More Thomas Merton

From New Seeds of Contemplation, pages 45 & 46:

This then is what it means to seek God perfectly:

• to withdraw from illusion and pleasure,
  
• from worldly anxieties and desires,
  
• from the works that God does not want,
  
• from a glory that is only human display;
  
• to keep my mind free from confusion in order that my liberty may be always 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 secrete 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 judgement 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 perfect love and blind faith and pure trust in God, to do His will.
  

And then to wait in peace and emptiness and oblivion of all things. Bonum est praestolari cum silentio salutare Dei. (It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of God.)