The Inner Experience: Thomas Merton's Unfinished Masterpiece on Contemplation, Bridging Catholic Monasticism and Eastern Meditation Traditions

by Thomas Merton

And as time goes on it seems evident that what we have to share seems to be not so much one another’s heaven as one another’s hell.

According to the Christian mystical tradition, one cannot find one’s inner center and know God there as long as one is involved in the preoccupations and desires of the outward self.

Freedom to enter the inner sanctuary of our being is denied to those who are held back by dependence on self-gratification and sense satisfaction, whether it be a matter of pleasure seeking, love of comfort, or proneness to anger, self-assertion, pride, vanity, greed, and all the rest.