Merton on listening to our subconscious (or not)

I do not say that we should try, without training or experience, to explore our own subconscious depths. But we ought to at least to admit that they exist, and that they are important, and we ought to have the humility to admit we do not know all about ourselves, that we are not experts at running our own lives. We ought to stop taking our conscious plans and decision with such infinite seriousness. It may well be that we are not the martyrs or the mystics or the apostles or the leaders or the lovers of God that we imagine ourselves to be.

-Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, Ch.3 Sec. 8