Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.
Interpretation
Meditation helps individuals maintain spiritual awareness and consciousness.
In this quote, Thomas Merton emphasizes the importance of meditation as a practice that helps individuals remain spiritually alert and engaged with their inner selves. It suggests that through meditation, people can cultivate a deeper awareness of their thoughts, feelings, and spiritual existence, thereby enhancing their overall sense of being and understanding of life.
In practice
During a wellness retreat, this quote can be shared to encourage participants to embrace meditation.
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.
There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be.
In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our minds into a place of surrender, we will have an easier time feeling the contours of the land. We do not have to break our way through as much as we have to find our way around the major obstacles. We do not have to cure every neurosis, we just have to learn how not to be caught by them.
These old knights are more cunning than you think, or they would never have lived to see their first grey hair.
There are a lot of people who helped make Queen Latifah who she is today. I don't forget, but a lot of people do and get big heads. My mom will make me walk the dogs or take out the trash when I go home. I'm not allowed to get a big head; I've still got to do the simple things in life.
A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge - broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.