On Giving Yourself Up

Real self-conquest is the conquest of ourselves not by ourselves but by the Holy Spirit. Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess. More precisely--we have to have enough mastery of ourselves to renounce our own will into the hands of Christ--so that He may conquer what we cannot reach by our own efforts.

--Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, p. 31.