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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.
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.
By your own thoughts you make or mar your life, your world, your universe, As you build within by the power of thought, so will your outward life and circumstances shape themselves accordingly.
make or mar your
Do you wish for kindness? Be kind. Do you ask for truth? Be true. What you give of yourself you find; Your world is a reflex of you.
To be patient under all circumstances, and to accept all conditions as necessary factors in your training, is to rise superior to all painful conditions, and to overcome them with an overcoming which is sure, and which leaves no fear of their return, for by the power of obedience to law they are utterly slain.
You may bring about that improved condition in your outward life which you desire, if you will unswervingly resolve to improve your inner life.
you. There is no practice more degrading, debasing, and soul-destroying than that of self-pity.
But the man who is outwardly poor, yet rich in virtue, is truly rich, and, in the midst of all his poverty he is surely traveling towards prosperity; and abounding joy and bliss await his coming. If you would become truly and permanently prosperous, you must first become virtuous.
You say you desire wealth, not for your own sake, but in order to do good with it, and to bless others.
No matter how poor you are, there is room for self-sacrifice, for did not the widow put her all into the treasury?
Your true wealth is your stock of virtue, and your true power the uses to which you put it. Rectify your heart, and you will rectify your life. Lust, hatred, anger, vanity, pride, covetousness, self-indulgence, self-seeking, obstinacy,- all these are poverty and weakness; whereas love, purity, gentleness, meekness, compassion, generosity, self- forgetfulness, and self-renunciation,- all these are wealth and power.
It matters not that by the unfailing Law, there are past thoughts and acts to work out and to atone for, as, by the same law, we are setting in motion, during every moment of our life, fresh thoughts and acts, and we have the power to make them good or ill. Nor does it follow that if a man (reaping what he has sown) must lose money or forfeit position, that he must also lose his fortitude or forfeit his uprightness, and it is in these that his wealth and power and happiness are to be found.
The dark’ning sorrow veils a Star That waits to shine with gladsome light; Hell waits on heaven; and after night Comes golden glory from afar.
All the wisdom possible to man on this material earth is to be found only in complete self-mastery, and the command, “Love your enemies,” resolves itself into an exhortation to enter here and now, into the possession of that sublime wisdom by taking hold of, mastering and transmuting, those mind forces to which man is now slavishly subject, and by which he is helplessly borne, like a straw on the stream, upon the currents of selfishness.
All men’s accomplishments were first wrought out in thought, and then objectivized.
Where there is fear, worry, anxiety, doubt, trouble, chagrin, or disappointment, there is ignorance and lack of faith.
become a master, and there is only one way by which they can be overcome, and that is by steady and persistent growth in inward knowledge.
The intelligent practice of self-control, quickly leads to a knowledge of one’s interior thought-forces, and, later on, to the acquisition of that power by which they are rightly employed and directed.
Faith and purpose constitute the motive- power of life.
The hour of calmness is the hour of illumination and correct judgment.
The difference between a savior and a sinner is this, that the one has a perfect control of all the forces within him; the other is dominated and controlled by them.
As you rise above the lower, debilitating, and destructive thought-forces, you will come in contact with the positive, strengthening, and up-building currents generated by strong, pure, and noble minds, your happiness will be immeasurably intensified, and you will begin to realize the joy, strength, and power, which are born only of self-mastery.
Fix your mind upon the Highest, And the Highest you shall be.
With the accumulating years, and an ever-increasing intimacy with the so-called “realities” of life, our beautiful fairy-world became obliterated, and its wonderful inhabitants were relegated, in the archives of memory, to the shadowy and unreal. And we thought we were wise and strong in thus leaving for ever the land of childish dreams, but as we re-become little children in the wondrous world of wisdom, we shall return again to the inspiring dreams of childhood and find that they are, after all, realities.
With the accumulating years, and an ever-increasing intimacy with the so-called “realities” of life, our beautiful fairy-world became obliterated, and its wonderful inhabitants were relegated, in the archives of memory, to the shadowy and unreal. And we thought we were wise and strong in thus leaving for ever the land of childish dreams, but as we re-become little children in the wondrous world of wisdom, we shall return again to the inspiring dreams of childhood and find that they are, after all, realities.
There is no protection to compare with goodness, and by “goodness” I do not mean a mere outward conformity to the rules of morality; I mean pure thought, noble aspiration, unselfish love, and freedom from vainglory.
There is no evil in the universe but has its root and origin in the mind, and sin, sickness, sorrow, and affliction do not, in reality, belong to the universal order, are not inherent in the nature of things, but are the direct outcome of our ignorance of the right relations of things.
Put away your jealousies, your suspicions, your worries, your hatreds, your selfish indulgences, and you will put away your dyspepsia, your biliousness, your nervousness and aching joints.
True health and true success go together, for they are inseparably intertwined in the thought-realm.
Strive, O reader! to acquire, above everything, the priceless possession of this dauntless faith, for it is the talisman of happiness, of success, of peace, of power, of all that makes life great and superior to suffering.
If you will become possessed of this faith you will not need to trouble about your success or failure, and success will come.
all the blessedness that has entered into this woman’s life is the direct outcome of the inward state of blessedness which she has, throughout life, been cultivating and training toward perfection.
Let your heart grow large and loving and unselfish, and great and lasting will be your influence and success, even though you make little money.
Passion is not power; it is the abuse of power, the dispersion of power.
Self-purified, health will be yours; faith-protected, success will be yours; self-governed, power will be yours, and all that you do will prosper, for, ceasing to be a disjointed unit, self-enslaved, you will be in harmony with the Great Law, working no longer against, but with, the Universal Life, the Eternal Good.
Nothing is mine to claim or to command, But all is mine to know and understand.
It is this belief, rooted in the soil of ignorance, and continually watered by selfish cravings, that is the cause of all the misery in the world.
When you are willing to admit that all your unhappiness is the result of your own selfishness you will not be far from the gates of Paradise; but so long as you are convinced that it is the selfishness of others that is robbing you of joy, so long will you remain a prisoner in your self-created purgatory.
In so far as you succeed in losing yourself in the service of others, in that measure will happiness come to you, and you will reap a harvest of bliss.
“He that seeketh his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall find it.”
Men and women are rushing hither and thither in the blind search for happiness, and cannot find it; nor ever will until they recognize that happiness is already within them and round about them, filling the universe, and that they, in their selfish searching are shutting themselves out from it. I followed happiness to make
Forget yourself entirely in the sorrows of others and in ministering to others, and divine happiness will emancipate you from all sorrow and suffering.
“Taking the first step with a good thought, the second with a good word, and the third with a good deed, I entered Paradise.” And you also may enter into Paradise by pursuing the same course. It is not beyond, it is here. It is realized only by the unselfish.
He is poor who is dissatisfied; he is rich who is contented with what he has, and he is richer who is generous with what he has.
To possess those inward qualities which constitute goodness is to be armored against all the powers of evil, and to be doubly protected in every time of trial; and to build’ oneself up in those qualities is to build up a success which cannot be shaken, and to enter into a prosperity which will endure forever.
"Five Great Meditations":-- "The first meditation is the meditation of love, in which you so adjust your heart that you long for the weal and welfare of all beings, including the happiness of your enemies. "The second meditation is the meditation of pity, in which you think of all beings in distress, vividly representing in your imagination their sorrows and anxieties so as to arouse a deep compassion for them in your soul. "The third meditation is the meditation of joy, in which you think of the prosperity of others, and rejoice with their rejoicings. "The fourth meditation is the meditation
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There is one quality which pre-eminently distinguishes the man of Truth from the man of self, and that is humility. To be not only free from vanity, stubbornness and egotism, but to regard one’s own opinions as of no value, this indeed is true humility.
Reader, do you seek to realize the birth into Truth? There is only one way: Let self die. All those lusts, appetites, desires, opinions, limited conceptions and prejudices to which you have hitherto so tenaciously clung, let them fall from you.
To be in the world and yet not of the world is the highest perfection, the most blessed peace, is to achieve the greatest victory.
No pain like passion, no deceit like sense; Enter the Path; far hath he gone whose foot Treads down one fond offense."
