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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.

-Thomas Merton

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In Order To Find

Thomas Merton

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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.

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It Is True That We Are Called To Create A Better World. But We Are First Of All Called To A More Immediate And Exalted Task: That Of Creating Our Own Lives.

The Fact Remains That We Are Invited To Forget Ourselves On Purpose, Cast Our Awful Solemnity To The Wind, And Join In The General Dance.

Only The Man Who Has Had To Face Despair Is Really Convinced That He Needs Mercy. Those Who Do Not Want Mercy Never Seek It. It Is Better To Find God On The Threshold Of Despair Than To Risk Our Lives In A Complacency That Has Never Felt The Need Of Forgiveness. A Life That Is Without Problems May Literally Be More Hopeless Than One That Always Verges On Despair.

Let No One Hope To Find In Contemplation An Escape From Conflict, From Anguish Or From Doubt. On The Contrary, The Deep Inexpressible Certitude Of The Contemplative Experience Awakens A Tragic Anguish And Opens Many Questions In The Depths Of The Heart Like Wounds That Cannot Stop Bleeding.

The Pleasure Of A Good Act Is Something To Be Remembered - Not In Order To Feed Our Complacency But In Order To Remind Us That Virtuous Actions Are Not Only Possible And Valuable, But That They Can Become Easier And More Delightful And More Fruitful Than The Acts Of Vice Which Oppose And Frustrate Them.

Life Is This Simple: We Are Living In A World That Is Absolutely Transparent And The Divine Is Shining Through It All The Time. This Is Not Just A Nice Story Or A Fable, It Is True.

The Greatest Temptations Are Not Those That Solicit Our Consent To Obvious Sin, But Those That Offer Us Great Evils Masking As The Greatest Goods.

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.

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.

My Lord God, I Have No Idea Where I Am Going. I Do Not See The Road Ahead Of Me. I Cannot Know For Certain Where It Will End. Nor Do I Really Know Myself, And The Fact That I Think That I Am Following Your Will Does Not Mean That I Am Actually Doing So. But I Believe That The Desire To Please You Does In Fact Please You. And I Hope I Have That Desire In All That I Am Doing.

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.

Love Is An Intensification Of Life.

I Myself Am Part Of The Weather And Part Of The Climate And Part Of The Place … It Is Certainly Part Of My Life Of Prayer.

The Only Unhappiness Is Not To Love God.

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.

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.

Our Christian Destiny Is, In Fact, A Great One: But We Cannot Achieve Greatness Unless We Lose All Interest In Being Great. For Our Own Idea Of Greatness Is Illusory, And If We Pay Too Much Attention To It We Will Be Lured Out Of The Peace And Stability Of The Being God Gave Us, And Seek To Live In A Myth We Have Created For Ourselves. And When We Are Truly Ourselves We Lose Most Of The Futile Self-consciousness That Keeps Us Constantly Comparing Ourselves With Others In Order To See How Big We Are.

The Most Dangerous Man In The World Is The Contemplative Who Is Guided By Nobody. He Trusts His Own Visions. He Obeys The Attractions Of An Interior Voice But Will Not Listen To Other Men. He Identifies The Will Of God With Anything That Makes Him Feel, Within His Own Heart, A Big, Warm, Sweet Interior Glow. The Sweeter And The Warmer The Feeling Is, The More He Is Convinced Of His Own Infallibility.

The Simplicity That All This Presupposes Is Not Easy To Attain. I Find That My Life Constantly Threatens To Become Complex And Divisive. A Life Of Prayer Is Basically A Very Simple Life. This Simplicity, However, Is The Result Of Asceticism And Effort: It Is Not A Spontaneous Simplicity.

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.

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

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.

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.

Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity.

From The Moment You Put A Piece Of Bread In Your Mouth You Are Part Of The World. Who Grew The Wheat? Who Made The Bread? Where Did It Come From? You Are In Relationship With All Who Brought It To The Table. We Are Least Separate And Most In Common When We Eat And Drink.

In The Natural Order No Matter What Ideals May Be Theoretically Possible, Most People More Or Less Live For Themselves And For Their Own Interests And Pleasures Or For Those Of Their Own Family Or Group, And Therefore They Are Constantly Interfering With One Another's Aims, And Hurting One Another And Injuring One Another, Whether They Mean It Or Not.

The Silence Of The Forest Is My Bride And The Sweet Dark Warmth Of The Whole World Is My Love, And Out Of The Heart Of That Dark Warmth Comes The Secret That Is Heard Only In Silence, But It Is The Root Of All The Secrets That Are Whispered By All The Lovers In Their Beds All Over The World.

The Light Of Truth Burns Without A Flicker In The Depths Of A House That Is Shaken With Storms Of Passion And Fear.

To Consider Persons And Events And Situations Only In The Light Of Their Effect On Me Is To Live On The Doorstep Of Hell. Selfishness Is Doomed To Frustration Centered As It Is Upon A Lie. To Live Exclusively For Myself, I Must Make All Things Bend Themselves To My Will As If I Were A God.

Every Moment And Every Event Of Everyman's Life On Earth Plants Something In His Soul. For Just As The Wind Carries Thousands Of Winged Seeds, So Each Moment Brings With It Germs Of Spiritual Vitality That Come To Rest Imperceptibly In The Minds And Wills Of Men.

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.

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.

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.

How Do You Expect To Arrive At The End Of Your Own Journey If You Take The Road To Another Man's City?

The Illusion That Mechanical Progress Means Human Improvement ... Alienates Us From Our Own Being And Our Own Reality. It Is Precisely Because We Are Convinced That Our Life, As Such, Is Better If We Have A Better Car, A Better Tv Set, Better Toothpaste, Etc., That We Condemn And Destroy Our Own Reality And The Reality Of Our Natural Resources. Technology Was Made For Man, Not Man For Technology. In Losing Touch With Being And Thus With God, We Have Fallen Into A Senseless Idolatry Of Production And Consumption For Their Own Sakes.

There Should Be At Least A Room Or Some Corner Where No One Will Find You And Disturb You Or Notice You.

For The Sinful Self Is Not My Real Self, It Is Not The Self You Have Wanted For Me, Only The Self That I Have Wanted : And I No Longer Want This False Self. But Now, Father, I Come To You In Your Own Son's Self ... And It Is He Who Presents Me To You.

The Whole World Is Charged With The Glory Of God And I Feel Fire And Music Under My Feet.

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

Because You Have Called Me Here Not To Wear A Label By Which I Can Recognize Myself And Place Myself In Some Kind Of A Category. You Do Not Want Me To Be Thinking About What I Am, But About What You Are. Or Rather, You Do Not Even Want Me To Be Thinking About Anything Much: For You Would Raise Me Above The Level Of Thought. And If I Am Always Trying To Figure Out What I Am And Where I Am And Why I Am, How Will That Work Be Done?

For Every Gain In Deep Certitude There Is A Corresponding Growth Of Superficial "doubt." This Doubt Is By No Means Opposed To Genuine Faith, But It Mercilessly Examines And Questions The Spurious "faith" Of Everyday Life, The Human Faith Which Is Nothing But The Passive Acceptance Of Conventional Opinion.

To Be Grateful Is To Recognize The Love Of God In Everything.

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

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.

If We Are To Love Sincerely, And With Simplicity, We Must First Of All Overcome The Fear Of Not Being Loved.

Technology Is Not In Itself Opposed To Spirituality And To Religion. But It Presents A Great Temptation.

Detachment From Things Does Not Mean Setting Up A Contradiction Between 'things' And 'god' As If God Were Another Thing And As If Creatures Were His Rivals. We Do Not Detach Ourselves From Things In Order To Attach Ourselves To God, But Rather We Become Detached From Ourselves In Order To See And Use All Things In And For God.

We Thank Him Less By Words Than By The Serene Happiness Of Silent Acceptance. It Is Our Emptiness In The Presence Of His Reality, Our Silence In The Presence Of His Infinitely Rich Silence, Our Joy In The Bosom Of The Serene Darkness In Which His Light Holds Us Absorbed, It Is All This That Praises Him.

The Evil In The World Is All Of Our Own Making, And It Proceeds Entirely From Our Ruthless, Senseless, Wasteful, Destructive, And Suicidal Neglect Of Our Own Being.

To Love Our Nothingness We Must Love Everything In Us That The Proud Man Loves When He Loves Himself. But We Must Love It All For Exactly The Opposite Reason.

Souls Are Like Athletes, That Need Opponents Worthy Of Them, If They Are To Be Tried And Extended And Pushed To The Full Use Of Their Powers, And Rewarded According To Their Capacity.

Imagination Has The Creative Task Of Making Symbols, Joining Things Together In Such A Way That They Throw New Light On Each Other And On Everything Around Them. The Imagination Is A Discovering Faculty, A Faculty For Seeing Relationships, For Seeing Meanings That Are Special And Even Quite New.

The Sky Is My Prayer, The Birds Are My Prayer, The Wind In The Trees Is My Prayer, For God Is All In All.

To Enter Into The Realm Of Contemplation One Must In A Certain Sense Die: But This Death Is In Fact The Entrance To A Higher Life. It Is A Death For The Sake Of Life, Which Leaves Behind All That We Can Know Or Treasure As Life, As Thought, As Experience, As Joy, As Being.

What A Thing It Is To Sit Absolutely Alone, In The Forest, At Night, Cherished By This Wonderful, Unintelligible, Perfectly Innocent Speech, The Most Comforting Speech In The World, The Talk That Rain Makes By Itself All Over The Ridges, And The Talk Of The Watercourses Everywhere In The Hollows! Nobody Started It, Nobody Is Going To Stop It. It Will Talk As Long As It Wants This Rain. As Long As It Talks I Am Going To Listen.

Solitude Is Not Something You Must Hope For In The Future. Rather, It Is A Deepening Of The Present, And Unless You Look For It In The Present You Will Never Find It.

... But Any Fool Knows That You Don't Need Money To Get Enjoyment Out Of Life.

Love Is Perfect In Proportion To It's Freedom.

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

As A Magnifying Glass Concentrates The Rays Of The Sun Into A Little Burning Knot Of Heat That Can Set Fire To A Dry Leaf Or A Piece Of Paper, So The Mystery Of Christ In The Gospel Concentrates The Rays Of God's Light And Fire To A Point That Sets Fire To The Spirit Of Man. ... Through The Glass Of His Incarnation He Concentrates The Rays Of His Divine Truth And Love Upon Us So That We Feel The Burn, And All Mystical Experience Is Communicated To Men Through The Man Christ.

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.

If You Want To Study The Social And Political History Of Modern Nations, Study Hell.

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

A Gentle Sense Of Humor Will Be Alert To Detect Anything That Savors Of A Pious 'act' On The Part Of The Penitent.

The Cause Of Liberty Becomes A Mockery If The Price To Be Paid Is The Wholesale Destruction Of Those Who Are To Enjoy Liberty. Ghandi, Quoted In Merton, P. 68

There Is A Logic Of Language And A Logic Of Mathematics.

The Bible Is Not Primarily A Written Or Printed Text To Be Scrutinized In Private, In A Scholar's Study Or A Contemplative Cell. It Is A Body Of Oral Messages, Announcements, Prophecies, Promulgations, Recitals, Histories, Songs Of Praise, Lamentations, Etc., Which Are Meant Either To Be Uttered Or At Least Read Aloud, Or Chanted, Or Sung, Or Recited In A Community Convoked For The Purpose Of A Living Celebration.

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.

Now Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity. It Is The Fruit Of Unanswered Questions. But Questions Cannot Go Unanswered Unless They First Be Asked.

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.

The Only Thing To Seek In Contemplative Prayer Is God; And We Seek Him Successfully When We Realize That We Cannot Find Him Unless He Shows Himself To Us, And Yet At The Same Time That He Would Not Have Inspired Us To Seek Him Unless We Had Already Found Him.

Each Individual Christian And Each New Age Of The Church Has To Make This Rediscovery, This Return To The Source Of Christian Life.

The Most Awful Tyranny Is That Of The Proximate Utopia Where The Last Sins Are Currently Being Eliminated And Where, Tomorrow, There Will Be No More Sins Because All The Sinners Will Have Been Wiped Out.

We Cannot Arrive At The Perfect Possession Of God In This Life, And That Is Why We Are Travelling And In Darkness. But We Already Possess Him By Grace, And Therefore In That Sense We Have Arrived And Are Dwelling In The Light. But Oh! How Far Have I To Go To Find You In Whom I Have Already Arrived!

No Matter How Ruined Man And His World May Seem To Be, And No Matter How Terrible Man's Despair May Become, As Long As He Continues To Be A Man His Very Humanity Continues To Tell Him That Life Has A Meaning.

In An Age Where There Is Much Talk About "being Yourself," I Reserve To Myself The Right To Forget About Being Myself, Since In Any Case There Is Very Little Chance Of My Being Anybody Else.

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.

To Worship Our False Selves Is To Worship Nothing. And The Worship Of Nothing Is Hell.

It Is Both Dangerous And Easy To Hate Man As He Is Because He Is Not What He Ought To Be. If We Do Not First Respect What He Is We Will Never Suffer Him To Become What He Ought To Be: In Our Impatience We Do Away With Him Altogether.

There Is In All Visible Things An Invisible Fecundity, A Dimmed Light, A Meek Namelessness, A Hidden Wholeness. This Mysterious Unity And Integrity Is Wisdom, The Mother Of Us All, "natura Naturans." There Is In All Things An Inexhaustible Sweetness And Purity, A Silence That Is A Fountain Of Action And Joy. It Rises Up In Wordless Gentleness, And Flows Out To Me From The Unseen Roots Of All Created Being.

Life Is Not Accomplishing Some Special Work But Attaining To A Degree Of Consciousness And Inner Freedom Which Is Beyond All Works And Attainments.

God Utters Me Like A Word Containing A Partial Thought Of Him. A Word Will Never Be Able To Comprehend The Voice That Utters It. But If I Am True To The Concept That God Utters In Me, If I Am True To The Thought Of Him That I Was Meant To Embody, I Shall Be Full Of His Actuality And Find Him Everywhere In Myself, And Find Myself Nowhere.

The Camera Does Not Know What It Takes; It Captures Materials With Which You Reconstruct, Not So Much What You Saw As What You Thought You Saw. Hence The Best Photography Is Aware, Mindful, Of Illusion And Uses Illusion, Permitting And Encouraging It - Especially Unconscious And Powerful Illusions That Are Not Usually Admitted On The Scene.

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.

Sincerity Must Be Bought At A Price: The Humility To Recognize Our Innumerable Errors, And Fidelity In Tirelessly Setting Them Right.

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

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

Contemplative Life

The World Of Men Has Forgotten The Joys Of Silence, The Peace Of Solitude, Which Is Necessary, To Some Extent, For The Fullness Of Human Living. Man Cannot Be Happy For Long Unless He Is In Contact With The Springs Of Spiritual Life Which Are Hidden In The Depths Of His Own Soul. If Man Is Exiled Constantly From His Own Home, Locked Out Of His Spiritual Solitude, He Ceases To Be A True Person.

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.

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.

It Might Be Good To Open Our Eyes And See.

None Of Our Prayers Should Ever Be Petitions For Our Own Needs: For This Is Only Another Subtle Way Of Trying To Put Ourselves On The Same Plane As God — Acting As If We Had No Needs, As If We Were Not Creatures, Not Dependent On Him.

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.

Ours Is A Time Of Anxiety Because We Have Willed It To Be So. Our Anxiety Is Not Imposed On Us By Force From Outside. We Impose It On Our World And Upon One Another From Within Ourselves.

If You Have Love You Will Do All Things Well.

Meditation Is One Of The Ways In Which The Spiritual Man Keeps Himself Awake.

To Love Blindly Is To Love Selfishly, Because The Goal Of Such Love Is Not The Real Advantage Of The Beloved But Only The Exercise Of Love In Our Own Souls.

What I Wear Is Pants. What I Do Is Live. How I Pray Is Breathe.

Pride Makes Us Artificial And Humility Makes Us Real.

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

Modern Man Believes He Is Fruitful And Productive When His Ego Is Aggressively Affirmed, When He Is Visibly Active, And When His Action Produces Obvious Results.

I Had Refused To Pay Any Attention To The Moral Laws Upon Which All Our Vitality And Sanity Depend: And So Now I Was Reduced To The Condition Of A Silly Old Woman, Worrying About A Lot Of Imaginary Rules Of Health, Standards Of Food-value, And A Thousand Minute Details Of Conduct That Were In Themselves Completely Ridiculous And Stupid, And Yet Which Haunted Me With Vague And Terrific Sanctions. If I Eat This, I May Go Out Of My Mind. If I Do Not Eat That, I May Die In The Night.

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

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

One Thing Is Certain: The Humility Of Faith, If It Is Followed By The Proper Consequences-by The Acceptance Of The Work And Sacrifice Demanded By Our Providential Task-will Do Far More To Launch Us Into The Full Current Of Historical Reality Than The Pompous Rationalizations Of Politicians Who Think They Are Somehow The Directors And Manipulators Of History.

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.

Keeping A Journal Has Taught Me That There Is Not So Much New In Your Life As You Sometimes Think. When You Re-read Your Journal You Find Out That Your Latest Discovery Is Something You Already Found Out Five Years Ago. Still, It Is True That One Penetrates Deeper And Deeper Into The Same Ideas And The Same Experiences.

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.

In Order To Settle Down In The Quiet Of Our Own Being We Must Learn To Be Detached From The Results Of Our Own Activity. We Must Be Content To Live Without Watching Ourselves Live, To Work With Expecting Immediate Reward, To Love Without An Instant Satisfaction, And To Exist Without Any Special Recognition. It Is Only When We Are Detached From Ourselves That We Can Be At Peace With Ourselves.

The Art Of Our Time, Sacred Art Included, Will Necessarily Be Characterized By A Certain Poverty, Grimness And Roughness Which Correspond To The Violent Realities Of A Cruel Age.

Our Vocation Is Not Simply To Be, But To Work Together With God In The Creation Of Our Own Life, Our Own Identity, Our Own Destiny....to Work Out Our Identity In God.

Saints Are What They Are Not Because Their Sanctity Makes Them Admirable To Others, But Because The Gift Of Sainthood Makes It Possible For Them To Admire Everyone Else.

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

A Happiness That Is Sought For Ourselves Alone Can Never Be Found: For A Happiness That Is Diminished By Being Shared Is Not Big Enough To Make Us Happy.

What Can We Gain By Sailing To The Moon If We Are Not Able To Cross The Abyss That Separates Us From Ourselves? This Is The Most Important Of All Voyages Of Discovery, And Without It, All The Rest Are Not Only Useless, But Disastrous.

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.

... Nothing Resembles Reality Less Than The Photograph. Nothing Resembles Substance Less Than Its Shadow. To Convey The Meaning Of Something Substantial You Have To Use Not A Shadow But A Sign, Not The Limitation But The Image. The Image Is A New And Different Reality, And Of Course It Does Not Convey An Impression Of Some Object, But The Mind Of The Subject; And That Is Something Else Again.

That Is God's Call To Us - Simply To Be People Who Are Content To Live Close To Him And To Renew The Kind Of Life In Which The Closeness Is Felt And Experienced.

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.

Nevertheless, The Liturgy Of Ash Wednesday Is Not Focussed On The Sinfulness Of The Penitent But On The Mercy Of God. The Question Of Sinfulness Is Raised Precisely Because This Is A Day Of Mercy, And The Just Do Not Need A Savior.

His Justice Is The Love That Gives To Each One Of His Creatures The Gifts That His Mercy Has Previously Decreed. And His Mercy Is His Love, Doing Justice To Its Own Exigencies, And Renewing The Gift Which We Had Failed To Accept.

The Truth Never Becomes Clear As Long As We Assume That Each One Of Us, Individually, Is The Center Of The Universe.

God, Who Is Everywhere, Never Leaves Us. Yet He Seems Sometimes To Be Present, Sometimes To Be Absent. If We Do Not Know Him Well, We Do Not Realize That He May Be More Present To Us When He Is Absent Than When He Is Present.

If There Was No Other Proof Of The Infinite Patience Of God, A Very Good One Could Be Found In His Toleration Of The Pictures That Are Painted Of Him.

Conscience Is The Light By Which We Interpret The Will Of God In Our Own Lives.

While Some Men See Ordinary Happenings, Others See Divine Light And Guidance.

Teach Me To Go To The Country Beyond Words And Beyond Names.

Life Consists In Learning To Live On One's Own, Spontaneous, Freewheeling: To Do This One Must Recognize What Is One's Own-be Familiar And At Home With Oneself. This Means Basically Learning Who One Is, And Learning What One Has To Offer To The Contemporary World, And Then Learning How To Make That Offering Valid.

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

In General, It Can Be Said That No Contemplative Life Is Possible Without Ascetic Self-discipline. One Must Learn To Survive Without The Habit-forming Luxuries Which Get Such A Hold On Men Today. I Do Not Say That To Be A Contemplative One Absolutely Has To Go Without Smoking Or Without Alcohol, But Certainly One Must Be Able To Use These Things Without Being Dominated By An Uncontrolled Need For Them.

Contemplative Life

All Men Who Live Only According To Their Five Senses, And Seek Nothing Beyond The Gratification Of Their Natural Appetites For Pleasure And Reputation And Power, Cut Themselves Off From That Charity Which Is The Principle Of All Spiritual Vitality And Happiness Because It Alone Saves Us From The Barren Wilderness Of Our Own Abominable Selfishness.

The Danger Of Education, I Have Found, Is That It So Easily Confuses Means With Ends. Worse Than That, It Quite Easily Forgets Both And Devotes Itself Merely To The Mass Production Of Uneducated Gradtuates - People Literaly Unfit For Anything Except To Take Part In An Elaborate And Completely Artificial Charade Which They And Their Contemporaries Have Conspired To Call "life".

Humility Is The Surest Sign Of Strength.

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.

He Who Hopes In God Trusts God, Whom He Never Sees, To Bring Him To The Possession Of Things That Are Beyond Imagination.

If You Want To Have A Spiritual Life You Must Unify Your Life. A Life Is Either All Spiritual Or Not Spiritual At All.

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.

To Be Unknown To God Is Altogether Too Much Privacy.

By Reading The Scriptures I Am So Renewed That All Nature Seems Renewed Around Me And With Me. The Sky Seems To Be A Pure, A Cooler Blue, The Trees A Deeper Green. The Whole World Is Charged With The Glory Of God And I Feel Fire And Music Under My Feet.

Faith Is The Door To The Full Inner Life Of The Church, A Life Which Includes Not Only Access To An Authoritative Teaching But Above All To A Deep Personal Experience Which Is At Once Unique And Yet Shared By The Whole Body Of Christ, In The Spirit Of Christ.

Perhaps Peace Is Not, After All, Something You Work For, Or 'fight For.' It Is Indeed 'fighting For Peace' That Starts All The Wars. What, After All, Are The Pretexts Of All These Cold War Crises, But 'fighting For Peace?' Peace Is Something You Have Or Do Not Have. If You Are Yourself At Peace, Then There Is At Least Some Peace In The World. Then Share Your Peace With Everyone, And Everyone Will Be At Peace.

One Of The Most Important-and Most Neglected-elements In The Beginning Of The Interior Life Is The Ability To Respond To Reality, To See The Value And The Beauty In Ordinary Things, To Come Alive To The Splendour That Is All Around Us.

The Biggest Disease In North America Is Busyness.

We Must Slow Down To A Human Tempo And We’ll Begin To Have Time To Listen.

Teach Me To Take All Grace / And Spring It Into Blades Of Act, / Grow Spears And Sheaves Of Charity, / While Each New Instant, (new Eternity) / Flowering With Clean And Individual Circumstance, / Speaks Me The Whisper Of [god's] Consecrating Spirit. / Then Will Obedience Bring Forth New Incarnations / Shining To God With The Features Of [the Lord's] Christ.

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

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.

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.

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.

Every Man Has A Vocation To Be Someone: But He Must Understand Clearly That In Order To Fulfill This Vocation He Can Only Be One Person: Himself.

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

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.

Whose Silence Are You?

Love Is Its Own Reward.

Unconditional Love

....it Is Of The Very Essence Of Christianity To Face Suffering And Death Not Because They Are Good, Not Because They Have Meaning, But Because The Resurrection Of Jesus Has Robbed Them Of Their Meaning.

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

It Is By Desiring To Grow In Love That We Receive The Holy Spirit, And The Thirst For More Charity Is The Effect Of This More Abundant Reception.

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

Our Technological Society Has No Longer Any Place In It For Wisdom That Seeks Truth For Its Own Sake, That Seeks The Fullness Of Being, That Seeks To Rest In An Intuition Of The Very Ground Of All Being. Without Wisdom, The Apparent Opposition Of Action And Contemplation, Of Work And Rest, Of Involvement And Detachment, Can Never Be Resolved.

A Life That Is Without Problems May Literally Be More Hopeless, Than One That Always Verges On Despair.

When Ambition Ends, Happiness Begins.

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.

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.

Every Man Becomes The Image Of The God He Adores. He Whose Worship Is Directed To A Dead Thing Becomes Dead. He Who Loves Corruption Rots. He Who Loves A Shadow Becomes, Himself, A Shadow. He Who Loves Things That Must Perish Lives In Dread Of Their Perishing.

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

The Primordial Blessing, 'increase And Multiply', Has Suddenly Become A Hemorrhage Of Terror. We Are Numbered In Billions, And Massed Together, Marshalled, Numbered, Marched Here And There, Taxed, Drilled, Armed, Worked To The Point Of Insensibility, Dazed By Information, Drugged By Entertainment, Surfeited With Everything, Nauseated With The Human Race And With Ourselves, Nauseated With Life.

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

When I Am Liberated By Silence, When I Am No Longer Involved In The Measurement Of Life, But In The Living Of It, I Can Discover A Form Of Prayer In Which There Is Effectively No Distraction. My Whole Life Becomes A Prayer. My Whole Silence Is Full Of Prayer. The World Of Silence In Which I Am Immersed Contributes To My Prayer.

O Love-why Can't You Leave Me Alone? Which Is A Rhetorical Question Meaning: For Heaven's Sake, Don't.

The End Of The World Will Be Legal.

End Of The World

In A World Of Noise, Confusion And Conflict It Is Necessary That There Be Places Of Silence, Inner Discipline And Peace. In Such Places Love Can Blossom.

Humility Sets Us Free To Do What Is Really Good, By Showing Us Our Illusions And Withdrawing Our Will From What Was Only An Apparent Good.

Perhaps I Am Stronger Than I Think.

God Himself Begins To Live In Me Not Only As My Creator But As My Other And True Self.

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

God Has Left Sin In The World In Order That There May Be Forgiveness: Not Only The Secret Forgiveness By Which He Himself Cleanses Our Souls, But The Manifest Forgiveness By Which We Have Mercy On One Another And So Give Expression To The Fact That He Is Living, By His Mercy, In Our Own Hearts.

Zen Insight Is Not Our Awareness, But Being's Awareness Of Itself In Us.

Love Is The Epiphany Of God In Our Poverty.

Since No Man Ever Can, Or Could, Live By Himself And For Himself Alone, The Destinies Of Thousands Of Other People Were Bound To Be Affected, Some Remotely, But Some Very Directly And Near-at-hand, By My Own Choices And Decisions And Desires, As My Own Life Would Also Be Formed And Modified According To Theirs.

For Our Duties And Our Needs, In All The Fundamental Things For Which We Were Created, Come Down In Practice To The Same Thing.

On Pride: This Sickness Is Most Dangerous When It Succeeds In Looking Like Humility. When A Proud Man Thinks He Is Humble His Case Is Hopeless.

We Stumble And Fall Constantly Even When We Are Most Enlightened. But When We Are In True Spiritual Darkness, We Do Not Even Know That We Have Fallen.

Our Thought Should Not Merely Be An Answer To What Someone Else Has Just Said. Or What Someone Else Might Have Said. Our Interior World Must Be More Than An Echo Of The Words Of Someone Else. There Is No Point In Being A Moon To Somebody Else's Sun, Still Less Is There Any Justification For Our Being Moons Of One Another, And Hence Darkness To One Another, Not One Of Us Being A True Sun.

The Only Way To Make A Man Worthy Of Love Is By Loving Him.

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.

Living Is Not Thinking. Thought Is Formed And Guided By Objective Reality Outside Us. Living Is The Constant Adjustment Of Thought To Life And Life To Thought In Such A Way That We Are Always Growing, Always Experiencing New Things In The Old And Old Things In The New. Thus Life Is Always New.

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

The Artist Should Preach Nothing-not Even His Own Autonomy. His Art Should Speak Its Own Truth, And In So Doing It Will Be In Harmony With Every Other Kind Of Truth- Moral, Metaphysical, Mystical.

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.

The Real Reason Why So Few Men Believe In God Is That They Have Ceased To Believe That Even A God Can Love Them.

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

We Assume That Others Are Receiving The Kind Of Appreciation We Want For Ourselves, And We Proceed On The Assumption That Since We Are Not Loveable As We Are, We Must Become Lovable Under False Pretenses, As If We Were Something Better Than We Are.

Humility Is A Virtue, Not A Neurosis.

People May Spend Their Whole Lives Climbing The Ladder Of Success Only To Find, Once They Reach The Top, That The Ladder Is Leaning Against The Wrong Wall.

To Hope Is To Risk Frustration. Make Up Your Mind To Risk Frustration.

Love Not Only Prefers The Good Of Another To My Own, But It Does Not Even Compare The Two.

It Is In Deep Solitude And Silence That I Find The Gentleness With Which I Can Truly Love My Brother And Sister.

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Arthur Conan Doyle

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