ACQUIRE POWER THROUGH SELF DEVELOPMENT.

Romans 14:11King James Version (KJV)

¹¹ For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

King James Version (KJV)


It is the natural right of every human being to be happy to escape all the miseries of life. Happiness is the normal condition, as natural as the landscapes and the seasons. It is unnatural to suffer and it is only because of our ignorance that we do suffer. Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship of human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape every ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is unshadowed joy.

Why do we suffer in life? Because in the scheme of nature we are being forced forward in evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination that alone can light the way and enable us to move safely among the obstacles that lie before us. Usually we do not even see or suspect the presence of trouble until it suddenly leaps upon us like a concealed tiger. One day our family circle is complete and happy. A week later death has come and gone and joy is replaced with agony. Today we have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an enemy and we do not know why. A little while ago we had wealth and all material luxuries. There was a sudden change and now we have only poverty and misery and yet we seek in vain for a reason why this should be. There was a time when we had health and strength; but they have both departed and no trace of a reason appears. Aside from these greater tragedies of life innumerable things of lesser consequence continually bring to us little miseries and minor heartaches. We most earnestly desire to avoid them but we never see them until they strike us, until in the darkness of our ignorance we blunder upon them. The thing we lack is the spiritual illumination that will enable us to look far and wide, finding the hidden causes of human suffering and revealing the method by which they may be avoided; and if we can but reach illumination the evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably and swiftly. It is as though we must pass through a long, dark room filled with furniture promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be slow and painful and our bruises many. But if we could press a button that would turn on the electric light we could then make the same journey quickly and with perfect safety and comfort.

The old method of education was to store the mind with as many facts, or supposed facts, as could be accumulated and to give a certain exterior polish to the personality. The theory was that when a man was born he was a completed human being and that all that could be done for him was to load him up with information that would be used with more or less skill, according to the native ability he happened to be born with. The theosophical idea is that the physical man, and all that constitutes his life in the physical world, is but a very partial expression of the self; that in the ego of each there is practically unlimited power and wisdom; that these may be brought through into expression in the physical world as the physical body and its invisible counterparts, which together constitute the complex vehicle of the ego's manifestation, are evolved and adapted to the purpose; and that in exact proportion that conscious effort is given to such self-development will spiritual illumination be achieved and wisdom attained. Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled from within and the evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed of its suffering.

Why does death bring misery? Chiefly because it separates us from those we love. The only other reason why death brings grief or fear is  because we do not understand it and comprehend the part it plays in human evolution.  But the moment our ignorance gives way to comprehension such fear vanishes and a serene happiness takes its place.

Why do we have enemies from whose words or acts we suffer? Because in our limited physical consciousness we do not perceive the unity of all life and realize that our wrong thinking and doing must react upon us through other people a situation from which there is no possible escape except through ceasing to think evil and then patiently awaiting the time when the causes we have already generated are fully exhausted. When spiritual illumination comes, and we no longer stumble in the night of ignorance, the last enemy will disappear and we shall make no more forever.

Why do people suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blundering ignorance that makes their existence possible for us, and because we do not comprehend their meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude to assume toward them. Had we but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why they are necessary factors in their evolution, they would trouble us no longer. When nature's lesson is fully learned these mute teachers will vanish.

And so it is with all forms of suffering we experience. They are at once reactions from our ignorant blunderings and instructors that point out the better way. When we have comprehended the lessons they teach they are no longer necessary and disappear. It is not by the outward  acquirement of facts that men become wise and great. It is by developing the soul from within until it illuminates the brain with that flood of light called genius.

PREPARING FOR OLD AGE.

PREPARING FOR OLD AGE.

Socrates was once asked by a pupil, this question: "What kind of people shall we be when we reach Elysium?"

And the answer was this: "We shall be the same kind of people that we were here."

If there is a life after this, we are preparing for it now, just as I am today preparing for my life tomorrow.

What kind of a man shall I be tomorrow? Oh, about the same kind of a man that I am now. The kind of a man that I shall be next month depends upon the kind of a man that I have been this month.

If I am miserable today, it is not within the round of probabilities that I shall be supremely happy tomorrow. Heaven is a habit. And if we are going to Heaven we would better be getting used to it.

Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.

We are preparing all the time for old age. The two things that make old age beautiful are resignation and a just consideration for the rights of others.

In the play of Ivan the Terrible, the interest centers around one man, the Czar Ivan. If anybody but Richard Mansfield played the part, there would be nothing in it. We simply get a glimpse into the life of a tyrant who has run the full gamut of goosedom, grumpiness, selfishness and grouch. Incidentally this man had the power to put other men to death, and this he does and has done as his whim and temper might dictate. He has been vindictive, cruel, quarrelsome, tyrannical and terrible. Now that he feels the approach of death, he would make his peace with God. But he has delayed that matter too long. He didn't realize in youth and middle life that he was then preparing for old age.

Man is the result of cause and effect, and the causes are to a degree in our hands. Life is a fluid, and well has it been called the stream of life we are going, flowing somewhere. Strip Ivan of his robes and crown, and he might be an old farmer and live in Ebenezer. Every town and village has its Ivan. To be an Ivan, just turn your temper loose and practise cruelty on any person or thing within your reach, and the result will be a sure preparation for a querulous, quarrelsome, pickety, snipity, fussy and foolish old age, accented with many outbursts of wrath that are terrible in their futility and ineffectiveness.

Babyhood has no monopoly on the tantrum. The characters of King Lear and Ivan the Terrible have much in common. One might almost believe that the writer of Ivan had felt the incompleteness of Lear, and had seen the absurdity of making a melodramatic bid for sympathy in behalf of this old man thrust out by his daughters.

Lear, the troublesome, Lear to whose limber tongue there was constantly leaping words unprintable and names of tar, deserves no soft pity at our hands. All his life he had been training his three daughters for exactly the treatment he was to receive. All his life Lear had been lubricating the chute that was to give him a quick ride out into that black midnight storm.

"Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child," he cries.

There is something quite as bad as a thankless child, and that is a thankless parent an irate, irascible parent who possesses an underground vocabulary and a disposition to use it.

The false note in Lear lies in giving to him a daughter like Cordelia. Tolstoy and Mansfield ring true, and Ivan the Terrible is what he is without apology, excuse or explanation. Take it or leave it if you do not like plays of this kind, go to see Vaudeville.

Mansfield's Ivan is terrible. The Czar is not old in years not over seventy but you can see that Death is sniffing close upon his track. Ivan has lost the power of repose. He cannot listen, weigh and decide he has no thought or consideration for any man or thing this is his habit of life. His bony hands are never still the fingers open and shut, and pick at things eternally. He fumbles the cross on his breast, adjusts his jewels, scratches his cosmos, plays the devil's tattoo, gets up nervously and looks behind the throne, holds his breath to listen. When people address him, he damns them savagely if they kneel, and if they stand upright he accuses them of lack of respect. He asks that he be relieved from the cares of state, and then trembles for fear his people will take him at his word. When asked to remain ruler of Russia he proceeds to curse his councilors and accuses them of loading him with burdens that they themselves would not endeavor to bear.

He is a victim of amor senilis, and right here if Mansfield took one step more his realism would be appalling, but he stops in time and suggests what he dares not express. This tottering, doddering, slobbering, sniffling old man is in love he is about to wed a young, beautiful girl. He selects jewels for her he makes remarks about what would become her beauty, jeers and laughs in cracked falsetto. In the animality of youth there is something pleasing it is natural but the vices of an old man, when they have become only mental, are most revolting.

The people about Ivan are in mortal terror of him, for he is still the absolute monarch he has the power to promote or disgrace, to take their lives or let them go free. They laugh when he laughs, cry when he does, and watch his fleeting moods with thumping hearts.

He is intensely religious and affects the robe and cowl of a priest. Around his neck hangs the crucifix. His fear is that he will die with no opportunity of confession and absolution. He prays to High Heaven every moment, kisses the cross, and his toothless old mouth interjects prayers to God and curses on man in the same breath.

If any one is talking to him he looks the other way, slips down until his shoulders occupy the throne, scratches his leg, and keeps up a running comment of insult "Aye," "Oh," "Of course," "Certainly," "Ugh," "Listen to him now!" There is a comedy side to all this which relieves the tragedy and keeps the play from becoming disgusting.

Glimpses of Ivan's past are given in his jerky confessions he is the most miserable and unhappy of men, and you behold that he is reaping as he has sown.

All his life he has been preparing for this. Each day has been a preparation for the next. Ivan dies in a fit of wrath, hurling curses on his family and court dies in a fit of wrath into which he has been purposely taunted by a man who knows that the outburst is certain to kill the weakened monarch.

Where does Ivan the Terrible go when Death closes his eyes?

I know not. But this I believe: No confessional can absolve him no priest benefit him no God forgive him. He has damned himself, and he began the work in youth. He was getting ready all his life for this old age, and this old age was getting ready for the fifth act.

The playwright does not say so, Mansfield does not say so, but this is the lesson: Hate is a poison wrath is a toxin sensuality leads to death clutching selfishness is a lighting of the fires of hell. It is all a preparation cause and effect.

If you are ever absolved, you must absolve yourself, for no one else can. And the sooner you begin, the better.

We often hear of the beauties of old age, but the only old age that is beautiful is the one the man has long been preparing for by living a beautiful life. Every one of us are right now preparing for old age.

There may be a substitute somewhere in the world for Good Nature, but I do not know where it can be found.

The secret of salvation is this: Keep Sweet.

CHANGE (principals)

Everyone seems to be looking for the “quick fix”, but we must operate from our belief systems and from deep values that assure us that in the long run the principals we use are absolutely the best policy.

Here are some principals to work on to help you figure out where you want to go and what you want to achieve and how to develop a method to get there;

1.Clearly Define you goals;

2.Develop an unshakable desire to achieve those goals;

3.Take action in the face of fear to make your goals become reality;

4.Know yourself, believe in yourself, forgive yourself for past mistakes heal and move forward;

5.When negative things and thoughts happen use logic and patient to counteract it;

 

6.Save as much as possible even in small portions and amounts;

7.Use common sense, keep it short and simple, talk less and do more;

8.Try new things;

9.Develop a pleasing personality;

10.Master all the details;

11.be persistent no matter how slowly you may have to move at first;

12;Do not be scared to fail, but remember failure is not a option;