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. β¨ Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for: Selected Spiritual Writings.
More Author Quotes
- 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 β¦ βΆ
- 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 th β¦ βΆ
- Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage. β¨ Thomas Merton (1998). The β¦ βΆ
- 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 β¦ βΆ
- The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily. β¨ Thomas Merton (2005). No Man is an Island, p.189, Shambhala Publications
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