Thomas Merton

We have admitted that it is possible to live in deep and peaceful interior solitude, even in the midst of the world

and its confusion.

You will never find interior solitude

unless you make some conscious effort to deliver yourself from the desires and the cares and the attachments of an existence in time and in the world.

Do everything you can to avoid the noise and the business of people.

Keep as far away as you can from the places where they gather to cheat and insult one another, to exploit one another, to laugh at one another,

or to mock one another with their false gestures of friendship.

Be glad if you can keep beyond the reach of their radios.

Do not bother with their unearthly songs.

Do not read their advertisements.

The contemplative life certainly does not demand a self-righteous contempt for the habits and diversions of ordinary people.

But nevertheless, no one who seeks liberation and light in solitude, no one who seeks spiritual freedom can afford to yield passively to all the appeals of a society of salesmen, advertisers and consumers.

Keep your eyes clean and your ears quiet and your mind serene.

Breathe God's air.

Work, if you can, under the sky.

But if you have to live in a city and work among machines and ride in the subways

and eat in a place where the radio makes you deaf with spurious news and where the food destroys your life and the sentiments of those around you poison your heart with boredom.

Do not be impatient but accept it as the love of God

and as a seed of solitude planted in your soul.

If you are appalled by those things, you will keep your appetite for the healing silence of recollection.