is Gone.

You Will Never Be Able To Have Perfect Interior Peace And Recollection Unless You Are Detached Even From The Desire Of Peace And Recollection. You Will Never Be Able To Pray Perfectly Until You Are Detached From The Pleasures Of Prayer.

Our Knowledge Of God Is Perfected By Gratiitude: We Are Thankful And Rejoice In The Experience Of The Truth That He Is Love.

Knowledge Of God

It Is Not Merely Our Own Desire But The Desire Of Christ In His Spirit That Drives Us To Grow In Love. Those Who Seldom Or Never Feel In Their Hearts The Desire For The Love Of God And Other Men, And Who Do Not Thirst For The Pure Waters Of Desire Which Are Poured Out In Us By The Strong, Living God, Are Usually Those Who Have Drunk From Other Rivers Or Have Dug For Themselves Broken Cisterns.

The Only Trouble Is That In The Spiritual Life There Are No Tricks And No Shortcuts. Those Who Imagine That They Can Discover Spiritual Gimmicks And Put Them To Work For Themselves Usually Ignore God's Will And His Grace.

Our God...is A Consuming Fire. And If We, By Love, Become Transformed Into Him And Burn As He Burns, His Fire Will Be Our Everlasting Joy. But If We Refuse His Love And Remain In The Coldness Of Sin And Opposition To Him And To Other Men Then Will His Fire (by Our Own Choice Rather Than His) Become Our Everlasting Enemy, And Love, Instead Of Being Our Joy, Will Become Our Torment And Our Destruction.

In Humility Is The Greatest Freedom. As Long As You Have To Defend The Imaginary Self That You Think Is Important, You Lose Your Piece Of Heart. As Soon As You Compare That Shadow With The Shadows Of Other People, You Lose All Joy, Because You Have Begun To Trade In Unrealities And There Is No Joy In Things That Do Not Exist.

How Far Have I To Go To Find You In Whom I Have Already Arrived.

I Stand Among You As One Who Offers A Small Message Of Hope. . . There Are Always People Who Dare To Seek On The Margin Of Society, Who Are Not Dependent On Social Acceptance, Not Dependent On Social Routine, And Prefer A Kind Of Free-floating Existence Under A State Of Risk.

Everything In Modern City Life Is Calculated To Keep Man From Entering Into Himself And Thinking About Spiritual Things. Even With The Best Of Intentions A Spiritual Man Finds Himself Exhausted And Deadened And Debased By The Constant Noise Of Machines And Loudspeakers, The Dead Air And The Glaring Lights Of Offices And Shops, The Everlasting Suggestion Of Advertising And Propaganda. The Whole Mechanism Of Modern Life Is Geared For A Flight From God And From The Spirit Into The Wilderness Of Neurosis.

I Believe That The Desire To Please You Does In Fact Please You.

Business Is Not The Supreme Virtue, And Sanctity Is Not Measured By The Amount Of Work We Accomplish. Perfection Is Found In The Purity Of Our Love For God, And This Pure Love Is A Delicate Plant That Grows Best Where There Is Plenty Of Time For It To Mature

Duty Does Not Have To Be Dull. Love Can Make It Beautiful And Fill It With Life.

I Have My Own Way To Walk And For Some Reason Or Other Zen Is Right In The Middle Of It Wherever I Go. So There It Is, With All Its Beautiful Purposelessness, And It Has Become Very Familiar To Me Though I Do Not Know "what It Is." Or Even If It Is An "it." Not To Be Foolish And Multiply Words, I'll Say Simply That It Seems To Me That Zen Is The Very Atmosphere Of The Gospels, And The Gospels Are Bursting With It. It Is The Proper Climate For Any Monk, No Matter What Kind Of Monk He May Be. If I Could Not Breathe Zen I Would Probably Die Of Spiritual Asphyxiation.

The Whole Purpose Of Spiritual Direction Is To Penetrate Beneath The Surface Of A Man's Life, To Get Behind The Façade Of Conventional Gestures And Attitudes Which He Presents To The World, And To Bring Out His Inner Spiritual Freedom, His Inmost Truth, Which Is What We Call The Likeness Of Christ In His Soul.

Words Stand Between Silence And Silence: Between The Silence Of Things And The Silence Of Our Own Being. Between The Silence Of The World And The Silence Of God. When We Have Really Met And Known The World In Silence, Words Do Not Separate Us From The World Nor From Other Men, Nor From God, Nor From Ourselves Because We No Longer Trust Entirely In Language To Contain Reality.

True Contemplation Is Not A Psychological Trick But A Theological Grace. It Can Come To Us Only As A Gift, And Not As A Result Of Our Own Clever Use Of Spiritual Techniques.

You Do Not Need To Know Precisely What Is Happening, Or Exactly Where It Is All Going. What You Need Is To Recognize The Possibilities And Challenges Offered By The Present Moment, And To Embrace Them With Courage, Faith And Hope.

If Nothing That Can Be Seen Can Either Be God Or Represent Him To Us As He Is, Then To Find God We Must Pass Beyond Everything That Can Be Seen And Enter Into Darkness. Since Nothing That Can Be Heard Is God, To Find Him We Must Enter Into Silence. Since God Cannot Be Imagined, Anything Our Imagination Tells Us About Him Is Ultimately A Lie And Therefore We Cannot Know Him As He Really Is Unless We Pass Beyond Everything That Can Be Imagined And Enter Into An Obscurity Without Images And Without The Likeness Of Any Created Thing.

It Is Almost Impossible To Overestimate The Value Of True Humility And Its Power In The Spiritual Life. For The Beginning Of Humility Is The Beginning Of Blessedness And The Consummation Of Humility Is The Perfection Of All Joy. Humility Contains In Itself The Answer To All The Great Problems Of The Life Of The Soul. It Is The Only Key To Faith, With Which The Spiritual Life Begins: For Faith And Humility Are Inseparable. In Perfect Humility All Selfishness Disappears And Your Soul No Longer Lives For Itself Or In Itself For God: And It Is Lost And Submerged In Him And Transformed Into Him.

We Cannot Find Him Unless We Know We Need Him. We Forget This Need When We Take A Self-sufficient Pleasure In Our Own Good Works. The Poor And Helpless Are The First To Find Him, Who Came To Seek And To Save That Which Was Lost.

It Is Not Only Our Hatred Of Others That Is Dangerous But Also And Above All Our Hatred Of Ourselves: Particularly That Hatred Of Ourselves Which Is Too Deep And Too Powerful To Be Consciously Faced. For It Is This Which Makes Us See Our Own Evil In Others And Unable To See It In Ourselves.

If We Live With Possibilities We Are Exiles From The Present Which Is Given Us By God To Be Our Own, Homeless And Displaced In A Future Or A Past Which Are Not Ours Because They Are Always Beyond Our Reach. The Present Is Our Right Place, And We Can Lay Hands On Whatever It Offers Us.

The Solution Of The Problem Of Life Is Life Itself. Life Is Not Attained By Reason And Analysis But First Of All By Living.

Art Enables Us To Find Ourselves And Lose Ourselves At The Same Time.

Finding Yourself

Our Idea Of God Tells Us More About Ourselves Than About Him.

And It Is In This Darkness, When There Is Nothing Left In Us That Can Please Or Comfort Our Own Minds, When We Seem To Be Useless And Worthy Of All Contempt, When We Seem To Have Failed, When We Seem To Be Destroyed And Devoured, It Is Then That The Deep And Secret Selfishness That Is Too Close To Us For Us To Identify Is Stripped Away From Our Souls. It Is In This Darkness That We Find Liberty. It Is In This Abandonment That We Are Made Strong. This Is The Night Which Empties Us And Makes Us Pure.

Gratitude Takes Nothing For Granted, Is Never Unresponsive, Is Constantly Awakening To New Wonder.

Nonviolence Seeks To ‘win’ Not By Destroying Or Even By Humiliating The Adversary, But By Convincing [the Adversary] That There Is A Higher And More Certain Common Good Than Can Be Attained By Bombs And Blood. Nonviolence, Ideally Speaking, Does Not Try To Overcome The Adversary By Winning Over [them], But To Turn [them] From An Adversary Into A Collaborator By Winning [them] Over.

It Is Easy Enough To Tell The Poor To Accept Their Poverty As Gods Will When You Yourself Have Warm Clothes And Plenty Of Food And Medical Care And A Roof Over Your Head And No Worry About The Rent. But If You Want Them To Believe Youtry To Share Some Of Their Poverty And See If You Can Accept It As Gods Will Yourself!

Roof Over Your Head

We Are Living In A World That Is Absolutely Transparent And God Is Shining Through It All The Time. God Manifests Himself Everywhere, In Everything - In People And In Things And In Nature And In Events ... The Only Thing Is We Don't See It ... I Have No Program For This Seeing. It Is Only Given. But The Gate Of Heaven Is Everywhere.

You Are Certainly One Of The Joys Of Life For All Who Have Ever Come Within A Mile Of You.

To Be Alone By Being Part Of The Universe-fitting In Completely To An Environment Of Woods And Silence And Peace. Everything You Do Becomes A Unity And A Prayer. Unity Within And Without.

This Is The Greatest Stumbling Block In Our Spiritual Discipline, Which, In Actuality, Consists Not In Getting Rid Of The Self But In Realizing The Fact That There Is No Such Existence From The First.

The Man Of Faith Who Has Never Experienced Doubt Is Not A Man Of Faith.

It Is Not Humility To Insist On Being Someone That You Are Not. It Is As Much As Saying That You Know Better Than God Who You Are And Who You Ought To Be. How Do You Expect To Arrive At The End Of Your Own Journey If You Take The Road To Another Man's City? How Do You Expect To Reach Your Own Perfection By Leading Somebody Else's Life? His Sanctity Will Never Be Yours; You Must Have The Humility To Work Out Your Own Salvation In A Darkness Where You Are Absolutely Alone.

A Man Who Fails Well Is Greater Than One Who Succeeds Badly.

I Can Only Become Perfectly Free By Serving The Will Of God.

It Is A Glorious Destiny To Be A Member Of The Human Race, Now I Realize What We All Are . If Only They [people] Could All See Themselves As They Really Are I Suppose The Big Problem Would Be That We Would Fall Down And Worship Each Other At The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Sin And By Illusions, A Point Of Pure Truth This Little Point Is The Pure Glory Of God In Us. It Is In Everybody.

My Best Writing Has Always Been In Journals.

It Is True That Neither The Ancient Wisdoms Nor The Modern Sciences Are Complete In Themselves. They Do Not Stand Alone. They Call For One Another. Wisdom Without Science Is Unable To Penetrate The Full Sapiential Meaning Of The Created And The Material Cosmos. Science Without Wisdom Leaves Man Enslaved To A World Of Unrelated Objects In Which There Is No Way Of Discovering (or Creating) Order And Deep Significance In Man's Own Pointless Existence. (p. 4)

Today Will Never Come Again.

But Precisely This Illusion That Everything Is "clear" Is What Is Blinding Us All. It Is A Serious Temptation, And It Is A Subtle Form Of Pride And Worldly Love Of Power And Revenge.

Prayer Is Not So Much A Way To Find God As A Way Of Resting In Him...who Loves Us, Who Is Near To Us.

The Solution Of The Problem Of Life Is Life Itself. Life Is Not Attained By Reasoning And Analysis, But First Of All By Living. For Until We Have Begun To Live Our Prudence Has No Material To Work On. And Until We Have Begun To Fail We Have No Way Of Working Out Our Success.

But If You Want To Identify Me, Ask Me Not Where I Live, Or What I Like To Eat, Or How I Comb My Hair, But Ask Me What I Think I Am Living For.

The Secret Of My Full Identity Is Hidden In Him. He Alone Can Make Me Who I Am, Or Rather Who I Will Be When At Last I Fully Begin To Be. But Unless I Desire This Identity And Work To Find It With Him And In Him, The Work Will Never Be Done

See, See Who God Is, See The Glory Of God, Going Up To Him Out Of This Incomprehensible And Infinite Sacrifice In Which All History Begins And Ends, All Individual Lives Begin And End, In Which Every Story Is Told, And Finished, And Settled For Joy Or For Sorrow: The One Point Of Reference For All The Truths That Are Outside Of God, Their Center, Their Focus: Love.

When Society Is Made Up Of Men Who Know No Interior Solitude It Can No Longer Be Held Together By Love: And Consequently It Is Held Together By A Violent And Abusive Authority. But When Men Are Violently Deprived Of The Solitude And Freedom Which Are Their Due, Then Society In Which They Live Becomes Putrid, It Festers With Servility, Resentment And Hate.

In Meditative Prayer, One Thinks And Speaks Not Only With The Mind And Lips, But In A Certain Sense With One's Whole Being... All Good Meditative Prayer Is A Conversation Of Our Entire Self To God.

Very Well, Then: Why Are You Attached To Any One Book, Or To The Words And Ways Of One Saint When He Himself Tells You To Let Them Go And Walk In Simplicity? To Hang On To Him As If To Make A Method Of Him Is To Contradict Him And To Go In The Opposite Direction To The One In Which He Would Have You Travel.

The Holy Spirit Is The Most Perfect Gift Of The Father To Men, And Yet He Is The One Gift Which The Father Gives Most Easily.

To Find Love I Must Enter Into The Sanctuary Where It Is Hidden, Which Is The Mystery Of God.

If You Yourself Are At Peace, Then There Is At Least Some Peace In The World.

The World As Pure Object Is Something That Is Not There. It Is Not A Reality Outside Us For Which We Exist....it Is A Living And Self-creating Mystery Of Which I Am Myself A Part, To Which I Am Myself, My Own Unique Door.

We Have To Have A Deep, Patient Compassion For The Fears Of Others And Irrational Mania Of Those Who Hate Or Condemn Us.

If We Examine Ourselves Carefully We Shall See Most Of Us Have An Enormous Amount Of Unfinished Business...we Have To Be Free So That We Can Just Step Across The Line And That's It. That Is What Real Freedom Is.

Unfinished Business

Just Remaining Quietly In The Presence Of God, Listening To Him, Being Attentive To Him, Requires A Lot Of Courage And Know-how.

In Our Creation, God Asked A Question And In Our Truly Living; God Answers The Question.

Those Who Think They 'know' From The Beginning Will Never In Fact Come To Know Anything.

Ultimately Faith Is The Only Key To The Universe. The Final Meaning Of Human Existence, And The Answers To The Questions On Which All Our Happiness Depends Cannot Be Found In Any Other Way.

First, The Desert Is The Country Of Madness. Second, It Is The Refuge Of The Devil, Thrown Out Into The "wilderness Of Upper Egypt" To "wander In Dry Places." Thirst Drives Man Mad, And The Devil Himself Is Mad With A Kind Of Thirst For His Own Lost Excellence--lost Because He Has Immured Himself In It And Closed Out Everything Else. So The Man Who Wanders Into The Desert To Be Himself Must Take Care That He Does Not Go Mad And Become The Servant Of The One Who Dwells There In A Sterile Paradise Of Emptiness And Rage.

We Too Often Forget That Faith Is A Matter Of Questioning And Struggle Before It Becomes One Of Certitude And Peace. You Have To Doubt And Reject Everything Else In Order To Believe Firmly In Christ, And After You Have Begun To Believe, Your Faith Itself Must Be Tested And Purified. Christianity Is Not Merely A Set Of Forgone Conclusions. Faith Tends To Be Defeated By The Burning Presence Of God In Mystery, And Seeks Refuge From Him, Flying To Comfortable Social Forms And Safe Convictions In Which Purification Is No Longer An Inner Battle But A Matter Of Outward Gesture.

Do Not Be Too Quick To Assume Your Enemy Is A Savage Just Because He Is Your Enemy. Perhaps He Is Your Enemy Because He Thinks You Are A Savage. Or Perhaps He Is Afraid Of You Because He Feels That You Are Afraid Of Him. And Perhaps If He Believed You Are Capable Of Loving Him He Would No Longer Be Your Enemy.

The Devil Makes Many Disciples By Preaching Against Sin. He Convinces Them That The Great Evil Of Sin, Induces A Crisis Of Guilt By Which “god Is Satisfied," And After That He Lets Them Spend The Rest Of Their Lives Meditating On The Intense Sinfulness And Evident Reprobation Of Other Men.

What Do You Want To Want To Be, Anyway?" "i Don't Know; I Guess What I Want To Be Is A Good Catholic." "what You Should Say"--he Told Me--"what You Should Say Is That You Want To Be A Saint.

The Man Who Fears To Be Alone Will Never Be Anything But Lonely, No Matter How Much He May Surround Himself With People. But The Man Who Learns, In Solitude And Recollection, To Be At Peace With His Own Loneliness, And To Prefer Its Reality To The Illusion Of Merely Natural Companionship, Comes To Know The Invisible Companionship Of God. Such A One Is Alone With God In All Places, And He Alone Truly Enjoys The Companionship Of Other Men, Because He Loves Them In God In Whom Their Presence Is Not Tiresome, And Because Of Whom His Own Love For Them Can Never Know Satiety.

The Grateful Person Knows That God Is Good, Not By Hearsay But By Experience. And That Is What Makes All The Difference.

Take More Time, Cover Less Ground.

Be Good, Keep Your Feet Dry, Your Eyes Open, Your Heart At Peace And Your Soul In The Joy Of Christ.

In Any Case, His Religious Teaching Consisted Mostly In More Or Less Vague Ethical Remarks, An Obscure Mixture Of Ideals Of English Gentlemanliness And His Favorite Notions Of Personal Hygiene. Everybody Knew That His Class Was Liable To Degenerate Into A Demonstration Of Some Practical Points About Rowing, With Buggy Sitting On The Table And Showing Us How To Pull An Oar.

The Friends Of Job Appear On The Scene As Advisers And "consolers," Offering Job The Fruits Of Their Moral Scientia. But When Job Insists That His Sufferings Have No Explanation And That He Cannot Discover The Reason For Them Through Conventional Ethical Concepts, His Friends Turn Into Accusers, And Curse Job As A Sinner. Thus, Instead Of Consolers, They Become Torturers By Virtue Of Their Very Morality, And In So Doing, While Claiming To Be Advocates Of God, They Act As Instruments Of The Devil.

Each Particular Being, In Its Individuality, Its Concrete Nature And Entity, With All Its Own Characteristics And Its Private Qualities And Its Own Inviolable Identity, Gives Glory To God By Being Precisely What He Wants It To Be Here And Now, In The Circumstances Ordained For It By His Love And His Infinite Art.

Grains Of Error Planted Innocently In A Well-kept Greenhouse Can Become Giant Poisonous Trees.

The Whole Function Of The Life Of Prayer Is, Then, To Enlighten And Strengthen Our Conscience So That It Not Only Knows And Perceives The Outward, Written Precepts Of The Moral And Divine Laws, But Above All Lives God's Law In Concrete Reality By Perfect And Continual Union With His Will.

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