A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of translating our thoughts and ideas into actions.
Thomas Merton's quote highlights the danger of living solely in the realm of thought without implementing those ideas into real-life actions. It suggests that true understanding and fulfillment come from integrating our mental knowledge into our lived experiences, thus underscoring the need for a balanced life where thought and action coalesce to shape our reality.
In practice
During a motivational speech about the importance of taking initiative.
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.
The greatest good that can come to anyone is forming within them an absolute certainty of themselves, and of their relationship to the Universe, forever removing the sense of heaven as being outside of them.
Man must reconcile himself to his natural greatness.... he must not forget that he is a person.
Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.
Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.
What is the mirror of Being? Non-being. Bring non-being as your gift, if you are not a fool.
There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.
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