Thomas Merton Quotes

It's freeing to not be caught up in your own personal baggage.

I have achieved an inner freedom.

You break free when you feel neither beneath anyone nor superior to anyone, when you shed the need to control other people, when you create space for others to be who they are and for your real self to be what it is.

To become truly free, you must surrender.

I considered myself liberated long before it became the fashion. First I liberated myself from debilitating habits, and went on to free myself of combative, aggressive thoughts. I have also cast aside any unnecessary possessions. This, I feel, is true liberation.

I use the word inquiry as synonymous with The Work...Inquiry is a way to end confusion and to experience internal peace, even in a world of apparent chaos. Above all else, inquiry is about realizing that all the answers we ever need are always available inside us.

I noticed every time I spent a lot of time in the bathtub, I would just get fantastic realizations about myself, and they were so valuable and liberating.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

When you have something that is bothering you, and then you articulate, take the time to really express it and see it clearly, to recognize. To acknowledge that is already a liberating energy.

There are certain things that make me relax, like writing my journal. That's the only time that I'm relaxing. It's the only time I really get to examine myself.

We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly - spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.

I don't see myself as someone that brings a lot of luggage.

It's ironic, but until you can free those final monsters within the jungle of yourself, your life, your soul is up for grabs.

We would go back and maybe not say that thing to our dad that we said, or maybe be a little nicer to someone who we cared about and had a relationship with when we were young. You know, they're subtle things, but we carry those with us forever. And I think that regret and time travel are intrinsically linked to me.

When I look at my life, I see that I wanted to be free of the physical plane, the psychological plane, and when I got free of those I didn't want to go anywhere near them.

This is like one thing that I've tried to do, and I think successfully, that when you realize that nothing really belongs to you, you begin to appreciate having an understanding of just where your head is at, and you feel so much better.

I still have moments when I close myself in, but I wouldn't be on the path that I am with the career that I've had if I didn't have a deep understanding of the sense of my inner freedom.

'Liberation' is an interesting word because you can be liberated from external things and also from your internal dialogue.

Until I really dealt with a lot of the demons in my life - the fear and self-doubt and unresolved issues with my old man - I could never feel fulfilled and happy. I would wake up in the morning and feel bad.

Thematically, I like playing with the ideas of stuff that you try to bury, and you think will go away, but instead you carry it with you until it becomes crippling. And sometimes you have to look back and deal with some stuff in order to truly move forward.

You're as sick as your secrets, and my whole life was a secret, so it's just... it's been really healing, and I've found a lot of inner peace by just owning everything and moving forward from there.

When I was able to better live in the moment that I was in, I think that it really freed me.

There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

So many of us have not attended to the deeper issues in ourselves; in our minds, our hearts, and in our external manifestations that keep love at bay. We instead concentrate on making a list of what we're looking for in another person.