One’s capacity to face the dark side of one’s personality increases in direct proportion as one’s trust in God develops, and even more when one experiences oneself as loved by God. All the defenses disintegrate in the presence of knowing one is loved by God.

All you have to do is stop being who you think you are, and you couldn’t be more delightful. Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the uniqueness that God has created. You don’t have to create the beauty. You’ve got the beauty. You don’t have to create the freedom, you’ve got it. You don’t have to create the image of God in you, you have it. You don’t have to win over God’s love, you have more than you know what to do with. You don’t have to become more beautiful because nothing could be more beautiful than your own particular uniqueness.

Thomas Keating, OCSO