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Not All Of Us Are Called To Be Hermits, But All Of Us Need Enough Silence And Solitude In Our Lives To Enable The Deeper Voice Of Our Own Self To Be Heard At Least Occasionally.

-Thomas Merton

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Not All Of Us

Thomas Merton

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Not All Of Us Are Called To Be Hermits, But All Of Us Need Enough Silence And Solitude In Our Lives To Enable The Deeper Voice Of Our Own Self To Be Heard At Least Occasionally.

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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.

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.

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.

Everybody Has An Instinctive Desire To Do Good Things And Avoid Evil. But That Desire Is Sterile As Long As We Have No Experience Of What It Means To Be Good.

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.

If You Write For God You Will Reach Many Men And Bring Them Joy. If You Write For Men--you May Make Some Money And You May Give Someone A Little Joy And You May Make A Noise In The World, For A Little While. If You Write For Yourself, You Can Read What You Yourself Have Written And After Ten Minutes You Will Be So Disgusted That You Will Wish That You Were Dead.

We Know When We Are Following Our Vocation When Our Soul Is Set Free From Preoccupation With Itself And Is Able To Seek God And Even To Find Him, Even Though It May Not Appear To Find Him. Gratitude And Confidence And Freedom From Ourselves: These Are Signs That We Have Found Our Vocation And Are Living Up To It Even Though Everything Else May Seem To Have Gone Wrong. They Give Us Peace In Any Suffering. They Teach Us To Laugh At Despair. And We May Have To.

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.

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.

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

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.

We Cannot Master Everything, Taste Everything, Understand Everything, Drain Every Experience To Its Last Dregs. But If We Have The Courage To Let Almost Everything Else Go, We Will Probably Be Able To Retain The Thing Necessary For Us-whatever It May Be. If We Are Too Eager To Have Everything, We Will Almost Certainly Miss Even The One Thing We Need

One Has To Be Alone, Under The Sky, Before Everything Falls Into Place And One Finds His Or Her Own Place In The Midst Of It All. We Have To Have The Humility To Realize Ourselves As Part Of Nature.

Be Human In This Most Inhuman Of Ages; Guard The Image Of Man For It Is The Image Of God.

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

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.

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.

True Happiness Is Not Found In Any Other Reward Than That Of Being United With God. If I Seek Some Other Reward Besides God Himself, I May Get My Reward But I Cannot Be Happy.

The Psychological Impotence Of Our Enraged Generation Must Be Traced To The Overwhelming Accusation Of Insincerity Which Every Man And Woman Has To Confront, In The Depths Of His Own Soul, When He Seeks To Love Merely For His Own Pleasure.and Yet The Men Of Our Time Do Not Love With Enough Courage To Risk Even Discomfort Or Inconvenience.

Love Is The Door To Eternity.

A Man Knows When He Has Found His Vocation When He Stops Thinking About How To Live And Begins To Live.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It Might Be Good To Open Our Eyes And See.

Power Always Protects The Good Of Some At The Expense Of All Others.

Day After Day I Read Freud, Thinking Myself To Be Very Enlightened And Scientific When, As A Matter Of Fact, I Was About As Scientific As An Old Woman Secretly Poring Over Books About Occultism, Trying To Tell Her Own Fortune, And Learning How To Dope Out The Future Form The Lines In The Palm Of Her Hand. I Don't Know If I Ever Got Very Close To Needing A Padded Cell: But If I Ever Had Gone Crazy, I Think Psychoanalysis Would Have Been The One Thing Chiefly Responsible For It.

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

Contemplative Life

The Man Who Sweats Under His Mask, Whose Role Makes Him Itch With Discomfort, Who Hates The Division In Himself, Is Already Beginning To Be Free.

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.

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.

Charity Is Without Fear: Having Given All That It Has, It Has Nothing Left To Lose.

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.

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.

A Faith That Is Afraid Of Other People Is No Faith At All.

We Live On The Brink Of Disaster Because We Do Not Know How To Let Life Alone. We Do Not Respect The Living And Fruitful Contradictions And Paradoxes Of Which True Life Is Full.

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.

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.

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.

Today The Artist Has Inherited The Combined Functions Of Hermit, Pilgrim, Prophet, Priest, Shaman, Sorcerer, Soothsayer, Alchemist.

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.

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.

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

We Who Claim To Love Peace And Justice Must Always Be Careful That We Do Not Use Our Righteousness To Provoke The Violent, And In This Way Bring About The Conflict For Which We, Too, Like Other Men, Are Hungering In Secret, And With Suppressed Barbarity.

In Silence God Ceases To Be An Object And Becomes An Experience.

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.

Then It Was As If I Suddenly Saw The Secret Beauty Of Their Hearts, The Depths Of Their Hearts Where Neither Sin Nor Desire Nor Self-knowledge Can Reach, The Core Of Their Reality, The Person That Each One Is In God's Eyes. If Only They Could See Themselves As They Really Are. If Only We Could See Each Other That Way All The Time, There Would Be No More War, No More Hatred, No More Cruelty, No More Greed . . . I Suppose The Big Problem Would Be That We Would Fall Down And Worship Each Other.

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

Either You Look At The Universe As A Very Poor Creation Out Of Which No One Can Make Anything, Or You Look At Your Own Life And Your Own Part In The Universe As Infinitely Rich, Full Of Inexhaustible Interest, Opening Out Into The Infinite Further Responsibilities For Study And Contemplation And Interest And Praise. Beyond All And In All Is God.

Love Is Its Own Reward.

Unconditional Love

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.

We Are Obliged To Love One Another. We Are Not Strictly Bound To 'like' One Another. Love Governs The Will: 'liking' Is A Matter Of Sense And Sensibility. Nevertheless, If We Really Love Others It Will Not Be Too Hard To Like Them Also.

Love One Another

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

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.

We Do Not Exist For Ourselves.

We Cannot Achieve Greatness Unless We Lose All Interest In Being Great.

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.

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.

The First Step Toward Finding God, Who Is Truth, Is To Discover The Truth About Myself: And If I Have Been In Error, This First Step To Truth Is The Discovery Of My Error.

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.

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.

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.

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

Music Is Pleasing Not Only Because Of The Sound But Because Of The Silence That Is In It: Without The Alternation Of Sound And Silence There Would Be No Rhythm.

For Language To Have Meaning, There Must Be Intervals Of Silence Somewhere, To Divide Word From Word And Utterance From Utterance. He Who Retires Into Silence Does Not Necessarily Hate Language. Perhaps It Is Love And Respect For Language Which Imposes Silence Upon Him. For The Mercy Of God Is Not Heard In Words Unless It Is Heard, Both Before And After The Words Are Spoken, In Silence.

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.

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

The Great Thing, And The Only Thing, Is To Adore And Praise God.

The Lights Of Prayer That Make Us Imagine We Are Beginning To Be Angels Are Sometimes Only Signs That We Are Finally Beginning To Be Men. We Do Not Have A High Enough Opinion Of Our Own Nature. We Think We Are At The Gates Of Heaven And We Are Only Just Beginning To Come Into Our Own Realm As Free And Intelligent Beings.

Here Is An Unspeakable Secret: Paradise Is All Around Us And We Do Not Understand.

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.

Love In Fact Is The Spiritual Life, And Without It All The Other Exercises Of The Spirit, However Lofty, Are Emptied Of Content And Become Mere Illusions.

Spread Abroad The Name Of Jesus In Humility And With A Meek Heart; Show Him Your Feebleness, And He Will Become Your Strength.

If A Writer Is So Cautious That He Never Writes Anything That Cannot Be Criticized, He Will Never Be Able To Write Anything That Can Be Read. If You Want To Help Other People You Have Got To Make Up Your Mind To Write Things That Some Men Will Condemn.

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

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.

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

Love Is Our True Destiny.

The God Of Peace Is Never Glorified By Human Violence.

October Is A Fine And Dangerous Season In America. A Wonderful Time To Begin Anything At All. You Go To College, And Every Course In The Catalogue Looks Wonderful.

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.

The Rush And Pressure Of Modern Life Are A Form, Perhaps The Most Common Form, Of Contemporary Violence. To Allow Oneself To Be Carried Away By A Multitude Of Conflicting Concerns, To Surrender To Too Many Demands, To Commit Oneself To Too Many Projects, To Want To Help Everyone In Everything, Is To Succumb To Violence. The Frenzy Of Our Activity Neutralizes Our Work For Peace. It Destroys Our Own Inner Capacity For Peace. It Destroys The Fruitfulness Of Our Own Work, Because It Kills The Root Of Inner Wisdom Which Makes Work Fruitful.

May God Prevent Us From Becoming "right-thinking Men"-that Is To Say Men Who Agree Perfectly With Their Own Police.

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.

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.

My Best Writing Has Always Been In Journals.

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.

My Spiritual Goal Is To One Day Walk Into God And Disappear.

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

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

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

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

One Of The Strange Laws Of The Contemplative Life Is That In It You Do Not Sit Down And Solve Problems: You Bear With Them Until They Somehow Solve Themselves. Or Until Life Solves Them For You.

Contemplative Life

The Real Hope Is Not In Something We Think We Can Do, But In God, Who Is Making Something Good Out Of It In Some Way We Cannot See.

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.

Consequently, The Truth Of God Lives In Our Souls More By The Power Of Superior Moral Courage Than By The Light Of An Eminent Intelligence. Indeed, Spiritual Intelligence Itself Depends On The Fortitude And Patience With Which We Sacrifice Ourselves For The Truth, As It Is Communicated To Our Lives Concretely In The Providential Will Of God

Pardon All Runners, All Speechless, Alien Winds, All Mad Waters. Pardon Their Impulses, Their Wild Attitudes, Their Young Flights, Their Reticence. When A Message Has No Clothes On How Can It Be Spoken.

We Do Not Want To Be Beginners. But Let Us Be Convinced Of The Fact That We Will Never Be Anything Else But Beginners, All Our Life!

Violence Is Essentially Wordless. And It Can Begin Only Where Thought And Rational Communication Have Broken Down.

A Daydream Is An Evasion.

The Goal Of Fasting Is Inner Unity.

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

We Must Make The Choices That Enable Us To Fulfill The Deepest Capacities Of Our Real Selves.

Decisions You Make

We Are Not Converted Only Once In Our Lives But Many Times And This Endless Series Of Conversions And Inner Revolutions Leads To Our Transformation.

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.

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 Zen Has Any Preference It Is For Glass That Is Plain, Has No Color, And Is "just Glass."

There Is No Way Of Telling People That They Are All Walking Around Shining Like The Sun.

For Perfect Hope Is Achieved On The Brink Of Despair, When Instead Of Falling Over The Edge, We Find Ourselves Walking On Air.

When Your Tongue Is Silent, You Can Rest In The Silence Of The Forest. When Your Imagination Is Silent, The Forest Speaks To You. It Tells You Of Its Unreality And Of The Reality Of God. But When Your Mind Is Silent, Then The Forest Suddenly Becomes Magnificently Real And Blazes Transparently With The Reality Of God.

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.

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

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.

O God, My God, The Night Has Values That The Day Never Dreamed Of.

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.

Wheels Of Fire, Cosmic, Rich, Full-bodied Honest Victories Over Desperation.

You Have Got Me Walking Up And Down All Day Under Those Trees, Saying To Me Over And Over Again, "solitude, Solitude." And You Have Turned Around And Thrown The World In My Lap. You Have Told Me, "leave All Things And Follow Me," And Then You Have Tied Half Of New York To My Foot Like A Ball And Chain. You Have Got Me Kneeling Behind That Pillar With My Mind Making A Noise Like A Bank. Is That Contemplation?

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.

I Just Remember Their Kindness And Goodness To Me, And Their Peacefulness And Their Utter Simplicity. They Inspired Real Reverence, And I Think, In A Way, They Were Certainly Saints. And They Were Saints In That Most Effective And Telling Way: Sanctified By Leading Ordinary Lives In A Completely Supernatural Manner, Sanctified By Obscurity, By Usual Skills, By Common Tasks, By Routine, But Skills, Tasks, Routine Which Received A Supernatural Form From Grace Within.

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

A Christian Is Committed To The Belief That Love And Mercy Are The Most Powerful Forces On Earth.

There Is No Greater Disaster In The Spiritual Life Than To Be Immersed In Unreality, For Life Is Maintained And Nourished In Us By Our Vital Relation With Realities Outside And Above Us.

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.

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

Contemplative Living Is Living In True Relationship With Oneself, God, Others And Nature, Free Of The Illusions Of Separateness.

True Relationship

Love Is Our True Destiny. We Do Not Find The Meaning Of Life By Ourselves Alone - We Find It With Another.

Some Of Us Need To Discover That We Will Not Begin To Live More Fully Until We Have The Courage To Do And See And Taste And Experience Much Less Than Usual... And For A Man Who Has Let Himself Be Drawn Completely Out Of Himself By His Activity, Nothing Is More Difficult Than To Sit Still And Rest, Doing Nothing At All. The Very Act Of Resting Is The Hardest And Most Courageous Act He Can Perform.

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)

The Married Man And The Mother Of A Christian Family, If They Are Faithful To Their Obligations, Will Fulfill A Mission That Is As Great As It Is Consoling: That Of Bringing Into The World And Forming Young Souls Capable Of Happiness And Love, Souls Capable Of Sanctification And Transformation In Christ.

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.

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.

There Are Days When I Am Convinced That Heaven Starts Already, Now, In This Ordinary Life Just As It Is, In All Its Incompleteness, Yet, This Is Where Heaven Starts.. See Within Yourself, If You Can Find It. I Walked Through The Field In Front Of The House, Lots Of Swallows Flying, Everywhere! Some Very Near Me..it Was Magical. "we Are Already One, Yet We Know It Not.

The Only Right Way: To Love And Serve The Man Of The Modern World, But Not Simply To Succumb, With Him, To All His Illusions About The World.

God, Have Mercy On Me In The Blindness In Which I Hope I Am Seeking You!

But There Is No Substance Under The Things I Have Gathered Together About Me. I Am Hollow, And My Structure Of Pleasures And Ambitions Has No Foundation. I Am Objectified In Them. But They Are All Destined By Their Very Contingency To Be Destroyed. And When They Are Gone There Will Be Nothing Left Of Me But My Own Nakedness And Emptiness And Hollowness, To Tell Me That I Am A Mistake.

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.

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.

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

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 Serve The God Of Love One Must Be Free, One Must Face The Terrible Responsibility Of The Decision To Love In Spite Of All Unworthiness Whether In Oneself Or In One's Neighbor.

Therefore, Doing The Stations Of The Cross Was Still More Laborious Than Consoling, And Required A Sacrifice. It Was Much The Same With All My Devotions. They Did Not Come Easily Or Spontaneously, And They Very Seldom Brought With Them Any Strong Sensible Satisfaction. Nevertheless The Work Of Performing Them Ended In A Profound And Fortifying Peace: A Peace That Was Scarcely Perceptible, But Which Deepened And Which, As My Passions Subsided, Became More And More Real, More And More Sure, And Finally Stayed With Me Permanently.

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.

A Purely Mental Life May Be Destructive If It Leads Us To Substitute Thought For Life And Ideas For Actions. The Activity Proper To Man Is Purely Mental Because Man Is Not Just A Disembodied Mind. Our Destiny Is To Live Out What We Think, Because Unless We Live What We Know, We Do Not Even Know It. It Is Only By Making Our Knowledge Part Of Ourselves, Through Action, That We Enter Into The Reality That Is Signified By Our Concepts.

When You See God In Everyone, Then They See God In You.

In All His Acts God Orders All Things, Whether Good Or Evil, For The Good Of Those Who Know Him And Seek Him And Who Strive To Bring Their Own Freedom Under Obedience To His Divine Purpose. All That Is Done By The Will Of God In Secret Is Done For His Glory And For The Good Of Those Whom He Has Chosen To Share In His Glory.

Our Minds Are Like Crows. They Pick Up Everything That Glitters, No Matter How Uncomfortable Our Nests Get With All That Metal In Them.

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?

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

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.

Man Was Made For The Highest Activity, Which Is, In Fact, His Rest.

But It Certainly Is A Wonderful Thing To Wake Up Suddenly In The Solitude Of The Woods And Look Up At The Sky And See The Utter Nonsense Of Everything Including All The Solemn Stuff Given Out By Professional Asses About The Spiritual Life; And Simply To Burst Out Laughing, And Laugh And Laugh, With The Sky And The Trees Because God Is Not In Words, And Not In Systems, And Not In Liturgical Movements, And Not In "contemplation" With A Big "c," Or In Asceticism Or In Anything Like That, Not Even In The Apostolate.

If We Have Not Silence, God Is Not Heard In Our Music. If We Have No Rest God, Does Not Bless Our Work.

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

Every One Of Us Is Shadowed By An Illusory Person: A False Self. We Are Not Very Good At Recognizing Illusions, Least Of All The Ones We Cherish About Ourselves.

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

My Own Personal Task Is Not Simply That Of Poet And Writer (still Less Commentator, Pseudo-prophet); It Is Basically To Praise God Out Of An Inner Center Of Silence, Gratitude, And 'awareness.' This Can Be Realized In A Life That Apparently Accomplishes Nothing. Without Centering On Accomplishment Or Nonaccomplishment, My Task Is Simply The Breathing Of This Gratitude From Day To Day, In Simplicity, And For The Rest Turning My Hand To Whatever Comes, Work Being Part Of Praise, Whether Splitting Logs Or Writing Poems, Or Best Of All Simple Notes.

We Cannot Love Ourselves Unless We Love Others, And We Cannot Love Others Unless We Love Ourselves. But A Selfish Love Of Ourselves Makes Us Incapable Of Loving Others.

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.

I Am Beginning To Realize That "sanity" Is No Longer A Value Or An End In Itself. The "sanity" Of Modern Man Is About As Useful To Him As The Huge Bulk And Muscles Of The Dinosaur. If He Were A Little Less Sane, A Little More Doubtful, A Little More Aware Of His Absurdities And Contradictions, Perhaps There Might Be A Possibility Of His Survival.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

No Writing On The Solitary, Meditative Dimensions Of Life Can Say Anything That Has Not Already Been Said Better By The Wind In The Pine Trees.

We Love The Things We Pretend To Laugh At.

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.

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

The Logic Of Worldly Success Rests On A Fallacy: The Strange Error That Our Perfection Depends On The Thoughts And Opinions And Applause Of Other Men! A Weird Life It Is, Indeed, To Be Living Always In Somebody Else's Imagination, As If That Were The Only Place In Which One Could At Last Become Real!

I Seek To Speak To You, In Some Way, As Your Own Self. Who Can Tell What This May Meani Myself Do Not Know, But If You Listen, Things Will Be Said That Are Perhaps Not Written In This Book. And This Will Be Due Not To Me But To The One Who Lives And Speaks In Both.

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.

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.

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.

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

It Is When We Love The Other, The Enemy, That We Obtain From God The Key To An Understanding Of Who He Is, And Who We Are.

... 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.

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.

Who Is Willing To Be Satisfied With A Job That Expresses All His Limitations? He Will Accept Such Work Only As A 'means Of Livelihood' While He Waits To Discover His 'true Vocation'. The World Is Full Of Unsuccessful Businessmen Who Still Secretly Believe They Were Meant To Be Artists Or Writers Or Actors In The Movies.

If We Wait For Some People To Become Agreeable Or Attractive Before We Begin To Love Them, We Will Never Begin. If We Are Content To Give Them A Cold Impersonal 'charity' That Is Merely A Matter Of Obligation, We Will Not Trouble To Understand Them Or To Sympathize With Them At All. And In That Case We Will Not Really Love Them, Because Love Implies An Efficacious Will Not Only To Do Good To Others Exteriorly But Also To Find Some Good In Them To Which We Can Respond."

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Perhaps I Am Stronger Than I Think.

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.

To Be Unknown To God Is Altogether Too Much Privacy.

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.

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.

Happiness That Is Sought For Ourselves Alone Can Never Be Found.

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.

Each One Of Us Has Some Kind Of Vocation. We Are All Called By God To Share In His Life And In His Kingdom. Each One Of Us Is Called To A Special Place In The Kingdom. If We Find That Place We Will Be Happy. If We Do Not Find It, We Can Never Be Completely Happy. For Each One Of Us, There Is Only One Thing Necessary: To Fulfill Our Own Destiny, According To God's Will, To Be What God Wants Us To Be.

Thinking About Monastic Ideals Is Not The Same As Living Up To Them, But At Any Rate Such Thinking Has An Important Place In A Monk's Life, Because You Cannot Begin To Do Anything Unless You Have Some Idea What You Are Trying To Do.

Finally I Am Coming To The Conclusion That My Highest Ambition Is To Be What I Already I Am.

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

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Bret Easton Ellis

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