Death | Greed | Lost | Self | Sin | Thanks

THOMAS MERTON: THANKFUL FOR THE REAL ME
“In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be, and in order to find myself I must go out of myself, and in order to live I have to die. The reason for this is that I am born in selfishness and therefore all my natural efforts to make myself more real and more myself, make me less real and less myself, because they all revolve around a lie. People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or…