A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of having a singular focus in life, suggesting that one cannot successfully pursue conflicting desires or values.
Thomas Merton's quote reflects on the nature of human existence and the spiritual dimension of life. He posits that an individual's life should be guided by a clear and unwavering purpose, implying that divided loyalties or desires result in a lack of fulfillment. The concept of being 'made in the image of what you desire' underlines how our pursuits and aspirations shape our identity and experiences, urging individuals to align their lives with their true spiritual calling.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding one's true calling.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Being stuck in adolescence - that's a hell. 'Peter Pan' is a dystopia, and we forget that. Neverland is a bad place to be.
The will of God is always a bigger thing than we bargain for.
Definitions.... are never really needed, and rarely of any use
The current operating system [culture] is flawed. It actually has bugs in it that generate contradictions. We're cutting the earth from beneath our own feet. We're poisoning the atmosphere that we breathe. This is not intelligent behaviour. This is a culture with a bug in its operating system that's making it produce erratic, dysfunctional, malfunctional behaviour. Time to call a tech! And who are the techs? The shamans are the techs.
God help us from those who believe that they are the sole possessors of truth. How we manage at times to agree willingly to become prisoners within our own minds and souls of beliefs and ideas on which we can never be flexible.
One of the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson's investment theory of politics, as he calls it - very outstanding political economist - which essentially - I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state.
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