A Quote by Thomas Merton

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen. — © Thomas Merton
We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.
and even when I was broken the way sometimes one can be broken, and even though I had fallen, I found upon arising that I was stronger than before, that the glories, if I may call them that, which I had loved so much and that had been darkened in my fall, were shinning even brighter and nearly everytime subsequently I have fallen and darkness has come over me, they have obstinately arisen, not as they were, but brighter.
You've got to just let it go and know that other people are enjoying the fact that you've fallen over. It makes you feel better about the next time you laugh when you see another person fall over. These things go in cycles; someone has to fall over at some point, even the coolest man on earth. Ryan Gosling has fallen over...once. He has! It's just a fact, Ryan Gosling has fallen over and we should all embrace that.
There are times, you know, it's said in the Spiritual Tradition, just a glimpse at an enlightened personage can convey immense information at the sub-conscious level that sprouts later, that we don't even know.
I am always talking about the human condition and about American society in particular: what it is like to be human, what makes us weep, what makes us fall and stumble and somehow rise and go on from darkness into darkness and that darkness carpeted.
Even if you're not a Catholic, even if you're not a Christian, in fact even if you have no religious faith at all, what people could see in Pope John Paul was a man of true and profound spiritual faith.
"Don't worry too much about how spiritually poor you are_God sees that,but for you it is expected to trust in God and pray to Him as best you can,never to fall into despair and to struggle according to your strength.If you ever begin to think you are spiritually_"well off"_then you can know for sure that you aren't!True spiritual life,even on the most elementary level,is always accompanied by suffering and difficulties.Therefore you should rejoice in all your difficulties and sorrows."
The true light never hides the darkness but is born out of the very center of it, transforming and redeeming. So to the darkness we must return, each of us individually accepting his ignorance and loneliness, his sin and weakness, and, most difficult of all, consenting to wait in the dark and even to love the waiting
The interesting thing is that in everyday life, I fail to see the most ordinary things. I often stumble and sometimes I even fall over. But when I draw or look at a painting, I go into a sort of overdrive and just see things differently than other people.
Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.
It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble because if you’re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the Myth of Icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.
Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness.
Most of us have participated in the trust exercise in which one person falls back and is caught by a peer. Even if the catch is made a hundred times in a row, the trust is broken forever if the friend lets you fall the next time as a joke. Even if he swears he is sorry and will never let you fall again, you can never fall back without a seed of doubt.
We are called to love even in the loneliness, worship even in the tears and follow even in the darkness.
Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you eve know the difference?
True love is deemed to be the most tender of our emotions, as even the blind and deaf know; but I know, what few believe, that true friendship is more tender still.
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