Sublime
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IT is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily; you yourself do not know what you want. Rather than admit this, you pretend that someone is keeping you from exercising your liberty. Who is this? It is you yourself.
BUT as long as you pretend to live in pure autonomy, as your own master, without even a god to rule you, you will
Thomas Merton • New Seeds of Contemplation
there are three ways of knowing God: (1) in the creation, (2) in God’s actions through history, and (3) in the highest form of the knowledge of God—to know God tamquam ignotum (to know God as the unknown). The highest form of talking about the Trinity is to know that one does not know.
J. Francis Stroud • Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
“God” must be an experience before “God” can be a word.
Paul F. Knitter • Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian
One need not have journeyed too far into this silent land to realize that the so-called psychological self, our personality (not what Paul is talking about as hidden with Christ in God) is a cognitive construct pasted up out of thoughts and feelings. A rather elaborate job has been done of it, and it is singularly useful. But our deepest identity,
... See moreMartin Laird • Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation
You're walking in the forest. You find a semi-abandoned hut and sit down at the table. After drinking a glass of water and quickly meditating, you open up your notebook. The page is empty.
Thomas Merton, you tell your notebook.
Thomas Merton was a Trappist Monk, it responds - You may have already read his famous book "The Seven Storey Mountain" which
... See more“I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers as Socrates, Epictetus, Arnold, Parker…. They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue…. I would like to create a book … in which I could tell a person about his life, and about the Good
... See moreLeo Tolstoy • A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
But who can call upon you if they do not know you?
Ben O'Rourke • Confessions: St Augustine
Just a moment...
Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and 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.