Being Ourselves as God Calls Us to Be

This particular reading from the book A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations spoke to me after a day of work and reflection on who we are called to be and how we are called to love as God loves us.

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself—and, if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself. For it is the unaccepted self that stands in my way—and will continue to do so as long as it is not accepted. When it has been accepted, it is my own stepping-stone to what is above me. Because this is the way man was made by God—and original sin was the effort to surpass oneself by being “like God,” i.e., unlike oneself. But our Godlikeness begins at home. We must become like ourselves, and stop living “beside ourselves.” October 2, 1958

Thomas Merton’s Journals, volume III A Search for Solitude, (pp.220–21)