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.
Interpretation
Loving without true understanding often serves our own needs rather than those of the person we claim to love.
This quote by Thomas Merton suggests that when we love blindly, we may focus solely on our desire to love instead of genuinely caring for the well-being of the other person. This kind of love becomes a selfish exercise where our emotional fulfillment takes precedence over the true needs and advantages of the beloved, highlighting the necessity of mindful and selfless love.
In practice
In a counseling session, one might use this quote to help clients recognize the importance of understanding their partners' needs.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
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.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
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.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.
We never live so intensely as when we love strongly. We never realize ourselves so vividly as when we are in full glow of love for others.
cause it's a hard life, with love in the world. and i'm a hard girl, loving me is like chewing on pearls.
I am, as ever, a poor sinner, a captive of eternal love, running by the side of His triumphal chariot, and I have no desire to be anything else as long as I live.
Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God.
Take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth.
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