"...rebellion against [one's] own inner loneliness and poverty turns into pride. Pride is the fixation of the interior self upon itself, and the rejection of all other elements in the self for which it is incapable of assuming responsibility. This includes the rejection of the inmost self, with its apparent emptiness, its indefiniteness, and its general character as that which is dark and unknown. Pride is then a false and evasive self-realization which is in actual fact no realization at all, but only the fabrication of an illusory image. The effort which must be put into the protection and substantiation of this illusion gives an appearance of strength. But in reality, this fixation upon what does not exist merely exhausts and ruins our being."
---Thomas Merton
Cistercian Quarterly Review #18 (1983)
1 comment:
Can you give me a ... "I think this means ...... " At times (ok, frequently) I get lost in the Mertonesque. But love him. Not romantically like Mel Gibson, but for his fine thoughts that I at times can't access.
yep.
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