From Laurence Freeman OSB, “The Power of Attention,” THE SELFLESS SELF (London: DLT, 1989), pp. 31-35.
There has always been a great danger, but one that exists especially for us today in our self-conscious and narcissistic society, of mistaking introversion, self-fixation, self-analysis, for true interiority. The great prevalence of psychological woundedness and social alienation exacerbates this danger while calling for gentle tact and compassion in dealing with it. . . . To be truly interior is the complete opposite of being introverted. In the awareness of the indwelling presence our consciousness is turned around, con-verted, so that we are no longer, as we have habitually been doing, looking at ourselves, anticipating or remembering feelings, reactions, desires, ideas, or daydreams. . . .
It would be easier, we think, to turn away from introspection if we knew what we were turning towards. If only we had a fixed object to look at. If only God could be represented by an image. But the true God can never be an image. Images of God are gods. To make an image of God is merely to end up looking at a refurbished image of ourselves. To be truly interior, to open the eye of the heart, means to be living within the imageless vision that is faith, and that is the vision that permits us to “see God.” In faith attention is controlled by a new Spirit, no longer the spirits of materialism, self-seeking and self-preservation, but the ethos of faith which is by its nature dispossessive.
It is always letting go and continuously renouncing the rewards of renunciation. . . .There is no more crucial challenge than entering the experience of remaining other-centered. It is the ecstatic and continuous state of dispossession. We can glimpse it simply by calling to mind those moments or phases in life where we experienced the highest degree of peace, fulfillment and joy and recognize that those were times, not when we possessed anything, but when we lost ourselves in something or someone. The passport into the kingdom requires the stamp of poverty.
After Meditation, from THE JOURNALS OF THOMAS MERTON: Volume Five 1963-1965 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 224.
April 4, 1965. Passion Sunday.
Light rain all night. The need to keep working at meditation—going to the root. Mere passivity won’t do at this point. But activism won’t do either. A time of wordless deepening, to grasp the inner reality of my nothingness in the One who is. Talking about it in these terms is absurd. It has nothing to do with the concrete reality that is to be grasped. My prayer is peace and struggle in silence, to be aware and true, beyond myself. To go outside the door of myself, not because I will it but because I am called and must respond.
