Lift Your Spirit
IN THESE TIMES you cannot afford to meet the shock of life with emotion; you cannot hate, you cannot fear. The evil that you see has always been here; the ignorance is not for you to judge, nor should you respond to it even in the sense of so-called righteous indignation. We have tried to teach you that you must defend yourselves with the knowledge you have received from this way of life so that you will not be dragged down into an emotional maelstrom of dark imaginings. True creative sympathy does not throw one into the darkness of another’s life. Stand in the light that has been revealed to you by your communion with him who said, “My joy I give unto thee,” and by so doing help to illuminate the one in need. Divine wisdom is the antithesis of violence and despair; therefore if you have tendencies to strain and boil, to daydream, to think black in deep negations, you but add to the ignorance and are enslaved by it.
What holds the race back but fear thoughts— greed thoughts, self-thoughts, which are of the race? . . . this strange subtle pride of race! They take so many shapes; that is why one must be forever vigilant, forever remembering, forever holding oneself to the center and letting the Indwelling Spirit take possession, that it may fill your life to the uttermost with the realization that this infinite presence of the Spirit is actually present, is the actual stuff of love and peace and power. And when you find yourselves pressed hard say, “I will not take in, I will give out; I will not dwell in darkness, light shall be my life. It will cleanse me and I shall go forth forgiving all things, knowing that this love will resolve all things and my way will be made straight, and I shall knock and it shall be opened unto me, and I shall find and receive.” Keep awake in the victory of the Spirit; pour out thanksgiving before there is a sign of victory; thank the Father for the event before it happens; cleanse your hearts of all prejudices and the impotent rage against groups, enemies, and nationalities, and all the hot emotions the boil in the hell of personality.
Keep rather in that secret place where emotion is transmuted, and the human spirit is lifted by the swift transmutation. A time will come when by your steadfast voluntary discipline of the pressures of actualities and the realities of your outer world you will be aware of the involuntary transmutation which comes quietly as a reward for your intent and desire . . . your desire above all others to know him in your everyday world, to know eternal life now. Fight on brave ones, and cast off the heavy vestments with despair in their folds! Put on the garments of immortality; be worthy, keep yourselves in freedom; be stern with no one but yourselves, and do not go this way from a sense of duty, but for the fulfillment of joy!
“An interior man will make more impressions on hearts
by a single word animated by the spirit of God,
than another by a whole discourse which has cost him
much labor and in which he has exhausted all his power of reasoning.”
—Louis Lallement, 1587 – 1635
Restated from Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood, 1948
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The hope of a better nation— a better world—
is bound up in the progress and enlightenment of the individual.
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