Meditation's Effect

Merton, Thomas. _New Seeds of Contemplation_. New Directions Publishing
Co.
1961, p. 217-218.

"Meditation is a twofold discipline that has a twofold
function. First it is supposed to give you sufficient control over your
mind and memory and will to enable you to recollect yourself and withdraw
from exterior things and the business and activities and thoughts and concerns of
temporal existence, and second - this is the real end of meditation - it
teaches you how to become aware of the presence of God; and most of all it
aims at bringing you to a state of almost constant loving attention to God,
and dependence on Him. The real purpose of meditation is this: to teach a
manhow to work himself free of created things and temporal concerns, in whichhe
finds only confusion and sorrow, and enter into a conscious and loving
contact with God in which he is disposed to receive from God the help he
knows he needs so badly, and to pay to God the praise and honor
and thanksgiving and love which it has now become his joy to give."