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Hail the spirit, that may unite us;

for verily in images we live.

And with small steps the clocks do pace

beside our actual day.

Without knowing our true place,

we proceed from working alignments.

The antennae feel the antennae,

and the empty distance spanned...

Pure tension. Oh music of the powers!

Do not our venial transactions

turn all interference from you?

Though the farmer toil and trouble,

there where the seed turns into summer,

he will never reach. The earth bestows.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus

On Being and Doing

1. We are warmed by fire, not by the smoke of the fire. We are carried over the sea by a ship, not by the wake of a ship. So too, what we are is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in our outward reflection in our own acts. We must find our real selves not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul which is the principle of all our acts.

But my soul is hidden and invisible. I cannot see it directly, for it is hidden even from myself. Nor can I see my own eyes. They are too close to me for me to see them. They are not meant to see themselves. I know I have eyes when I see other things with them.

I can see my eyes in a mirror. My soul can also reflect itself in the mirror of its own activity. But what is seen in the mirror is only the reflection of who I am, not my true being. The mirror of words and actions only partly manifests my being.

The words and acts that proceed from myself and are accomplished outside myself are dead things compared with the hidden life from which they spring. These acts are transient and superficial. They are quickly gone, even though their effects may persist for a little while. But the soul itself remains. Much depends on how the soul sees itself in the mirror of its own activity.

Thomas Merton, from the essay Being and Doing