Part 7

Every man is forced to exist or die. Then why not make your choice where you will live best; for contentment, not momentary pleasure with sorrow, despair and regrets?

One can choose his own flower pot to grow in, after leaving nature's great Hot-house: even to choosing those who may admire you and love you for just what you are.

I dare not tell you of what is really ahead of you.
If you knew you would stretch out your arms toward the blue sky with tears in your eyes, and a longing in your heart to fly, to soar upward because of the distant beauty that is yours.
I have glimpsed that land of beauty.
And have been enamored by its magic.
But at times I dare not linger there, for fear of neglecting objectiveness.

If you do not labor for a purpose, you place no value on it.
For a thing, no matter how precious, is of no value unless you place there yourself by what you would do to obtain it.
If you find and win the love of a woman, with but little effort,
You will lose her to another, as easily as you won her.
But if it required half a lifetime, as in climbing a mountain to its height,
You will know the journey down, though more pleasant,
Has as many miles of road as going up.
So measure your value by what is required to obtain it.

Never profess to do more than you can.
The effort to maintain your assertion
Will be greater than the reward
From your deception.
With the same amount of energy
You could do better things
In your own way
The things that are yours to do.

When disputing over an opinion
Why not give your own
To match that of your opponent,
Rather than to produce none,
And only destroy his.
Why not give something in return
As a friendly bargain,
Instead of giving birth
To disappointed enemies.

You say you were never lost? But have you shown the way to others? If not, then you ARE lost.

How could we exist,
Were it not for a purpose?
If we do not know that purpose
It should be our purpose to seek it,
Slowly but surely.

Every man when lost
Must find himself
Or he will dispute
That he was ever lost
If someone else
Points out the right road.

Before considering being converted or initiated,
Do not accept the laws blindly.
You may buy that which you cannot support;
Obligate yourself to that which you cannot fulfill,
Breaking a law assumed without the sanction of your willingness and understanding,
Changing your entire makeup to obey the law of another;
Sinning for having broken a promise,
Assuming a law which will affect even your conscience,
Because that law seems to be an inspiration
Until you once find yourself in mental nakedness
Then you will become its enemy
Instead of a tolerant human being.
Always be convinced logically and practically,
So there will be no residue of a soap bubble left to shame you.
How many martyrs have died in the past,
Convinced they died for a sacred Cause.
But we today call them fanatics, spies, traitors, revolutionists, "ahead of their times",
But nevertheless they were truly martyrs
Worthy of a crown and of their convictions.
Be sure your heart is with your mind,
Before you accept in haste
Anything that you intend to graft on your tree of life, So when it bears fruit,
That branch will not hold fruit that will shame your own;
Though your own may be lemons (so essential to life),
And your adopted branch peaches
God made nothing useless
Not even the tail of a pig.

Nature has created our understanding
As the embryo of a chick,
Within an opaque shell.
So it might not, in its development
And involuntary growth,
Desire those things
Outside its own world.
This shell is opaque and brittle,
Until, by wisdom and knowing,
It becomes transparent.
Then knowledge removes
The superstitious potash, –
Brittleness, –
And makes it transparent,
And flexible, – to shape itself
According to its will and emotions.
Thus it is with ourselves.
As we evolve from ignorance and rigidity
Were we to see into the beyond,
We could not carry out the creation
Of our primitive worlds.
As we grow,
We tear away the veils,
Shaping ourselves according to the niche
We are destined to fill.
And only by degrees do we become aware
Of why our creation.
The purpose of all things we question.
But the Great Architect
Has placed life's answer
In every loving form.
And we could if we would,
Read the messages from the Father
To His self-Creating Sons.

Some men become famously wealthy,
Insisting on being in debt.

The scrubbing brush to a working woman
Is as important as the pen
To the President of the United States.
Never ridicule the flimsy bridge
You have just passed over.
You may have to use it
On your return trip.

If environments cannot be altered, it is well to have a few apparent calamities so that under the law of relativity, one is made to give more value to that which has become commonplace by familiarity.

The greatest sorrow and tragedy in life
Comes to those who seek happiness at the end of the trail
Rather than in the making of the trail.

If you wish to hold
What you think is yours,
Be sure that it is paid for.
And by your own coin.
Remembering, incidentally,
That each penny represents its value in deeds.
Or your possession is but a debt.

If you interest yourself in the roots of a rose, the blossom will be interested in you.

He who wins friends by frankness
Holds them without flattery.

If personality is good salesmanship,
Then the salesman
Must have sold himself the facts
Enough to believe them absolutely
To convince the buyer of the facts.
Then why not convince teachers and missionaries
To convince themselves first,
Before trying to convince others
Of that which they themselves have certain doubts
At least enough so to be sold by those
Who do believe, even though they may be mistaken.
At least there will be some
Who will be entirely convinced of facts
By the mistakes made by him
Who did believe, and still was mistaken.
Be sure you outlive your apprenticeship
Before assuming mastership
Or some pupil
May hail you as an equal
To your embarrassment among masters.

Always be yourself.
Then you'll know what you are,
And what you can be.

If you wish the world to follow you,
Keep on walking alone without looking back.
And when you have reached your goal
A multitude will be at your back.

Miracles are not so convincing as the fruits of them.
Christ did not convince the leaders of His time,
But the fruits of His work convinced the world.

Prevent rather than cure
By studying not only that which you're thinking with
But the material you have with which to shape that which does your thinking.
For your state of mind can be what you will it to be
By the right purpose in willing.

Learn how to forget what you should, or will,
As well as to remember that which again may be born to you beneficially,
So as to correct that mistake you ought to forget in its correction.

When you ridicule another,
You have been blinded by the same vice in a new form
As that of which you accuse your victim.
Just as he fails to understand his own knowledge of wisdom,
Or he whose physical strength makes him arrogant
Only to be humiliated by one who may be weak but not aware of it.

How many people fear to lose their good living
By leaving their hypocrisy behind?
Who advocates truth so that nobody may question his sincerity
Nor expose him to ridicule because of lack of truth?

Our bad habits make us prisoners, and our false pride is the jailer that keeps us there.

You are what you are; but can be what you will.

We always lose sight of what we've got, in our efforts to obtain what we haven't got.

When adversity comes, it is a sign that we are given a test, or given work to do. The Masters test only those whom they feel to be worthwhile, so as to be sure of results.

If you have found some truth,
Don't get over-excited and brag about it,
Or you may be checked up
To prove how ignorant you have been.
Rather add it to your stock of knowledge
For it is then already accepted,
And your word is law,
For that is truth.

Thoughts are bound to escape that may be injurious,
Your tongue of ill-reproof is evidence of that.
Think twice, for and against,
Before you think of thoughts you intend to express.

Do well, and conquer your work,
However menial,
And you will have done
What Christ did,
When He died upon the Cross.
And for the same purpose.

Sit down and meditate: from within, a new world shall be born, in place of what you are forced to accept.

If you lose yourself in serving men, God will find you to be served.

If you can't think it out, you can't act it out.

Each Individual must keep his balance if he wishes to succeed and be happy.
And always under some good discipline
To adopt a personal mental control governed by logic, reason and justice.

When the time comes that the public may know and realize what supposedly great men think about instead of what they talk about, you will behold a welcome miracle in the adjustment of man-made laws as influenced by God-made laws.

Don't think for a moment
That you can always get away
With those things that you try to prevent others getting away with.

Misfortune only follows when we starve our intuition,
Or follow the dictates of another into slavery.

A person who does not improve things is not improving himself.

Did you ever try to change your mind when angry?
Try it, and see what you are made of.
Don't lock up your reason when it is needed more.
When you start in to lick a man,
Notice if it is the same man you hit with your first blow.

As you climb the mountain to success, be sure to look down periodically, as you do upward.
It will make you more cautious and sure of your worthiness.
It will show you from what rank you came, and to what depths you may fall.

Many a man has been forced to great deeds, who capitalizes unearned reward,
While many a worthy martyr died in obscurity
To have his name and deeds resurrected in the selfish display of glory
That might have saved him to us in untold wisdom.
Far rather sustain life and receive living food for knowledge
Than only his dead memory of words, with no reply.
The world looks big to little men.
The world is small to big men.

Many an educated man becomes a fool through a leaky tongue.
Many an ocean liner sinks by a slow leak because too insignificant to notice such magnitude.
Still, a drop of kerosene in five gallons of milk manifests itself.
Let him who is always so ready to dispute the things of the spirit
Deny the existence of the evaporated brandy that he ran through his leaky still,
And when evaporated into the air
Ask him where it is.
Or have him color a glass full of alcohol;
And later when he finds the glass empty, and only the color remaining,
Ask him where it is
And if it is not a fact that had he placed his glass full of alcohol in an air-tight room,
He would have found it condensed on the floor,
To prove that the thing he could not see after it left the glass, was still there.
Likewise with spiritual things.

 

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