We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness. You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. Think of yourself as a body in a soul. You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while.
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. Each time that one surrenders to one’s vanities, each time that one thinks and lives for the sake of ‘appearing,’ one betrays. Love of bustle is not industry – it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind. As a person simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude.
Fear is the enemy of love and faith and it robs us of our sleep and our sunrise and makes us treacherous and venal and fills our glands with toxins and effaces our identity and gives flight to any vestige of self-respect. We generate fears while we sit. We overcome them by action. When you dare to be powerful, to use your strength in the service of your vision, then it becomes less and less important whether you are afraid.
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. Depression is not a dysfunction; it is a functioning of the soul that asks you to turn inward. How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away? The one who does not seek God in suffering is avoiding the only true path to Him.
The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. Remember there’s a way out that is as certain as the rising of the sun. The creator has planted within every creature a fragment of himself, a spark, a spirit of the same nature as himself and, thanks to this spirit, every creature can become a creator. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. God creates out of nothing. But He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.
Forgiveness is letting go of the idea that things could have been different. When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive to breathe, think, enjoy, and love. Breathing isn’t just an involuntary act; it’s a precious privilege. You’re alive, that’s a victory in itself. Deliberately compel yourself to reject all suffering, all sorrow, all depression, all morbidness, all inferiority, all aches and pains. You are saying nothing is true but the great and the good and the beautiful, only these will you add unto yourself.
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. You do not find the happy life. You make it. The details are not the details. They make the design. Be like the flower, turn your face to the sun. Burn until the flame turns blue. Gamble everything for Love. For the Great Reality.
Song Accompaniment: Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up
2024 Accompaniments Playlist – Apple Music
2024 Accompaniments Playlist – Spotify
Artwork: The Art of Seth
Read next:
Ego vs. Spirit: How to Win the Inner Battle for Your Life’s Direction
Endnotes are in the same order as the sentences they refer to:
Blog Title: “Man is condemned to be free.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
[i] Thich Nhat Hanh. 1991. Peace Is Every Step. New York: Bantam Books.
[ii] Lewis, C.S. 1942. The Screwtape Letters. London: Geoffrey Bles.)
[iii] Lewis, C.S. 1942. The Screwtape Letters. London: Geoffrey Bles.)
[iv] Lewis, C.S. 1942. The Screwtape Letters. London: Geoffrey Bles.)
[v] Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
[vi] Tolle, Eckhart. 1997. The Power of Now. Novato: New World Library.
[vii] E. E. Cummings, A Miscellany (New York: Argophile Press, 1958), 93.
[viii] Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, edited by David Rieff (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 138.
[ix] Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, “Letter 3: On True and False Friendship,” Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, Penguin Classics, 1969.
[x] Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854), Chapter 2: “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.
[xi] James Lee Burke, Creole Belle, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
[xii] Link, Henry C. 1937. The Return to Religion. New York: Macmillan.
[xiii] Link, Henry C. 1937. The Return to Religion. New York: Macmillan.
[xiv] Lorde, Audre. 1988. A Burst of Light: Essays. Ithaca: Firebrand Books.
[xv] Merton, Thomas. 1955. No Man Is an Island. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company.
[xvi] Hillman, James. 1996. The Soul’s Code. New York: Random House.
[xvii] James Lee Burke, Swan Peak (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008)
[xviii] Merton, Thomas. 1948. The Seven Storey Mountain. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company.
[xix] Fredrik Backman, Beartown (New York: Atria Books, 2017)
[xx] Emmet Fox, Around the Year with Emmet Fox: A Book of Daily Readings, HarperOne, 1951.
[xxi] Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, The Seeds of Happiness (Fréjus, France: Prosveta, 1989).
[xxii] Sun Tzu, The Art of War, translated by Lionel Giles, Barnes & Noble, 2003.
[xxiii] Kierkegaard, Søren. 1847. Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel.
[xxiv] Kierkegaard, Søren. 1847. Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel.
[xxv] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 280.
[xxvi] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays (New York: Modern Library, 2002), Book 5, Section 1.
[xxvii] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays (New York: Modern Library, 2002), Book 5, Section 1.
[xxviii] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays (New York: Modern Library, 2002), Book 5, Section 1
[xxix] Uell Stanley Anderson, Three Magic Words (Los Angeles, CA: DeVorss & Company, 1954), 60.
[xxx] Uell Stanley Anderson, Three Magic Words (Los Angeles, CA: DeVorss & Company, 1954), 60.
[xxxi] Gibran, Khalil. 1923. The Prophet. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
[xxxii] Kimball, Camilla E. 1997. The Eternal Life. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book.
[xxxiii] Kimball, Camilla E. 1997. The Eternal Life. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book.
[xxxiv] “Eames: The Architect and the Painter,” directed by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey, 2011.
[xxxv] “Eames: The Architect and the Painter,” directed by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey, 2011.
[xxxvi] Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.
[xxxvii] The Paper Kites, “Til the Flame Turns Blue,” On the Corner Where You Live, Wonderlick Entertainment, 2023.
[xxxviii] Rumi, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).