Friday, July 27, 2012
James Allen: The Path to Prosperity
It is not sufficient to deny or ignore evil; it must be understood. It is not
enough to pray to God to remove the evil; you must find out why it is there, and
what lesson it has for you.
It is of no avail to fret and fume and chafe at the chains which bind you; you must know why and how you are bound. Therefore, reader, you must get outside yourself, and must begin to examine and understand yourself.
You must cease to be a disobedient child in the school of experience and must begin to learn, with humility and patience, the lessons that are set for your edification and ultimate perfection; for evil, when rightly understood, is found to be, not an unlimited power or principle in the universe, but a passing phase of human experience, and it therefore becomes a teacher to those who are willing to learn.
Evil is not an abstract some thing outside yourself; it is an experience in your own heart, and by patiently examining and rectifying your heart you will be gradually led into the discovery of the origin and nature of evil, which will necessarily be followed by its complete eradication.
All evil is corrective and remedial, and is therefore not permanent. It is rooted in ignorance, ignorance of the true nature and relation of things, and so long as we remain in that state of ignorance, we remain subject to evil. There is no evil in the universe which is not the result of ignorance, and which would not, if we were ready and willing to learn its lesson, lead us to higher wisdom, and then vanish away. But men remain in evil, and it does not pass away because men are not willing or prepared to learn the lesson which it came to teach them.
Know, then, that when the dark night of sorrow, pain, or misfortune settles down upon your soul, and you stumble along with weary and uncertain steps, that you are merely intercepting your own personal desires between yourself and the boundless light of joy and bliss, and the dark shadow that covers you is cast by none and nothing but yourself.
And just as the darkness without is but a negative shadow, an unreality which comes from nowhere, goes to nowhere, and has no abiding dwelling place, so the darkness within is equally a negative shadow passing over the evolving and Light-born soul.
"But," I fancy I hear someone say, "why pass through the darkness of evil at all?" Because, by ignorance, you have chosen to do so, and because, by doing so, you may understand both good and evil, and may the more appreciate the light by having passed through the darkness.
As evil is the direct outcome of ignorance, so, when the lessons of evil are fully learned, ignorance passes away, and wisdom takes its place. But as a disobedient child refuses to learn its lessons at school, so it is possible to refuse to learn the lessons of experience, and thus to remain in continual darkness, and to suffer continually recurring punishments in the form of disease, disappointment, and sorrow.
A man may shut himself up in a dark room, and deny that the light exists, but it is everywhere without, and darkness exists only in his own little room. So you may shut out the light of Truth, or you may begin to pull down the walls of prejudice, self-seeking and error which you have built around yourself, and so let in the glorious and omnipresent Light.
By earnest self-examination strive to realize, and not merely hold as a theory, that evil is a passing phase, a self-created shadow; that all your pains, sorrows and misfortunes have come to you by a process of undeviating and absolutely perfect law; have come to you because you deserve and require them, and that by first enduring, and then understanding them, you may be made stronger, wiser, nobler.
When you have fully entered into this realization, you will be in a position to mould your own circumstances, to transmute all evil into good and to weave, with a master hand, the fabric of your destiny.
The Morning cometh, lover of the Light;
Even now He gilds with gold the mountain's brow,
Dimly I see the path whereon even now
His shining feet are set toward the Night.
Darkness shall pass away, and all the things
That love the darkness, and that hate the Light
Shall disappear for ever with the Night:
Rejoice! for thus the speeding Herald sings.
-James Allen, The Path to Prosperity
It is of no avail to fret and fume and chafe at the chains which bind you; you must know why and how you are bound. Therefore, reader, you must get outside yourself, and must begin to examine and understand yourself.
You must cease to be a disobedient child in the school of experience and must begin to learn, with humility and patience, the lessons that are set for your edification and ultimate perfection; for evil, when rightly understood, is found to be, not an unlimited power or principle in the universe, but a passing phase of human experience, and it therefore becomes a teacher to those who are willing to learn.
Evil is not an abstract some thing outside yourself; it is an experience in your own heart, and by patiently examining and rectifying your heart you will be gradually led into the discovery of the origin and nature of evil, which will necessarily be followed by its complete eradication.
All evil is corrective and remedial, and is therefore not permanent. It is rooted in ignorance, ignorance of the true nature and relation of things, and so long as we remain in that state of ignorance, we remain subject to evil. There is no evil in the universe which is not the result of ignorance, and which would not, if we were ready and willing to learn its lesson, lead us to higher wisdom, and then vanish away. But men remain in evil, and it does not pass away because men are not willing or prepared to learn the lesson which it came to teach them.
Know, then, that when the dark night of sorrow, pain, or misfortune settles down upon your soul, and you stumble along with weary and uncertain steps, that you are merely intercepting your own personal desires between yourself and the boundless light of joy and bliss, and the dark shadow that covers you is cast by none and nothing but yourself.
And just as the darkness without is but a negative shadow, an unreality which comes from nowhere, goes to nowhere, and has no abiding dwelling place, so the darkness within is equally a negative shadow passing over the evolving and Light-born soul.
"But," I fancy I hear someone say, "why pass through the darkness of evil at all?" Because, by ignorance, you have chosen to do so, and because, by doing so, you may understand both good and evil, and may the more appreciate the light by having passed through the darkness.
As evil is the direct outcome of ignorance, so, when the lessons of evil are fully learned, ignorance passes away, and wisdom takes its place. But as a disobedient child refuses to learn its lessons at school, so it is possible to refuse to learn the lessons of experience, and thus to remain in continual darkness, and to suffer continually recurring punishments in the form of disease, disappointment, and sorrow.
A man may shut himself up in a dark room, and deny that the light exists, but it is everywhere without, and darkness exists only in his own little room. So you may shut out the light of Truth, or you may begin to pull down the walls of prejudice, self-seeking and error which you have built around yourself, and so let in the glorious and omnipresent Light.
By earnest self-examination strive to realize, and not merely hold as a theory, that evil is a passing phase, a self-created shadow; that all your pains, sorrows and misfortunes have come to you by a process of undeviating and absolutely perfect law; have come to you because you deserve and require them, and that by first enduring, and then understanding them, you may be made stronger, wiser, nobler.
When you have fully entered into this realization, you will be in a position to mould your own circumstances, to transmute all evil into good and to weave, with a master hand, the fabric of your destiny.
The Morning cometh, lover of the Light;
Even now He gilds with gold the mountain's brow,
Dimly I see the path whereon even now
His shining feet are set toward the Night.
Darkness shall pass away, and all the things
That love the darkness, and that hate the Light
Shall disappear for ever with the Night:
Rejoice! for thus the speeding Herald sings.
-James Allen, The Path to Prosperity
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Ernest Holmes: Creative Mind
The highest attitude of mind, from which all else springs, is one of perfect
calm and absolute trust in the Spirit. The one who can with perfect confidence
look into the future and with perfect ease of mind rest in the present, and who
never looks backward, but who has learned to be still in his own soul and wait
upon the Spirit, he is the one who will the most completely demonstrate the
supremacy of spiritual thought over all so-called material resistance. "Be still
and know that I Am God."
Do you wish to live in a perfect world peopled with friends who love you, surrounded by all that is beautiful and pleasing? Do you wish to have the good things of life? There is but one way and that way is as sure as that the sun shines. Forget all else and think only upon what you want. Control all thought that denies the real, and as the mist disappears before the sun so shall all adversity melt before the shining radiance of your own exalted thought.
Most people, through ignorance of the higher laws of their being, are suffering from the thoughts imposed upon them from a negative and doubtful world. We who are claiming the use of the greater law must emancipate ourselves from all sense of limitation. We are not to be governed by the outer confusion but by the inner realization. We are to judge life not from the way that things in the past have been done, but from the way that the Spirit does things.
-Ernest Holmes, Creative Mind
Do you wish to live in a perfect world peopled with friends who love you, surrounded by all that is beautiful and pleasing? Do you wish to have the good things of life? There is but one way and that way is as sure as that the sun shines. Forget all else and think only upon what you want. Control all thought that denies the real, and as the mist disappears before the sun so shall all adversity melt before the shining radiance of your own exalted thought.
Most people, through ignorance of the higher laws of their being, are suffering from the thoughts imposed upon them from a negative and doubtful world. We who are claiming the use of the greater law must emancipate ourselves from all sense of limitation. We are not to be governed by the outer confusion but by the inner realization. We are to judge life not from the way that things in the past have been done, but from the way that the Spirit does things.
-Ernest Holmes, Creative Mind
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Do Nothing: Siroj Sorajjakool
These stubborn feelings do not just go simply by realizing the illusory categories we use to define ourselves. Instead, the soul has to be caught up in the Way. The Way is that existential neutralization of the internalized negatives. The second negative is the power to stay in the darkness of the deep. It is the courage to remain within the discomfort one may feel, in the lack of spontaneity, in the pain of rejection. It is the sustaining power to rest under the ugly tree of jealousy, frustration, fear, and anxiety. Grace is the power that sustains, embraces, and holds a person within these negatives and through this act of embracing, redefines existential feelings, neutralizing them as neither “this” nor “that.”
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
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