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The Logic Of The Poet - That Is, The Logic Of Language Or The Experience Itself - Develops The Way A Living Organism Grows: It Spreads Out Towards What It Loves, And Is Heliotropic, Like A Plant.

-Thomas Merton

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The Logic Of The

Thomas Merton

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The Logic Of The Poet - That Is, The Logic Of Language Or The Experience Itself - Develops The Way A Living Organism Grows: It Spreads Out Towards What It Loves, And Is Heliotropic, Like A Plant.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love Is The Door To Eternity.

Surrender Your Own Poverty And Acknowledge Your Nothingness To The Lord. Whether You Understand It Or Not, God Loves You, Is Present In You, Lives In You, Dwells In You, Calls You, Saves You And Offers You An Understanding And Compassion Which Are Like Nothing You Have Ever Found In A Book Or Heard In A Sermon.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Contemplation Is The Loving Sense Of This Life, This Presence And This Eternity.

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.

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.

Zen Enriches No One. There Is No Body To Be Found. The Birds May Come And Circle For A While In The Place Where It Is Thought To Be. But They Soon Go Elsewhere. When They Are Gone, The "nothing," The "no-body" That Was There, Suddenly Appears. That Is Zen. It Was There All The Time But The Scavengers Missed It, Because It Was Not Their Kind Of Prey.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Infinite Sharing Is The Law Of God S Inner Life.

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.

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.

Hurry Ruins Saints As Well As Artists. They Want Quick Success, And They Are In Such A Hurry To Get It That They Cannot Take Time To Be True To Themselves. And When The Madness Is Upon Them, They Argue That Their Very Haste Is A Species Of Integrity.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

I Believe We Are Going To Have To Prepare Ourselves For The Difficult And Patient Task Of Outgrowing Rigid And Intransigent Nationalism, And Work Slowly Towards A World Federation Of Peaceful Nations. How Will This Be Possible? Don't Ask Me. I Don't Know. But Unless We Develop A Moral, Spiritual, And Political Wisdom That Is Proportionate To Our Technological Skill, Our Skill May End Us.

Fear Narrows The Little Entrance Of Our Heart. It Shrinks Up Our Capacity To Love. It Freezes Up Our Power To Give Ourselves.

Capacity To Love

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.

....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.

Our Real Journey In Life Is Interior; It Is A Matter Of Growth, Deepening, And Of An Ever Greater Surrender To The Creative Action Of Love And Grace In Our Hearts. Never Was It More Necessary To Respond To That Action.

Life Reveals Itself To Us Only In So Far As Well Live It.

A Daydream Is An Evasion.

Not Only Does Silence Give Us A Chance To Understand Ourselves Better, To Get A Truer And More Balanced Perspective On Our Own Lives In Relation To The Lives Of Others: Silence Makes Us Whole If We Let It. Silence Helps Draw Together The Scattered And Dissipated Energies Of A Fragmented Existence.

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.

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

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.

Let Us Come Alive To The Splendor That Is All Around Us And See The Beauty In Ordinary Things.

Ordinary Things

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

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.

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.

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.

And 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.

The Purpose Of Our Lives Is To Find The Purpose Of Our Lives.

Stop Thinking And Start Looking.

Good Moral Actions Are Not Enough. Everything In Us, From The Very Depths, Must Be Cleansed And Reordered.

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

A Tree Gives Glory To God By Being A Tree. For In Being What God Means It To Be It Is Obeying [god]. It “consents,” So To Speak, To [god's] Creative Love. It Is Expressing An Idea Which Is In God And Which Is Not Distinct From The Essence Of God, And Therefore A Tree Imitates God By Being A Tree

What Does It Mean To Know And Experience My Own “nothingness?” It Is Not Enough To Turn Away In Disgust From My Illusions And Faults And Mistakes, To Separate Myself From Them As If They Were Not, And As If I Were Someone Other Than Myself. This Kind Of Self-annihilati On Is Only A Worse Illusion, It Is A Pretended Humility Which, By Saying “i Am Nothing” I Mean In Effect “i Wish I Were Not What I Am.

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

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.

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.

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

I Will No Longer Wound Myself With The Thoughts And Questions That Have Surrounded Me Like Thorns: That Is A Penance You Do Not Ask Of Me.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Is In All Visible Things An Invisible Fecundity, A Dimmed Light, A Meek Namelessness, A Hidden Wholeness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love Is Our True Destiny.

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

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.

What We Have To Be Is What We Are.

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

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

To Be A Saint Is To Be Yourself.

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

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

We Must Suffer. Our Five Sense Are Dulled By Inordinate Pleasure. Penance Makes Them Keen, Gives Them Back Their Natural Vitality, And More. Penance Clears The Eye Of Conscience And Of Reason. It Helps Think Clearly, Judge Sanely. It Strengthens The Action Of Our Will.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Only Influence That Can Really Upset The Injustice And Iniquity Of Men Is The Power That Breathes In The Christian Tradition, Renewing Our Participation In The Life That Is The Light Of Men.

The Goal Of Fasting Is Inner Unity.

I Cannot Make The Universe Obey Me. I Cannot Make Other People Conform To My Own Whims And Fancies. I Cannot Make Even My Own Body Obey Me.

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.

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

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

We Are Not Perfectly Free Until We Live In Pure Hope. For When Our Hope Is Pure, It No Longer Trusts Exclusively In Human And Visible Means, Nor Rests In Any Visible End. He Who Hopes In God Trusts God, Whom He Never Sees, To Bring Him To The Possession Of Things That Are Beyond Imagination.

For The Ones Who Are Called Saints By Human Opinion On Earth May Very Well Be Devils, And Their Light May Very Well Be Darkness

October Is A Fine And Dangerous Season In America. It Is Dry And Cool And The Land Is Wild With Red And Gold And Crimson, And All The Lassitudes Of August Have Seeped Out Of Your Blood, And You Are Full Of Ambition. It Is A Wonderful Time To Begin Anything At All.

Solitude And Silence Teach Me To Love My Brothers For What They Are, Not For What They Say.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Are Crimes Which No One Would Commit As An Individual Which He Willingly And Bravely Commits When Acting In The Name Of His Society, Because He Has Been (too Easily) Convinced That Evil Is Entirely Different When It Is Done 'for The Common Good.'...one Might Point To The Way In Which Racial Hatreds And Even Persecution Are Admitted By People Who Consider Themselves, And Perhaps In Some Sense Are, Kind, Tolerant, Civilized And Even Humane.

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

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.

My God, I Pray Better To You By Breathing And Walking Than By Talking, Just As In Choir I Sing Best When I Am Thinking About Something Else, Or Better Still, Praying.

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.

Lovely Morning! How Lovely Life Can Be!

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Every Breath We Draw Is A Gift Of God's Love; Every Moment Of Existence Is A Grace.

The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Sin And By Illusion, A Point Of Pure Truth.

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.

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.

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

Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity.

Learn How To Meditate On Paper. Drawing And Writing Are Forms Of Meditation. Learn How To Contemplate Works Of Art. Learn How To Pray In The Streets Or In The Country. Know How To Meditate Not Only When You Have A Book In Your Hand But When You Are Waiting For A Bus Or Riding In A Train.

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.

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.

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.

Our Happiness Consists In Sharing The Happiness Of God, The Perfection Of His Unlimited Freedom, The Perfection Of His Love.

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

It Might Be Good To Open Our Eyes And See.

It Is True To Say That For Me Sanctity Consists In Being Myself And For You Sanctity Consists Of Being Yourself And That, In The Last Analysis, Your Sanctity Will Never Be Mine And Mine Will Never Be Yours, Except In The Communism Of Charity And Grace. 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.

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.

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.

This Act Of Total Surrender Is Not Merely A Fantastic Intellectual And Mystical Gamble; It Is Something Much More Serious. It Is An Act Of Love For This Unseen Person, Who, In The Very Gift Of Love By Which We Surrender Ourselves To His Reality Also Makes His Presence Known To Us.

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.

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.

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.

In The Spiritual Life There Is No Such Thing As An Indifference To Love Or Hate.

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

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.

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

I Refuse To Be Misled By Any Kind Of A Mirage About Any Alleged Success Of What I Write. Those Things Are Too Easily Exaggerated, And Even When They Are True, They Always Mean Less Than They Seem To.

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

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.

You Are Made In The Image Of What You Desire.

Spiritual Awakening

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

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.

Let Me Say This Before Rain Becomes A Utility That They Can Plan And Distribute For Money. By "they" I Mean The People Who Cannot Understand That Rain Is A Festival, Who Do Not Appreciate Its Gratuity, Who Think That What Has No Price Has No Value, That What Cannot Be Sold Is Not Real, So That The Only Way To Make Something Actual Is To Place It On The Market. The Time Will Come When They Will Sell You Even Your Rain. At The Moment It Is Still Free, And I Am In It. I Celebrate Its Gratuity And Its Meaninglessness.

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

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.

If There Is No Silence Beyond And Within The Many Words Of Doctrine, There Is No Religion, Only A Religious Ideology. For Religion Goes Beyond Words And Actions, And Attains To The Ultimate Truth Only In Silence And Love.

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.

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

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.

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.

True Encounter With Christ Liberates Something In Us, A Power We Did Not Know We Had, A Hope, A Capacity For Life, A Resilience, An Ability To Bounce Back When We Thought We Were Completely Defeated, A Capacity To Grow And Change, A Power Of Creative Transformation.

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.

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.

The Biggest Disease In North America Is Busyness.

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.

The Whole Idea Of Compassion Is Based On A Keen Awareness Of The Interdependence Of All These Living Beings, Which Are All Part Of One Another, And All Involved In One Another.

For Pride, Which Is The Inordinate Attribution Of Goods And Values And Glories To One's Own Contingent Self, Cannot Exist Where There Is No Contingent Self To Which Anything Can Be Attributed.

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

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

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

In Louisville, At The Corner Of Fourth And Walnut, In The Center Of The Shopping District, I Was Suddenly Overwhelmed With The Realization That I Loved All Those People, That They Were Mine And I Theirs, That We Could Not Be Alien To One Another Even Though We Were Total Strangers.

Humble People Can Do Great Things With Uncommon Perfection Because They Are No Longer Concerned About Their Own Interests And Their Own Reputation, And Therefore They No Longer Need To Waste Their Efforts In Defending Them.

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

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

Happiness And Love

When Ambition Ends, Happiness Begins.

‎"our Job Is To Love Others Without Stopping To Inquire Whether Or Not They Are Worthy.

First Of All, Although Men Have A Common Destiny, Each Individual Also Has To Work Out His Own Personal Salvation For Himself In Fear And Trembling. We Can Help One Another To Find The Meaning Of Life No Doubt. But 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. You Cannot Tell Me Who I Am And I Cannot Tell You Who You Are. If You Do Not Know Your Own Identity, Who Is Going To Identify You?

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.

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.

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.

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

The Geographical Pilgrimage Is The Symbolic Acting Out An Inner Journey. The Inner Journey Is The Interpolation Of The Meanings And Signs Of The Outer Pilgrimage. One Can Have One Without The Other. It Is Best To Have Both.

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.

The Artistic Experience, At Its Highest, Was Actually A Natural Analogue Of Mystical Experience. It Produced A Kind Of Intuitive Of Perception.

Mystical Experiences

Many Poets Are Not Poets For The Same Reason That Many Religious Men Are Not Saints: They Never Succeed In Being Themselves. They Never Get Around To Being The Particular Poet Or The Particular Monk They Are Intended To Be By God. They Never Become The Man Or The Artist Who Is Called For By All The Circumstances Of Their Individual Lives. They Waste Their Years In Vain Efforts To Be Some Other Poet, Some Other Saint...they Wear Out Their Minds And Bodies In A Hopeless Endeavor To Have Somebody Else's Experiences Or Write Somebody Else's Poems.

The Question Of Love Is One That Cannot Be Evaded. Whether Or Not You Claim To Be Interested In It From The Moment You Are Alive You Are Bound To Be Concerned With Love Because Love Is Not Just Something That Happens To You: It Is A Certain Special Way Of Being Alive. Love Is In Fact An Intensification Of Life A Completeness A Fullness A Wholeness Of Life.

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

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?

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.

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.

Actions Are The Doors And Windows Of Being. Unless We Act, We Have No Way Of Knowing What We Are.

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 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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

Action Is The Stream, And Contemplation Is The Spring.

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.

For Power Can Guarantee The Interests Of Some Men But It Can Never Foster The Good Of Man. Power Always Protects The Good Of Some At The Expense Of All The Others. Only Love Can Attain And Preserve The Good Of All. Any Claim To Build The Security Of All On Force Is A Manifest Imposture.

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.

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

They Were In The World And Not Of It--not Because They Were Saints, But In A Different Way: Because They Were Artists. The Integrity Of An Artist Lifts A Man Above The Level Of The World Without Delivering Him From It.

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Jacques Yves Cousteau

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