To live well myself means for me to know and appreciate something of the secret the mystery in myself: that which is incommunicable, which is at once myself and not myself at once in me and above me. From this sanctuary I must seek humbly and patiently to ward off all the intrusions of violence and self-assertion. These intrusions cannot really penetrate the sanctuary, but they can draw me forth from it and slay me before the secret doorway.
If I can understand something of myself and something of others, I can begin to share with them the work of building the foundations for spiritual unity. But first we must work together at dissipating the more absurd fictions which make unity impossible.
Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp. 81-82
