Recall the kind of feeling you have when you succeed, when you have made it, when you get to the top, when you win a game or an argument.And contrast it with the kind of feeling you get when you really enjoy the job you are doing, you are absorbed in, the action you are currently engaged in. . . .Notice the qualitative difference between the worldly feeling and the soul feeling.. . .Now attempt to understand the true nature of worldly feelings—of self-promotion, self-glorification.They are not natural, they were invented by your society and your culture to make you productive and to make you controllable.These feelings do not produce the nourishment and happiness that is produced when one contemplates nature or enjoys the company of one's friends or one's work.They were meant to produce thrills, excitement—and emptiness.
If we have been called to unity, the way to God, for us, passes through our neighbor. It is through this passage, which may sometimes be as dim and dark as a tunnel, that one comes to the light. This is the mysterious path God invites us to take. Each day there are opportunities to perfect this art, a tiring one at times and exhausting, but always wonderful too, vital and fertile, the art of "making ourselves one" with other people: the art of loving.