A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of having a singular focus in life, suggesting that one cannot successfully pursue conflicting desires or values.
Thomas Merton's quote reflects on the nature of human existence and the spiritual dimension of life. He posits that an individual's life should be guided by a clear and unwavering purpose, implying that divided loyalties or desires result in a lack of fulfillment. The concept of being 'made in the image of what you desire' underlines how our pursuits and aspirations shape our identity and experiences, urging individuals to align their lives with their true spiritual calling.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding one's true calling.
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.
Society's preservation against the unlimited violence of scandals lies in the mimetic coalition against the single victim and its ensuing limited violence. The violent death of Jesus is, humanly speaking, an example of this strange process.
There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.
There is no problem of human nature which is insoluble.
A dance is the devil's procession, and he that entereth into a dance, entereth into his possession.
This non-proletarianised plebs has been racialist when it has been colonialist; it has been nationalist - chauvinist - when it has been armed; and it has been fascist when it has become the police force.These ideological effects on the plebs have been uncontestable and profound.
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