... We whisper with caution any reference to ‘authentic Reality’, for the linguistic philosophers might tell us that ‘reality’ is nothing more than conformity to established genres and expectations. But in T. S. Eliot’s sense of reality, of that which human kind cannot bear very much, the shift from artificiality to reality is less about straight paths, more about waking up, learning to bear the beams of Love ...
-- William Shannon Thomas Merton's Dark Path
