MERTON

This is what it means to seek God perfectly: to withdraw from illusion and 
pleasure, from worldly anxieties and desires, from works that God does not want, 
from glory that is only human display; to keep my mind free from confusion in 
order that my liberty may always be at the disposal of His will; to entertain 
silence in my heart and listen for the voice of God; to cultivate an 
intellectual freedom from the images of created things in order to receive the 
secret contact of God in obscure love; to love all men as myself; to rest in 
humility and to find peace in withdrawal from conflict and competition with 
other men; to turn aside from controversy and put away heavy loads of judgment 
and censorship and criticism and the whole burden of opinions that I have no 
obligation to carry; to have a will that is always ready to fold back within 
itself and draw all the powers of the soul down from its deepest center to rest 
in silent expectancy for the coming of God, poised in tranquil and effortless 
concentration upon the point of my dependence on Him; to gather all that I am, 
and have all that I can possibly suffer or do or be, and abandon them all to God 
in the resignation of a perfect love and blind faith and pure trust in God, to 
do His will.



Merton.