In our being there is a primordial yes that is not our own; it is not at our own disposal; it is not accessible to our inspection and understanding; we do not even fully experience it as real (except in rare and unique circumstances). And we have to admit that for most people this primordial “yes” is something they never advert to at all. It is in fact absolutely unconscious, totally forgotten.
Basically, however, my being is not an affirmation of a limited Real and False Selves I is self, but the “yes” of Being itself, irrespective of my own choices. Where do “I” come in? Simply in uniting the “yes” of my own freedom with the “yes” of Being that already is before I have a chance to choose. This is not “adjustment.” There is nothing to adjust. There is reality, and there is free consent. There is the actuality of one “yes.” In this actuality no question of “adjustment” remains and the ego vanishes.
Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 243
