CHAPTER 1. THE POWER OF MEDITATION. Spiritual meditation is the pathway to divinity. It is the mystic latter which reaches from earth to heaven, from error to truth, from pain to peace. Every saint has climbed it, every sinner must sooner or later come to it, and every weary pilgrim that turns his back upon self and the world, and sets his face resolutely toward the Father's home, must plant his feet upon its golden rounds. Without its age you cannot grow into the divine state, the divine likeness, the divine peace, and the faithless glories and unpolluting joys of truth will remain hidden from you. Meditation is the intense dwelling, in thought, upon an idea or theme, with the object of thoroughly comprehending it, and whatsoever you constantly meditate upon you will not only come to understand, but will grow more and more into its likeness, for it will become incorporated into your very being, will become, in fact, your very self. If therefore you constantly dwell upon that which is selfish and debasing, you will ultimately become selfish and debased.  Tell me what that is upon which you most frequently and intensely think, that to which, in your silent hours, your soul most naturally turns, and I will tell you to what place of pain or peace you are traveling, and whether you are growing into the likeness of the divine or the bestial. There is an unavoidable tendency to become, literally, the embodiment of that quality upon which one most constantly thinks. Let therefore the object of your meditation be above and not below, so that every time you revert to it in thought you will be lifted up. Let it be pure and unmixed with any selfish element, so shall your heart become purified and drawn nearer to truth and not defiled and dragged more hopelessly into error. Meditation, in the spiritual sense, in which I am now using it, is the secret of all growth in spiritual life and knowledge. Every prophet, sage and savior, became such by the power of meditation. Buddha meditated upon the truth until he could say, I am the truth. Jesus brooded upon the divine immanisance until at last he could declare, I am my father or one. Meditation centered upon divine realities is the very essence and soul of prayer. It is the silent reaching of the soul toward the eternal. Mere petitionary prayer, without meditation, is a body without a soul, and is powerless to lift the mind and heart above sin and affliction. If you are daily praying for wisdom, for peace, for loft your purity and a fuller realization of truth, and that for which you pray is still far from you, it means that you are praying for one thing while living out in thought and act another. If you will cease from such waywardness, taking your mind off those things the selfish clinging to, which debars you from the possession of the stainless realities for which you pray. If you will no longer ask God to grant you that which you do not deserve, or to bestow upon you that love and compassion which you refuse to bestow upon others, but will commence to think and act in the spirit of truth, you will day by day be growing into those realities so that ultimately you will become one with them. He who would secure any worldly advantage must be willing to work vigorously for it, and he would be foolish indeed who waited with folded hands expected it to come to him for the mere asking. Do not then vainly imagine that you can obtain the heavenly possessions without making an effort. Only when you commence to work earnestly in the kingdom of truth will you be allowed to partake of the bread of life, and when you have, by patient and uncomplaining effort, earn the spiritual wages for which you ask, they will not be withheld from you. If you really seek truth and not merely your own gratification, if you love it above all worldly pleasures and gains, more even than happiness itself, you will be willing to make the effort necessary for its achievement. If you would be freed from sin and sorrow, if you would taste of that spotless purity for which you sigh and pray, if you would realize wisdom and knowledge and would enter into the possession of profound and abiding peace, come now and enter the path of meditation and let the supreme object of your meditation be truth. At the outset, meditation must be distinguished from idle reverie. There is nothing dreamy and unpractical about it. It is a process of searching and uncompromising thought which allows nothing to remain but the simple and naked truth. Thus meditating you will no longer strive to build yourself up in your prejudices, but forgetting self you will remember only that you are seeking the truth. And so you will remove, one by one, the errors which you have built up around yourself in the past and will patiently wait for the revelation of truth which will come when your errors have been sufficiently removed. In the silent humility of your heart you will realize that there is an inmost center in us all where truth abides in fullness and around. Wall upon wall the gross flesh hems it in, this perfect clear perception which is truth, a baffling and perverting carnal mesh blinds it and makes all error and to know, rather consists in opening out a way once the imprisoned splendor may escape, thus in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without. Select some portion of the day in which to meditate and keep that period sacred to your purpose. The best time is the very early morning when the spirit of repose is upon everything. All natural conditions will then be in your favor. The passions, after the long bodily fast of the night, will be subdued. The excitements and worries of the previous day will have died away, and the mind, strong and yet restful, will be receptive to spiritual instruction. Indeed, one of the first efforts you will be called upon to make will be to shake off lethargy and indulgence, and if you refuse, you will be unable to advance, for the demands of the spirit are imperative. To be spiritually awakened is also to be mentally and physically awakened. The sluggard and the self-indulgent can have no knowledge of truth. He who, possessed of health and strength, waste the calm precious hours of the silent morning in drowsy indulgence, is totally unfit to climb the heavenly heights. He who's awakening consciousness has become alive to its lofty possibilities, who is beginning to shake off the darkness of ignorance in which the world is enveloped, rises before the stars have ceased their vigil, and grappling with the darkness within his soul, strives, by holy aspiration, to perceive the light of truth while the unawakened world dreams on. The heights by great men, reached and kept, were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night. No saint, no holy man, no teacher of truth, ever lived who did not rise early in the morning. Jesus habitually rose early and climbed the solitary mountains to engage in holy communion. Buddha always rose an hour before sunrise, and engaged in meditation, and all his disciples, were enjoined to do the same. If you have to commence your daily duties at a very early hour, and are thus debarred from giving the early morning to systematic meditation, try to give an hour at night, and should this, by the length and laboriousness of your daily task, be denied you. You need not to spare, for you may then turn your thoughts upward in holy meditation, in the intervals of your work, or in those few idle minutes which you now waste in aimlessness. And should your work be of that kind which becomes by practice automatic, you may meditate while engaged upon it. That eminent Christian saint and philosopher, Jacob Bomi, realized his vast knowledge of divine things whilst working long hours as a shoemaker. In every life there is a time to think, and the busiest, the most laborious, is not shut out from aspiration and meditation. Spiritual meditation and self-discipline are inseparable, if you will. Therefore commence to meditate upon yourself, so as to try and understand yourself. For remember, the great object you will have in view, will be the complete removal of all your errors, in order that you may realize truth. You will begin to question your motives, thoughts and acts, comparing them with your ideal, and endeavoring to look upon them with a calm and impartial eye. In this manner, you will be constantly gaining more of that mental and spiritual equilibrium, without which men are but helpless straws upon the ocean of life. If you are given to hatred or anger, you will meditate upon gentleness and forgiveness, so as to become acutely alive, to a sense of your harsh and foolish conduct. You will then begin to dwell in thoughts of love, of gentleness, of abounding forgiveness, and as you overcome the lower by the higher, there will gradually, silently steal into your heart, a knowledge of the divine law of love, with an understanding of its bearing upon all the intricacies of life and conduct. And in applying this knowledge to your every thought, word and act, you will grow more and more gentle, more and more loving, more and more divine. And thus with every error, every selfish desire, every human weakness, by the power of meditation is it overcome. And as each sin, each error is thrust out, a fuller and clearer measure of the light of truth, illuminates the pilgrim soul. Thus meditating, you will be ceaselessly fortifying yourself against your only real enemy, your selfish, perishable self, and will be establishing yourself more and more firmly in the divine and imperishable self that is inseparable from truth. The direct outcome of your meditations will be a calm spiritual strength, which will be your stay in resting place in the struggle of life. Great is the overcoming power of holy thought, and the strength and knowledge gained in the hour of silent meditation will enrich the soul with saving remembrance in the hour of strife, of sorrow, or of temptation. As by the power of meditation, you grow in wisdom, you will relinquish more and more your selfish desires, which are fickle, impermanent and productive of sorrow and pain, and will take your stand with increasing steadfastness and trust upon unchangeable principles, and will realize heavenly rest. The use of meditation is the acquirement of a knowledge of eternal principles, and the power which results from meditation is the ability to rest upon and trust those principles, and so become one with the eternal. The end of meditation is, therefore, direct knowledge of truth, God, and the realization of divine and profound peace. Let your meditations take their rise from the ethical ground which you now occupy. Remember that you are to grow into truth by steady perseverance. If you are an orthodox Christian, meditate ceaselessly upon the spotless purity and divine excellence of the character of Jesus, and apply his every precept to your inner life and outward conduct, so as to approximate more and more toward his perfection. Do not be as those religious ones who are refusing to meditate upon the law of truth, and to put into practice the precepts given to them by their master, or content to formally worship, to cling to their particular creeds, and to continue the ceaseless round of sin and suffering. Strive to rise by the power of meditation, above all selfish clinging to partial gods or party creeds, above dead formalities and lifeless ignorance. Thus walking the highway of wisdom, with mind fixed upon the spotless truth, you shall know no halting place, short of the realization of truth. He who earnestly meditates first perceives a truth, as it were, a far off, and then realizes it by daily practice. It is only the doer of the word of truth that can know the doctrine of truth. For though by pure thought the truth is perceived, it is only actualized by practice. Said the Divine Gautama, the Buddha, he who gives himself up to vanity, and does not give himself up to meditation, for getting the real aim of life and grasping at pleasure, will in time envy him who has exerted himself in meditation, and he instructed his disciples in the following five great meditations. The first meditation is the meditation of love, in which you so adjust your heart that you long for the will 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 of impurity, in which you consider the evil consequences of corruption, the effects of sin and diseases, how trivial often the pleasure of the moment and how fatal its consequences. The fifth meditation is the meditation on serenity, in which you rise above love and hate, tyranny and oppression, wealth and want, and regard your own fate with impartial calmness and perfect tranquility. By engaging in these meditations the disciples of the Buddha arrived at a knowledge of the truth. But whether you engage in these particular meditations or not matters little, so long as your object is truth, so long as you hunger and thirst for all that righteousness which is a holy heart and a blameless life. In your meditations, therefore, let your heart grow and expand with ever-broadening love, until freed from all hatred and passion and condemnation, it embraces the whole universe with thoughtful tenderness. As the flower opens its petals to receive the morning light, so open your soul more and more to the glorious light of truth. Soar upward upon the wings of aspiration, be fearless, and believe in the loftiest possibilities, believe that a life of absolute meekness is possible, believe that a life of stainless purity is possible, believe that a life of perfect holiness is possible, believe that the realization of the highest truth is possible. He who so believes climbs rapidly the heavenly hills, whilst the unbelievers continue to grope darkly and painfully in the fog-bound valleys. So believing, so aspiring, so meditating, divinely sweet and beautiful will be your spiritual experiences and glorious the revelations that will enrapture your inward vision. As you realize the divine love, the divine justice, the divine purity, and the perfect law of good or God, great will be your bliss and deep your peace. Old things will pass away, and all things will become new. The veil of the material universe, so dense and impenetrable to the eye of error, so thin and gauzy to the eye of truth, will be lifted and the spiritual universe will be revealed, time will cease, and you will live only in eternity. Change and mortality will no more cause you anxiety and sorrow, for you will become established in the unchangeable, and will dwell in the very heart of immortality. Star of Wisdom, star that of the birth of Vishnu, birth of Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, told the wise ones, heavenward looking, waiting, watching for thy gleaming, in the darkness of the night time, in the starless gloom of midnight, shining herald of the coming, of the kingdom of the righteous, teller of the mystic story, of the lowly birth of Godhead, in the stable of the passions, in the manger of the mind-soul, silent singer of the secret, of compassion deep and holy, to the heart with sorrow burdened, to the soul with waiting weary, star of all surpassing brightness, thou again dost deck the midnight, thou again dost cheer the wise ones, watching in the creedle of darkness, weary of the endless battle with the grinding blades of error, tired of lifeless, useless idols, of the dead forms of religions, spent with watching for thy shining, thou hast ended their despairing, thou hast lighted up their pathway, thou hast brought again the old truce to the hearts of all thy watchers, to the souls of them that love thee, thou dost speak of joy and gladness, of the peace that comes of sorrow, blessed are they that can't see thee, weary wanderers in the night time, blessed they who feel the throbbing, in their bosoms feel the pulsing of a deep love stirred within them by the great power of thy shining. Let us learn thy lesson truly, learn it faithfully and humbly, learn it meekly, wisely, gladly, ancient star of holy Vishnu, light of Krishna, Buddha, Jesus. upon the battlefield of the human soul, two masters are ever contending for the crown of supremacy, for the kingship and dominion of the heart, the master of self, called also the prince of this world, and the master of truth, called also the father God. The master self is that rebellious one, whose weapons are passion, pride, avarice, vanity, self-will, implements of darkness. The master truth is that meek and lowly one, whose weapons are gentleness, patience, purity, sacrifice, humility, love, instruments of light. In every soul the battle is waged, and as a soldier cannot engage at once in two opposing armies, so every heart is enlisted, either in the ranks of self or of truth. There is no half and half course. There is self and there is truth. Where self is, truth is not. Where truth is, self is not. Thus spake Buddha, the teacher of truth, and Jesus, the manifested Christ, declared that no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Truth is so simple, so absolutely undeviating and uncompromising, that it admits of no complexity, no turning, no qualification. Self is ingenious, crooked, and governed by subtle and snakey desire, admits of endless turnings and qualifications, and eluded worshippers of self vainly imagine that they can gratify every worldly desire, and at the same time possess the truth. But the lovers of truth worship truth with the sacrifice of self, and ceaselessly guard themselves against worldliness and self-seeking. Do you seek to know and to realize truth? Then you must be prepared to sacrifice, to renounce to the uttermost, for truth in all its glory can only be perceived and known when the last vestige of self has disappeared. The eternal Christ declared that he who would be his disciple must deny himself daily.  If so, you may enter the narrow way of truth and find that peace from which the world is shut out. The absolute denial, the utter extinction of self, is the perfect state of truth, and all religions and philosophies are but so many aids to this supreme attainment. Self is the denial of truth. Truth is the denial of self. As you let self die, you will be reborn in truth. As you cling to self, truth will be hidden from you. While as you cling to self, your path will be beset with difficulties, and repeated pains, sorrows, and disappointments will be your lot. There are no difficulties in truth. And coming to truth, you will be freed from all sorrow and disappointment. Truth in itself is not hidden in dark. It is always revealed and is perfectly transparent. But the blind and wayward self cannot perceive it. The light of day is not hidden except to the blind, and the light of truth is not hidden except to those who are blinded by self. Truth is the one reality in the universe, the inward harmony, the perfect justice, the eternal love. Nothing can be added to it nor taken from it. It does not depend upon any man, but all men depend upon it. You cannot perceive the beauty of truth while you are looking out through the eyes of self.  If lustful, your heart and mind will be so clouded with the smoke and flames of passion that everything will appear distorted through them. If proud and opinionative, you will see nothing in the whole universe except the magnitude and importance of your own opinions. There is one quality which preeminently 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. He who is immersed in self, regards his own opinions as truth, and the opinions of other men as error. But that humble truth lover, who has learned to distinguish between opinion and truth, regards all men with the eye of charity, and does not seek to defend his opinions against theirs, but sacrifices those opinions that he may love the more, that he may manifest the spirit of truth. For truth in its very nature is ineffable, and can only be lived. He who has most of charity, has most of truth. Men engage in heated controversies and foolishly imagine they are defending the truth, when in reality they are merely defending their own petty interests and perishable opinions. The follower of self takes up arms against others. The follower of truth takes up arms against himself. Truth, being unchangeable and eternal, is independent of your opinion and of mine. We may enter into it, or we may stay outside. But both our defense and our attack are superlifes, and are hurled back upon themselves. Men and enslaved by self, passionate, proud, and condemnatory, believe their particular creed or religion to be the truth, and all other religions to be error, and they proselytize with passionate ardor. There is but one religion, the religion of truth. There is but one error, the error of self. Truth is not a formal belief, it is unselfish, holy, and aspiring heart, and he who has truth is at peace with all, and cherishes all with thoughts of love.  Do you harbor thoughts of suspicion, anemone, envy, lust, pride, or do you strenuously fight against these? If the former, you are chained to self, no matter what religion you may profess. If the latter, you are a candidate for truth, even though outwardly you may profess no religion.  Or are you gentle, mild, unselfish, quid of every form of self-indulgence, and are ever ready to give up your own? If the former, self is your master. If the latter, truth is the object of your affection. Do you strive for riches? Do you fight with passion for your party? Do you lust for power and leadership? Are you given to ostentation and self-praise? Or have you given up the love of riches? Have you relinquished all strife? Are you content to take the lowest place, and to be passed by unnoticed? And have you ceased to talk about yourself, and to regard yourself with self-complacent pride? If the former, even though you may imagine you worship God, the God of your heart is self. If the latter, even though you may withhold your lips from worship, you are dwelling with the Most High. The signs by which the truth-lover is known are unmistakable. Here the Holy Krishna declare them, and Sir Edwin Arnold's beautiful rendering of the Bhagavad Gita. Fearlessness, singleness of soul, the will always to strive for wisdom, opened hand and governed appetites, and piety and love of lonely study, humbleness, uprightness, he to injure not which lives, truthfulness, slowness unto wrath, a mind that lightly leteth go, what others prize, and equanimity, and charity, which splithe no man's faults, and tenderness, towards all that suffer, a contented heart, fluttered by no desires, a bearing mild, modest in grave, with manhood nobly mixed, with patience, fortitude, and purity, an un-revengeful spirit, never given to rate itself too high. Such be the signs, O Indian Prince, of him whose feet are set on that fair path, which leads to heavenly birth. When men, lost in the devious ways of error and self, have forgotten the heavenly birth, the state of holiness and truth, they set up artificial standards by which to judge one another, and make acceptance of, and adherence to, their own particular theology, the test of truth, and so men are divided one against another, and there is ceaseless enmity and strife, and unending sorrow and suffering. Reader, do you seek to realize the birth into truth? There is only one way.  All those lusts, appetites, desires, opinions, limited conceptions and prejudices, to which you have hitherto so tenaciously clung. Let them fall from you. Let them no longer hold you in bondage, and truth will be yours. Cease to look upon your own religion as superior to all others, and strive humbly to learn the supreme lesson of charity. No longer cling to the idea, so productive of strife and sorrow, that the Savior whom you worship is the only Savior, and that the Savior whom your brother worships, with equal sincerity and ardor, is an imposter. But seek diligently the path of holiness, and then you will realize that every holy man is a Savior of mankind. The giving up of self is not merely the renunciation of outward things. It consists of the renunciation of the inward sin, the inward error. Not by giving up vain clothing, not by relinquishing riches, not by abstaining from certain foods, not by speaking smooth words, not by merely doing these things as the truth found. But by giving up the spirit of vanity, by relinquishing the desire for riches, by abstaining from the loss of self-indulgence, by giving up all hatred, strife, condemnation, and self-seeking, and becoming gentle and pure at heart. By doing these things is the truth found. To do the former and not to do the latter is Phariseism and hypocrisy, whereas the latter includes the former. You may renounce the outward world and isolate yourself in a cave or in the depths of a forest. But you will take all your selfishness with you, and unless you renounce that, great indeed will be your wretchedness and deep your delusion. You may remain just where you are, performing all your duties, and yet renounce the world, the inward enemy. 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. The renunciation of self is the way of truth. Therefore enter the path there is no grief like hate, no pain like passion, no deceit like sense. Enter the path, far hath he gone whose foot, treads down one fond offense. As you succeed in overcoming self, you will begin to see things in their right relations. He who is swayed by any passion, prejudice, like or dislike, adjusts everything to that particular bias, and sees only his own delusions. He who is absolutely free from all passions, prejudice, preference and partiality, sees himself as he is, sees others as they are, sees all things in their proper proportions and right relations. Having nothing to attack, nothing to defend, nothing to conceal and no interest to guard, he is at peace. He has realized the profound simplicity of truth. For this unbiased, tranquil, blessed state of mind and heart is the state of truth. He who attends to it dwells with the angels, and sits at the footstool of the Supreme. Knowing the great law, knowing the origin of sorrow, knowing the secret of suffering, knowing the way of emancipation and truth, how can such a one engage in strife or condemnation? For though he knows that the blind, self-seeking world, surrounded with the clouds of its own illusions, and enveloped in the darkness of error and self, cannot perceive the steadfast light of truth, and is utterly incapable of comprehending the profound simplicity of the heart that has died, or is dying to self. Yet he also knows that when the suffering ages have piled up mountains of sorrow, the crushed and burdened soul of the world will fly to its final refuge, and that when the ages are completed, every prodigal will come back to the fold of truth.  Men cannot understand truth because they cling to self, because they believe in and love self, because they believe self to be the only reality, whereas it is the one delusion. When you cease to believe in and love self, you will desert it, and fly to truth, and will find the eternal reality. When men are intoxicated, with the wines of luxury, and pleasure, and vanity, the thirst of life grows and deepens within them, and they delude themselves with dreams of fleshy immortality. But when they come to reap the harvest of their own sowing, and pain and sorrow supervene, then crushed and humiliated, relinquishing self and all the intoxications of self, they come, with aching hearts to the one immortality, the immortality that destroys all delusions, the spiritual immortality in truth. Men pass from evil to good, from self to truth, through the dark gate of sorrow, for sorrow and self are inseparable. Only in the peace and bliss of truth is all sorrow vanquished.  If you suffer remorse for your conduct, it is because you have given way to self. If you are overwhelmed with chagrin and regret because of the attitude of someone else towards you, it is because you have been cherishing self. If you are wounded on account of what has been done to you or said of you, it is because you are walking in the painful way of self. All suffering is of self. All suffering ends in truth. When you have entered into and realize truth, you will no longer suffer disappointment, remorse and regret, and sorrow will flee from you. Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul. Truth is the only angel that can bid the gates unroll. And when he comes to call thee, arise and follow fast. His way may lie through darkness, but it leads to light at last. The woe of the world is of its own making. Sorrow purifies and deepens the soul, and the extremity of sorrow is the prelude to truth. Have you suffered much? Have you sorrowed deeply? Have you pondered seriously upon the problem of life? If so, you are prepared to wage war against self and to become a disciple of truth. The intellectual who does not see the necessity for giving up self frame endless theories about the universe and call them truth. But do thou pursue that direct line of conduct, which is the practice of righteousness, and thou wilt realize the truth which has no place in theory and which never changes. Cultivate your heart. Water it continually with unselfish love and deep felt pity, and strive to shut out from it all thoughts and feelings which are not in accordance with love. Return good for evil, love for hatred, gentleness for ill treatment, and remain silent when attacked. So shall you transmute all your selfish desires into the pure gold of love, and self will disappear in truth. So will you walk blamelessly among men, yoked with the easy yoke of lowliness, and clothed with the divine garment of humility. O come, weary brother, thy struggling and striving, and thou in the heart of the master of Ruth, across self's dreared desert, why wilt thou be driving at thirst for the quickening waters of truth? When here by the path of thy searching and sinning, flow's life's gladsome stream, lies love's oasis green. Come, turn thou and rest, know the end and beginning, the sought and the surcher, the seer and seen. Thy master sits not in the unapproached mountains, nor dwells in the mirage which floats on the air, nor shalt thou discover his magical fountains, in pathways of sand that encircle despair. In self-wood's dark desert sees wearily seeking, the odorous tracks of the feet of thy king. And if thou wouldest hear the sweet sound of his speaking, be deaf to all voices that emptily sing. Flea the vanishing places, renounce all thou hast, leave all that thou lovest and naked and bare, thy self at the shrine of the innermost caste, the highest, the holiest, the changeless is there. Within in the heart of the silence he dwelleth, leave sorrow and sin, leave thy wandering sore. Come bathe in his joy, whileest he, whispering telleth, thy soul what it seeketh, and wander no more. Then cease, weary brother, thy struggling and striving, find peace in the heart of the master of Ruth. Across self's darkest desert cease wearily driving. Come, drink at the beautiful waters of truth. CHAPTER III. THE ACQUIREMENT OF SPIRITUAL POWER. The world is filled with men and women seeking pleasure, excitement, novelty, seeking ever to be moved to laughter or tears, not seeking strength, stability, and power, but courting weakness, and eagerly engaged in dispersing what power they have. Men and women of real power and influence are few, because few are prepared to make the sacrifice necessary to the acquirement of power, and few are still are ready to patiently build up character. To be swayed by your fluctuating thoughts and impulses is to be weak and powerless. To rightly control and direct those forces is to be strong and powerful. Men of strong animal passions have much of the ferocity of the beast, but this is not power. The elements of power are there, but it is only when this ferocity is tamed and subdued by the higher intelligence that real power begins, and men can only grow in power by awakening themselves to higher and ever higher states of intelligence and consciousness. The difference between a man of weakness and one of power lies not in the strength of the personal will, for the stubborn man is usually weak and foolish, but in that focus of consciousness which represents their states of knowledge. The pleasure seekers, the lovers of excitement, the hunters after novelty, and the victims of impulse and hysterical emotion, lack that knowledge of principles which gives balance, stability, and influence. A man commences to develop power when checking his impulses and selfish inclinations. He falls back upon the higher and calmer consciousness within him, and begins to steady himself upon a principle. The realization of unchanging principles and consciousness is at once the source and secret of the highest power, when after much searching and suffering and sacrificing, the light of an eternal principle dons upon the soul, a divine calm ensues, and joy unspeakable gladdens the heart. He who has realized such a principle ceases to wander and remains poised and self-possessed. He ceases to be passion-slave and become a master-builder in the temple of destiny. The man that is governed by self and not by principle changes his front when his selfish comforts are threatened. Deeply intent upon defending and guarding his own interests, he regards all means as lawful that will subserve that end. He is continually scheming as to how he may protect himself against his enemies, being too self-centered to perceive that he is his own enemy. Such a man's work crumbles away, for it is divorced from truth and power. All effort that is grounded upon self perishes. Only that work endures that is built upon an indestructible principle. The man that stands upon a principle is the same calm, dauntless, self-possessed man under all circumstances. When the hour of trial comes, and he has to decide between his personal comforts and truth, he gives up his comforts and remains firm. Even the prospect of torture and death cannot alter or detour him. The man of self regards the loss of his wealth, his comforts or his life, as the greatest calamities which can befall him. The man of principle looks upon these incidents as comparatively insignificant and not to be weighted with loss of character, loss of truth. To desert truth is, to him, the only happening which can really be called a calamity. It is the hour of crisis which decides who are the minions of darkness and who are the children of light. It is the epoch of threatening disaster, ruin and persecution which divides the sheep from the goats and reveals to the reverential gaze of succeeding ages the men and women of power. It is easy for a man, so long as he is left in the enjoyment of his possessions, to persuade himself that he believes in and adheres to the principles of peace, brotherhood and universal love. But if when his enjoyments are threatened or he imagines they are threatened, he begins to clamor loudly for war, he shows that he believes in and stands upon, not peace, brotherhood and love, but strife, selfishness and hatred. He who does not desert his principles when threatened with the loss of every earthly thing, even to the loss of reputation and life, is the man of power, is the man whose every word and work endures, is the man whom the afterworld honors, reveres and worships. Rather than desert that principle of divine love on which he rested, and which all his trust was placed, Jesus endured the utmost extremity of agony and deprivation, and today the world prostrates itself at his pierced feet, in rapt adoration. There is no way to the acquirement of spiritual power except by that inward illumination and enlightenment, which is the realization of spiritual principles, and those principles can only be realized by constant practice and application. Take the principle of divine love, and quietly and diligently meditate upon it, with the object of arriving at a thorough understanding of it.  As you persevere in this course, the divine love will become more and more perfectly revealed to you, and your own shortcomings will stand out in more and more vivid contrast, spurring you on to renewed endeavor, and having once caught a glimpse of the incomparable majesty of that imperishable principle. You will never again rest in your weakness, your selfishness, your imperfection, but will pursue that love until you have relinquished every discordant element and have brought yourself into perfect harmony with it. And that state of inward harmony is spiritual power. Take also other spiritual principles, such as purity and compassion, and apply them in the same way, and so exacting as truth, you will be able to make no stay, no resting place, until the inmost garment of your soul is bereft of every stain, and your heart has become incapable of any hard condemnatory and pitiless impulse. Only insofar as you understand, realize and rely upon these principles will you acquire spiritual power, and that power will be manifested in and through you in the form of increasing dispassion, patience and equanimity. Dispassion argues superior self-control. Sublime patience is the very hallmark of divine knowledge, and to retain an unbroken calm amid all the duties and distractions of life, marks off the man of power. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after our own. But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. Some mystics hold that perfection, and dispassion is the source of that power by which miracles, so called, are performed, and truly he who has gained such perfect control of all his interior forces that no shock, however great, can for one moment unbalance him, must be capable of guiding and directing those forces with a master hand. To grow in self-control, in patience, in equanimity, is to grow in strength and power, and you can only thus grow by focusing your consciousness upon a principle. As a child, after making many invigorous attempts to walk unaided, at last succeeds after numerous falls in accomplishing this, so you must enter the way of power by first attempting to stand alone. Break away from the tyranny of custom, tradition, conventionality, and the opinions of others, until you succeed in walking lonely and erect among men. Rely upon your own judgment. Be true to your own conscience. Follow the light that is within you. All outward lights are so many will owe the wisps. There will be those who will tell you that you are foolish, that your judgment is faulty, that your conscious is all awry, and that the light within you is darkness, but heed them not. If what they say is true the sooner you as the searcher for wisdom, find it out the better, and you can only make the discovery by bringing your powers to the test. Therefore pursue your course bravely. Your conscience is at least your own, and to follow it is to be a man. To follow the conscience of another is to be a slave. You will have many falls, will suffer many wounds, will endure many buffettings for a time, but press on in faith, believing that sure and certain victory lies ahead. Search for a rock, a principal, and having found it, cling to it. Get it under your feet and stand erect upon it, until at last, immovably fixed upon it, you succeed in defying the fury of the waves and storms of selfishness. For selfishness in any and every form is dissipation, weakness, death. Unselfishness in its spiritual aspect is conservation, power, life. As you grow in spiritual life and become established upon principles, you will become as beautiful and as unchangeable as those principles, will taste of the sweetness of their immortal essence, and will realize the eternal and indestructible nature of the God within. No harmful shaft can reach the righteous man, standing erect amid the storms of hate, defying hurt and injury and ban, surrounded by the trembling slaves of fate, majestic in the strength of silent power, serene he stands, nor changes not nor turns, patient and firm in suffering's darkest hour, time bends to him, and death and doom he spurns. Wrath's lurid lightnings round about him play, and hell's deep thunders roll above his head, yet heeds he not, for him they cannot slay, who stands whence earth and time and space are fled. Sheltered by deathless love, what fear hath he, armored in changeless truth, what can he know of loss and gain, knowing eternity? He moves not whilst the shadows come and go. Call him immortal, call him truth and light, and splendor of prophetic majesty, who bideeth thus amid the powers of the night, clothed with the glory of divinity. CHAPTER IV THE REALIZATION OF SELF-LESS LOVE It is said that Michelangelo saw in every rough block of stone a thing of beauty, awaiting the master hand to bring it into reality. Even so, within each, there reposes the divine image awaiting the master hand of faith and the chisel of patience to bring it into manifestation. And that divine image is revealed and realized as stainless selfless love. Hidden deep in every human heart, though frequently covered up with a mass of heart and almost impenetrable accretions, is the spirit of divine love, whose holy and spotless essence is undying and eternal. It is the truth in man, it is that which belongs to the Supreme, that which is real and immortal. All else changes and passes away. This alone is permanent and imperishable. And to realize this love by ceaseless diligence in the practice of the highest righteousness, to live in it and to become fully conscious in it, is to enter into immortality here and now, is to become one with truth, one with God, one with the central heart of all things, and to know our own divine and eternal nature. To reach this love, to understand and experience it, one must work with great persistency and diligence upon his heart and mind, must ever renew his patience and keep strong his faith, for there will be much to remove, much to accomplish, before the divine image is revealed in all its glorious beauty. He who strives to reach and to accomplish the divine, will be tried to the very uttermost. And this is absolutely necessary. For how else could one acquire that sublime patience, without which there is no real wisdom, no unity? Ever and on as he proceeds, all his work will seem to be futile, and his efforts appear to be thrown away. Now and then a hasty touch will mar his image, and perhaps when he imagines his work is almost completed, he will find what he imagined to be the beautiful form of divine love utterly destroyed. And he must begin again, with his past bitter experience to guide and help him. But he who has resolutely set himself to reach the highest, recognizes no such thing as defeat. All failures are apparent, not real. Every slip, every fall, every return to selfishness is a lesson learned, and experience gained, from which a golden grain of wisdom is extracted, helping the striver toward the accomplishment of his lofty object, to recognize that of our vices we can frame, a ladder, if we will but tread, beneath our feet, each deed of shame, is to enter the way that leads us takeably toward the divine, and the failings of one who thus recognizes are so many dead selves, upon which he rises, as upon stepping stones, to hire things. Once come to regard your failings, your sorrows and sufferings, as so many voices telling you plainly, where you are weak and faulty, where you fall below the true and the divine, you will then begin to ceaselessly watch yourself, and every slip, every pang of pain will show you where you are to set to work, and what you have to remove out of your heart in order to bring it nearer to the likeness of the divine, nearer to the perfect love. And as you proceed day by day, detaching yourself more and more from the inward selfishness, the love that is selfless will gradually become revealed to you. And when you are growing patient and calm, when your petulances, tempers, and irritabilities are passing away from you, the more powerful lusts and prejudice is seek to dominate and enslave you, then you will know that the divine is awakening within you, that you are drawing near to the eternal heart, that you are not far from that selfless love, the possession of which is peace and immortality. Divine love is distinguished from human love, in this supremely important particular, it is free from partiality. Human love clings to a particular object, to the exclusion of all else, and when that object is removed, great and deep is the resultant suffering to the one who loves. Divine love embraces the whole universe, and without clinging to any part, yet contains within itself the whole, and he who comes to it by gradually purifying, and broadening his human loves, until all the selfish and impure elements are burnt out of them, ceases from suffering. It is because human loves are narrow and confined, and mingled with selfishness, that they cause suffering. No suffering can result from that love, which is so absolutely pure that it seeks nothing for itself. Nevertheless, human loves are absolutely necessary as steps toward the divine, and no soul is prepared to partake of divine love until it has become capable of the deepest and most intense human love. It is only by passing through human loves and human sufferings that divine love is reached and realized. All human loves are perishable, like the forms to which they cling, but there is a love that is imperishable, and that does not cling to appearances. All human loves are counterbalanced by human hates, but there is a love that admits of no opposite or reaction, divine and free from all taint of self, that sheds its fragrance on all alike. Human loves are reflections of the divine love, and draw the soul nearer to the reality, the love that knows neither sorrow nor change. It is well that the mother, clinging with passionate tenderness to the little helpless form of flesh that lies on her bosom, should be overwhelmed with the dark waters of sorrow when she sees it laid on the cold earth. It is well that her tears should flow in her heart ache, for only thus can she be reminded of the evanescent nature of the joys and objects of sense, and be drawn nearer to the eternal and imperishable reality. It is well that lover, brother, sister, husband, wife should suffer deep anguish and be enveloped in gloom when the visible object of their affection is torn from them, so that they may learn to turn their affections toward the invisible source of all, where alone abiding satisfaction is to be found. It is well that the proud, the ambitious, the self-seeking, should suffer defeat, humiliation, and misfortune, that they should pass through the scorching fires of affliction, for only thus can the wayward soul be brought to reflect upon the enigma of life, only thus can the heart be softened and purified, and prepared to receive the truth. When the sting of anguish penetrates the heart of human love, and gloom and loneliness and desertion cloud the soul of friendship and trust, then it is that the heart turns toward the sheltering love of the eternal, and finds its rest in its silent peace. And whosoever comes to this love is not turned away comfortless, is not pierced with anguish nor surrounded with gloom, and is never deserted in the dark hour of trial. The glory of divine love can only be revealed in the heart that is chastened by sorrow, and the image of the heavenly state can only be perceived and realized when the lifeless, formless accretions of ignorance and self are hewn away. Only that love that seeks no personal gratification or reward, that does not make distinctions, and that leaves behind no heartaches, can be called divine. Men clinging to self into the comfortless shadows of evil, are in the habit of thinking of divine love as something belonging to a God who is out of reach, as something outside themselves, and that must forever remain outside. Truly the love of God is ever beyond the reach of self. But when the heart and mind are emptied of self, then the selfless love, the supreme love, the love that is of God or good, becomes an inward and abiding reality. And this inward realization of holy love, is none other than the love of Christ, that is so much talked about and so little comprehended. The love that not only saves the soul from sin, but lifts it also above the power of temptation. But how may one attain to this sublime realization? The answer which truth has always given, and will ever give to this question is, empty thyself, and I will fill thee. Divine love cannot be known until self is dead, for self is the denial of love, and how can that which is known be also denied? Not until the stone of self is rolled away from the sepulchre of the soul and buried, cast off the bams of ignorance, and come forth in all the majesty of his resurrection. You believe that the Christ of Nazareth was put to death and rose again? I do not say you err in that belief. But if you refuse to believe that the gentle spirit of love is crucified daily upon the dark cross of your selfish desires, then I say you err in this unbelief, and you have not yet perceived, even afar off, the love of Christ. You say that you have tasted of salvation in the love of Christ. Are you saved from your temper, your irritability, your vanity, your personal dislikes, your judgment and condemnation of others? If not, from what are you saved, and wherein have you realized the transforming love of Christ? He who has realized the love that is divine has become a new man, and has ceased to be swayed and dominated by the old elements of self. He is known for his patience, his purity, his self control, his deep charity of heart, and his unalterable sweetness. Divine or selfless love is not a mere sentiment or emotion. It is a state of knowledge which destroys the dominion of evil, and the belief in evil, and lifts the soul into the joyful realization of the supreme good. To the divinely wise, knowledge and love are one and inseparable. It is toward the complete realization of this divine love that the whole world is moving. It was for this purpose that the universe came into existence, and every grasping at happiness, every reaching out of the soul toward objects, ideas and ideals, is an effort to realize it. But the world does not realize this love at present, because it is grasping at the fleeting shadow, and ignoring in its blindness the substance, and so suffering and sorrow continue, and must continue, until the world, taught by itself inflicted pains, discovers the love that is selfless, the wisdom that is calm and full of peace. And this love, this wisdom, this peace, this tranquil state of mind and heart, may be attained to, may be realized by all who are willing and ready to yield up self, and who are prepared to humbly enter into a comprehension of all that the giving up of self involves. There is no arbitrary power in the universe, and the strongest chains of fate by which men are bound, are self-forged.   And the indwelling of power which forged the chains, and built around itself the dark and narrow prison, can break away when it desires and wills to do so. And the soul does will to do so, when it has discovered the worthlessness of its prison, when long suffering has prepared it for the reception of the boundless light and love. As the shadow follows the form, and as the smoke comes after fire, so effect follows cause, and suffering and bliss follow the thoughts and deeds of men. There is no effect in the world around us, but has its hidden or revealed cause, and that cause is in accordance with absolute justice. Men reap a harvest of suffering, because in the near or distant past they have sown the seeds of evil, they reap a harvest of bliss, also as a result of their own sowing of the seeds of good. Let a man meditate upon this, let him strive to understand it, and he will then begin to sow only seeds of good, and will burn up the tears and weeds, which he has formally grown in the garden of his heart. The world does not understand the love that is selfless, because it isn't grossed in the pursuit of its own pleasures, and cramped within the narrow limits of perishable interest mistaking, in its ignorance, those pleasures in interest for real and abiding things. Caught in the flames of fleshy lust, and burning with anguish, it sees not the pure and peaceful beauty of truth. Feeding upon the swinish husks of error and self-delusion, it is shut out from the mansion of all seeing love. Not having this love, not understanding it, men institute innumerable reforms which involve no inward sacrifice, and each imagines that his reform is going to write the world forever, while he himself continues to propagate evil by engaging it in his own heart, that only can be called reform which tends to reform the human heart, for all evil has its rise there, and not until the world, ceasing from selfishness and party strife, has learned the lesson of divine love, will it realize the golden age of universal blessedness. Let the rich cease to despise the poor, and the poor to condemn the rich. Let the greedy learn how to give, and the lustful how to grow pure. Let the partisan cease from strife, and the uncharitable begin to forgive. Let the envious endeavor to rejoice with others, and the slanderers grow ashamed of their conduct. Let men and women take their course, and lo, the golden age is at hand. He therefore who purifies his heart is the world's greatest benefactor. Yet though the world is, and will be for many ages to come, shut out from that age of gold, which is the realization of selfless love. You, if you are willing, may enter it now, by rising above your selfish self, if you will pass from prejudice, hatred, and condemnation, to gentle and forgiving love. Where hatred, dislike, and condemnation are, selfless love does not abide. It resides only in the heart that has ceased from all condemnation. You say, How can I love the drunkard, the hypocrite, the sneak, the murderer? I am compelled to dislike and condemn such men. It is true you cannot love such men emotionally. But when you say that you must perforce, dislike, and condemn them, you show that you are not acquainted with the great overruling love, for it is possible to attain to such a state of interior enlightenment, as will enable you to perceive the train of causes by which these men have become as they are, to enter into their intense sufferings, and to know the certainty of their ultimate purification. Possessed of such knowledge, it will be utterly impossible for you, in longer, to dislike or condemn them, and you will always think of them with perfect calmness and deep compassion. If you love people and speak of them with praise until they in some way torture you, or do something of which you disapprove, and then you dislike them and speak of them with dispraise, you are not governed by the love which is of God. If in your heart you are continually arranging and condemning others, selfless love is hidden from you. He who knows that love is at the heart of all things, and has realized the all-sufficing power of that love, has no room in his heart for condemnation. Men not knowing this love, constitute themselves judge and executioner of their fellows, forgetting that there is the eternal judge and executioner, and in so far as men deviate from them in their own views, their particular reforms and methods, they brand themselves as fanatical, unbalanced, lacking judgment, sincerity, and honesty. In so far as others approximate to their own standard, do they look upon them as being everything that is admirable. Such are the men who are centered in self. But he whose heart is centered in the supreme love, does not so brand and classify men, does not seek to convert men to his own views, not to convince them of the superiority of his methods. During the law of love he lives it, and maintains the same calm attitude of mind and sweetness of heart toward all. The debased and virtuous, the foolish and the wise, the learned and the unlearned, the selfish and the unselfish, receive alike the benediction of his tranquil thought. You can only attain to supreme knowledge, this divine love, by unremitting endeavor and self-discipline, and by gaining victory after victory over yourself. Only the pure in heart see God, and when your heart is sufficiently purified, you will enter into the new birth, and the love that does not die nor change, nor end in pain and sorrow, will be awakened within you, and you will be at peace. He who strives for the attainment of divine love is ever seeking to overcome the spirit of condemnation. For where there is pure spiritual knowledge, condemnation cannot exist, and only in the heart that has become incapable of condemnation is love perfected and fully realized. The Christian condemns the atheist, the atheist satirizes the Christian, the Catholic and Protestant are ceaselessly engaged in wordy warfare, and the spirit of strife and hatred rules where peace and love should be. He that hateeth his brother is a murderer, a quiffire of the divine spirit of love, and until you can regard men of all religions, and of no religion, with the same impartial spirit, with all freedom from dislike, and with perfect equanimity, you have yet to strive for that love which bestows upon its possessor freedom and salvation. The realization of divine knowledge, selfless love, utterly destroys the spirit of condemnation, disperses all evil, and lifts the consciousness to that height of pure vision, where love, goodness, justice are seen to be universal, supreme, all conquering, indestructible. Train your mind in strong, impartial and gentle thought. Train your heart in purity and compassion. Train your tongue to silence and to true and stainless speech. So shall you enter the way of holiness and peace, and shall ultimately realize the immortal love. So living, without seeking to convert, you will convince, without arguing, you will teach, not cherishing ambition. The wise will find you out, and without striving to gain men's opinions, you will subdue their hearts. For love is all conquering, all powerful. The thoughts and deeds and words of love can never perish. To know that love is universal, supreme, all thysing. To be freed from the trammels of evil. To be quit of the inward unrest. To know that all men are striving to realize the truth, each in his own way. To be satisfied, sorrowless, serene. This is peace. This is gladness. This is immortality. This is divinity. This is the realization of selfless love. I stood upon the shore and saw the rocks. Resist the onslaught of the mighty sea. And when I thought how all the countless shocks they had withstood through an eternity. And I said to we're away from this solid main the ceaseless efforts of the waves are vain. But when I thought how they the rocks had rent, and saw the sand and shingles at my feet, per passive remnants of resistance spent, tumbled and tossed where they the waters meet. Then saw I ancient landmarks beneath the waves. And knew the waters held the stones, their slaves. I saw mighty work the waters wrought. By patient softness and unceasing flow. How they the proudest promontory brought, unto their feet and massy hills laid low. How the soft drops the adamantine wall, conquered at last, and brought it to its fall. And then I knew that hard resisting sin should yield at last to love soft ceaseless roll. Coming and going ever flowing in, upon the proud rocks of the human soul, that all resistance should be spent and passed. And every heart yield unto it at last. CHAPTER V. Entering into the infinite. From the beginning of time, man, in spite of his bodily appetites and desires, in the midst of all his clinging to earthly and impermanent things, has ever been intuitively conscious of the limited, transient, and illusionary nature of his material existence. And in his sane and silent moments, has tried to reach out into a comprehension of the infinite, and has turned with tearful aspiration toward the restful reality of the eternal heart. While vainly imagining that the pleasures of earth are real and satisfying, pain and sorrow continually remind him of their unreal and unsatisfying nature. Ever striving to believe that complete satisfaction is to be found in material things, he is conscious of an inward and persistent revolt against this belief. Which revolt is at once a refutation of his essential mortality, and an imperishable proof that only in the immortal, the eternal, the infinite, can he find abiding satisfaction and unbroken peace. And here is the common ground of faith, here the root and spring of all religion, here the soul of brotherhood and the heart of love, that man is essentially and spiritually divine and eternal, and that, immersed in mortality and troubled with unrest, he is ever striving to enter into a consciousness of his real nature. The spirit of man is inseparable from the infinite, and can be satisfied with nothing short of the infinite. And the burden of pain will continue to weigh upon man's heart, and the shadows of sorrow to darken his pathway. Until ceasing from his wanderings in the dream world of matter, he comes back to his home in the reality of the eternal. As the smallest drop of water detached from the ocean contains all the qualities of the ocean, so man, detached in consciousness from the infinite, contains within him its likeness. And as the drop of water must, by the law of its nature, ultimately find its way back to the ocean, and lose itself in its silent depths, so must man, by the unfailing law of his nature, at last return to his source, and lose himself in the great ocean of the infinite. To re-become one with the infinite is the goal of man. To enter into perfect harmony with the eternal law is wisdom, love, and peace. But this divine state is, and must ever be, incomprehensible to the merely personal. Personality, separateness, selfishness, are one in the same, and are the antithesis of wisdom and divinity. By the unqualified surrender of the personality, separateness and selfishness cease, and man enters into the possession of his divine heritage, of immortality and infinity. Such surrender of the personality is regarded by the worldly and selfish mind as the most grievous of all calamities, the most irreparable loss, yet it is the one supreme and incomparable blessing, the only real and lasting gain. The mind unenlightened upon the inner laws of being, and upon the nature and destiny of its own life, clings to transient appearances, things which have in them no enduring substantiality, and so clinging, perishes, for the time being, amid the shattered wreckage of its own illusions. Men cling to and gratify the flesh, as though it were going to last forever, and though they try to forget the nearness and inevitability of its dissolution, the dread of death, and of the loss of all that they cling to clouds their happiest hours, and the chilling shadow of their own selfishness follows them like a remorseless specter. And with the accumulation of temporal comforts and luxuries, the divinity within men is drugged, and they sink deeper and deeper into materiality, into the perishable life of the senses, and where there is sufficient intellect, theories concerning the immortality of the flesh come to be regarded as infallible truths. When a man's soul is clouded with selfishness in any or every form, he loses the power of spiritual discrimination, and confuses the temporal with the eternal, the perishable with the permanent, mortality with immortality, and error with truth. It is thus that the world has come to be filled with theories and speculations, having no foundation in human experience. Every body of flesh contains within itself, from the hour of birth, the elements of its own destruction, and by the unalterable law of its own nature must it pass away. The perishable in the universe can never become permanent. The permanent can never pass away. The mortal can never become immortal. The immortal can never die. The temporal cannot become eternal, nor the eternal become temporal. Immortality can never become reality, nor reality fade into appearance. Error can never become truth, nor truth become error. Man cannot immortalize the flesh, but by overcoming the flesh, by relinquishing all its inclinations, he can enter the region of immortality. God alone hath immortality, and only by realizing the God-state of consciousness does man enter into immortality. All nature in its myriad forms of life is changeable, impermanent, unenduring. Only the informing principle of nature endures. Nature is many, and is marked by separation. The informing principle is one, as marked by unity. By overcoming the senses and the selfishness within, which is the overcoming of nature, man emerges from a chrysalis of the personal and illusory, and wings himself into the glorious light of the impersonal, the region of universal truth, out of which all perishable forms come. But men, therefore, practice self-denial, let them conquer their animal inclinations, let them refuse to be enslaved by luxury and pleasure, let them practice virtue, and grow daily into higher and ever higher virtue, until at last they grow into the divine, and enter into both the practice and the comprehension of humility, meekness, forgiveness, compassion, and love, which practice and comprehension constitute divinity. Goodwill gives insight, and only he who has so conquered his personality, that he has but one attitude of mind, that of goodwill, toward all creatures, is possessed of divine insight, and is capable of distinguishing the true from the false. The supremely good man is, therefore, the wise man, the divine man, the enlightened seer, the knower of the eternal. Where you find unbroken gentleness, enduring patience, sublime lowliness, graciousness of speech, self-control, self-forgetfulness, and deep and abounding sympathy, look there for the highest wisdom, seek the company of such a one, for he has realized the divine, he lives with the eternal, he has become one with the infinite. Believe not him that is impatient, given to anger, boastful, who clings to pleasure and refuses to renounce his selfish gratifications, and who practices not goodwill and far-reaching compassion, for such a one hath not wisdom, vain is all his knowledge, and his works and words will perish, for they are grounded on that which passes away. Let a man abandon self, let him overcome the world, let him deny the personal. By this pathway only can he enter into the heart of the infinite. The world, the body, the personality, are mirages upon the desert of time, transitory dreams in the dark night of spiritual slumber, and those who have crossed the desert, those who are spiritually awakened, have alone comprehended the universal reality where all appearances are dispersed and dreaming and delusion are destroyed. There is one great law which exacts unconditional obedience, one unifying principle which is the basis of all diversity, one eternal truth wherein all the problems of the earth pass away like shadows. To realize this law, this unity, this truth, is to enter into the infinite, is to become one with the eternal. To center one's life in the great law of love, is to enter into rest, harmony, peace, to refrain from all participation in evil and discord, to cease from all resistance to evil, and from the omission of that which is good, and to fall back upon unswerving obedience to the holy calm within, is to enter into the inmost heart of things, is to attain to a living, conscious experience of that eternal and infinite principle which must ever remain a hidden mystery to the merely perceptive intellect. Until this principle is realized, the soul is not established in peace, and he who so realizes is truly wise, not wise with the wisdom of the learned, but with the simplicity of a blames heart and of a divine manhood. To enter into the realization of the infinite and eternal, is to rise superior to time, and the world, and the body, which compromise the kingdom of darkness, and is to become established in immortality, heaven and the spirit, which make up the empire of light. Entering into the infinite is not a mere theory or sentiment. It is a vital experience, which is the result of assiduous practice in inward purification. And the body is no longer believed to be, even remotely, the real man, when all appetites and desires are thoroughly subdued and purified, when the emotions are rested and calm, and when the oscillation of the intellect ceases, and perfect poise is secured, then, and not till then, does consciousness become one with the infinite? Not until then is childlike wisdom and profound peace secured.  Seeking to save his personal life, man forfeits the greater impersonal life in truth, clinging to the perishable, he is shut out from a knowledge of the eternal.  No problem, however great, but will disappear like a shadow, under the searching light of self-abnegation. Problems exist only in our own self-created illusions, and they vanish away when self is yielded up. Self and error are synonymous. Error is involved in the darkness of unfathomable complexity, but eternal simplicity is the glory of truth. Love of self shuts men out from truth, and seeking their own personal happiness they lose the deeper, purer and more abiding bliss, says Carlisle. There is in man a higher than love of happiness. He can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness. Love not pleasure, love God. This is the everlasting yay where an all contradiction is solved, wherein whoso walks and works it is well with him. He who has yielded up that self, that personality that men most love, and to which they cling with such fierce tenacity, has left behind him all perplexity, and has entered into a simplicity so profoundly simple as to be looked upon by the world, involved as it is in a network of error, as foolishness. Yet such a one has realized the highest wisdom, and is at rest in the infinite. He accomplishes without striving, and all problems melt before him, for he has entered the region of reality, and deals not with changing effects, but with the unchanging principles of things. He has enlightened with a wisdom, which is as superior to raseosination, as reason is to animality. Having yielded up his lusts, his errors, his opinions and prejudices, he has entered into possession of the knowledge of God, having slain the selfish desire for heaven, and along with it the ignorant fear of hell, having relinquished even the love of life itself, he has gained supreme bliss and life eternal, the life which bridges life and death, and knows its own immortality. Having yielded up all without reservation, he has gained all, and rests in peace on the bosom of the infinite. Only he who has become so free from self as to be equally content to be annihilated as to live, or to live as to be annihilated, is fit to enter into the infinite. Only he, ceasing to trust his perishable self, has learned to trust in boundless measure the great law, the supreme good, is prepared to partake of undying bliss. For such a one there is no more regret, nor disappointment, nor remorse. For where all selfishness has ceased these sufferings cannot be, and whatever happens to him he knows that it is for his own good, and he is content, being no longer the servant of self, but the servant of the supreme. He is no longer affected by the change of earth, and when he hears of wars and rumors of wars, his peace is not disturbed, and where men grow angry and cynical and quarrelsome, he bestows compassion and love. No appearance may contradict it. He knows that the world is progressing, and that through its laughing and its weeping, through its living and its keeping, through its follies and its labours, weaving in and out of sight, to the end from the beginning, through all virtue and all sinning, reeled from God's great spool of progress, runs the golden thread of light. When a fierce storm is raging, none are angered about it, as they know it will quickly pass away, and when the storms of contention are devastating the world, the wise man, looking with the eyes of truth and pity, knows that it will pass away, and out of the wreckage of broken hearts which it leaves behind, the immortal temple of wisdom will be built. Sublimely patient, infinitely compassionate, deep, silent and pure, his very presence is a benediction, and when he speaks, men ponder his words in their hearts, and by them rise to higher levels of attainment. Such is he who has entered into the infinite, who by the power of utmost sacrifice has solved the sacred mystery of life. Questioning life and destiny and truth, I sought the dark and labyrinthine Spinks, who spake to me this strange and wondrous thing. Concealment only lies in blinded eyes, and God alone can see the form of God. I sought to solve this hidden mystery, vainly by paths of blindness and of pain. But when I found the way of love and peace, concealment ceased, and I was blind no more. Then I saw God, in with the eyes of God. Sages and Saviors The Law of Service The spirit of love which is manifested as a perfect and rounded life is the crown of being and the supreme end of knowledge upon this earth. The measure of a man's truth is the measure of his love, and truth is far removed from him whose life is not governed by love. The intolerant and condemnatory, even though they profess the highest religion, have the smallest measure of truth. While those who exercise patience, and who listen calmly and dispassionately to all sides, and both arrive themselves at, and incline others to, thoughtful and unbiased conclusions upon all problems and issues, have truth in fullest measure. The final test of wisdom is this. How does a man live? What spirit does he manifest? How does he act under trial and temptation? Many men boast of being in possession of truth, who are continually swayed by grief, disappointment and passion, and who sink under the first little trial that comes along. Truth is nothing if not unchangeable, and insofar as a man takes his stand upon truth, does he become steadfast in virtue, does he rise superior to his passions and emotions and changeable personality. Men formulate perishable dogmas and call them truth. Truth cannot be formulated, it is ineffable, and ever beyond the reach of intellect. It can only be experienced by practice. It can only be manifested as a stainless heart and a perfect life. Who then, in the midst of the ceaseless pandemonium of schools and creeds and parties, has the truth? He who lives it, he who practices it, he who, having risen above that pandemonium by overcoming himself, no longer engages in it, but sits apart, quiet, subdued, calm and self-possessed, freed from all strife, all bias, all condemnation, and bestows upon all the glad and unselfish love of the divinity within him. He who is patient, calm, gentle, and forgiving, under all circumstances, manifests the truth. Truth will never be proved by wordy arguments and learned treatises, for if men do not perceive the truth in infinite patience, undying forgiveness, and all embracing compassion, no words can ever prove it to them. It is an easy matter for the passionate to be calm and patient, when they are alone, or are in the midst of calmness. It is equally easy for the uncharitable to be gentle and kind when they are kindly dealt with, but he who retains his patience and calmness under all trial, who remains sublimely meek and gentle under the most trying circumstances, he and he alone is possessed of the spotless truth. And this is so, because such lofty virtues belong to the divine, and can only be manifested by one who has attained, to the highest wisdom, who has relinquished his passionate and self-seeking nature, who has realized the supreme and unchangeable law, and has brought himself into harmony with it. Let men, therefore, cease from vain and passionate arguments about truth, and let them think and say and do those things which ache for harmony, peace, love, and goodwill. Let them practice heart virtue, and search humbly and diligently, for the truth which frees the soul from all error and sin, and from all that blights the human heart, and that darkens, as with unending night, the pathway of the wandering souls of earth. There is one great all-embracing law which is the foundation and cause of the universe, the law of love. It has been called by many names in various countries, and at various times, but behind all its names the same unalterable law may be discovered by the eye of truth. Names, religions, personalities pass away, but the law of love remains. To become possessed of a knowledge of this law, to enter into conscious harmony with it, is to become immortal, invincible, indestructible. It is because of the effort of the soul to realize this law that men come again and again to live, to suffer, and to die, and when realized suffering ceases, personality is dispersed, and the fleshy life and death are destroyed, for consciousness becomes one with the eternal. The law is absolutely impersonal, and its highest manifested expression is that of service. When the purified heart has realized truth, it is then called upon to make the last, the greatest and holiest sacrifice, the sacrifice of the well-earned enjoyment of truth. It is by virtue of this sacrifice that the divinely emancipated soul comes to dwell among men, clothed with a body of flesh, content to dwell among the lowliest and least, and to be esteemed the servant of all mankind. That sublime humility which is manifested by the world's saviors is the seal of Godhead, and he who has annihilated the personality and become a living visible manifestation of the impersonal, eternal boundless spirit of love is alone singled out as worthy to receive the unstinted worship of posterity. He only who succeeds in humbling himself with that divine humility, which is not only the extinction of self, but is also the pouring out upon the spirit of unselfish love, is exalted above measure, and given spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind. All of the great spiritual teachers have denied themselves personal luxuries, comforts and rewards, have abjured temporal power, and have lived and taught the limitless and impersonal truth. Compare their lives and teachings, and you will find the same simplicity, the same self-sacrifice, the same humility, love and peace, both lived and preached by them. They taught the same eternal principles, the realization of which destroys all evil. Those who have been hailed and worshipped as the saviors of mankind are manifestations of the great impersonal law, and being such were free from passion and prejudice, and having no opinions and no special letter of doctrine to preach and defend. They never sought to convert and to proselytize. Living in the highest goodness, the supreme perfection, their sole object was to uplift mankind by manifesting that goodness and thought word indeed. They stand between man the personal and God the impersonal, and serve as exemplary types for the salvation of self-enslaved mankind. Men who are immersed in self, and who cannot comprehend the goodness that is absolutely impersonal, deny divinity to all saviors except their own, and thus introduce personal hatred and doctrinal controversy, and while defending their own particular views with passion, look upon each other as being heathens or infidels, and so render null and void as far as their lives are concerned. The unselfish beauty and holy grandeur of the lives and teachings of their own masters. Truth cannot be limited. It can never be the special prerogative of any man, school, or nation, and when personality steps in, truth is lost. The gloria-like of the saint, the sage, and the saviour is this, that he has realized the most profound lowliness, the most sublime unselfishness, having given up all, even his own personality. All his works are holy and enduring, for they are freed from every taint of self. He gives yet never thinks of receiving. He works without regretting the past, or anticipating the future, and never looks for reward. When the farmer has tilled and dressed his land, and put in the seed, he knows that he has done all that he can possibly do, and that now he must trust to the elements, and wait patiently for the course of time to bring about the harvest, and that no amount of expectancy on his part will affect the result. Even so, he who has realized truth goes forth as a sower of the seeds of goodness, purity, love, and peace, without expectancy, and never looking for results, knowing that there is the great over-ruling law which brings about its own harvest in due time, and which is alike the source of preservation and destruction. Men not understanding the divine simplicity of a profoundly unselfish heart look upon their particular saviour as the manifestation of a special miracle, as being something entirely apart and distinct from the nature of things, and as being, in his ethical excellence, eternally unapproachable by the whole of mankind. This attitude of unbelief, for such it is, in the divine perfectibility of man, paralyzes effort, and binds the souls of men as with strong ropes to sin and suffering. Jesus grew in wisdom, and was perfected by suffering. But Jesus was, he became such, what Buddha was, he became such, and every holy man became such by unremitting perseverance in self-sacrifice. Once recognize this, once realize that by watchful effort and hopeful perseverance you can rise above your lower nature, and great and glorious will be the vistas of attainment that will open out before you. He vowed that he would not relax his efforts until he arrived at the state of perfection, and he accomplished his purpose. What the saints, sages, and saviours have accomplished, you likewise may accomplish, if you will only tread the way which they trod and pointed out, the way of self-sacrifice, of self-denying service. Truth is very simple. It says, give up self, come unto me, away from all that defiles, and I will give you rest. All the mountains of commentary that have been piled upon it cannot hide it from the heart that is earnestly seeking for righteousness. It does not require learning, it can be known in spite of learning. Disguised under many forms by airing self-seeking men, the beautiful simplicity and clear transparency of truth remains unaltered and undimmed, and the unselfish heart enters into it and partakes of its shining radiance. Not by weaving complex theories, not by building up speculative philosophies, is truth realized. But by weaving the web of inward purity, by building up the temple of a stainless life, is truth realized. He who enters upon this holy way begins by restraining his passions. This is virtue, and is the beginning of saintship, and saintship is the beginning of holiness. The entirely worldly man gratifies all his desires, and practices no more restraint than the law of the land in which he lives demands. The virtuous man restrains his passions. The saint attacks the enemy of truth in its stronghold within his own heart, and restrains all selfish and impure thoughts, while the holy man is he who is free from passion and all impure thought, and to whom goodness and purity have become, as natural as scent and color are to the flower. The holy man is divinely wise. He alone knows truth in its fullness, and has entered into abiding rest and peace. For him evil has ceased. It has disappeared in the universal light of the all-good. Holiness is the badge of wisdom. Said Krishna to Prince Arjuna. Humbleness, truthfulness, and harmlessness. Patience and honor. Reverence for the wise. Purity, constancy, control of self. Contempt of self-delights. Self-sacrifice. Perception of the certitude of ill. In birth, death, age, disease, suffering, and sin. An ever-tranquil heart in fortunes good, and fortunes evil. Endeavors resolute. To reach perception of the utmost soul, and grace to understand what gain it were, so to attain. This is true wisdom, Prince, and what is otherwise is ignorance. Ever fight ceaselessly against his own selfishness, and strives to supplant it with all-embracing love, is a saint, whether he live in a cottage or in the midst of riches and influence, or whether he preaches or remains obscure. To the worldling who is beginning to aspire towards higher things, the saint, such as sweet St. Francis of Assisi, or a conquering St. Anthony, is a glorious and inspiring spectacle. To the saint, unequally enrapturing sight is that of the sage, sitting serene and holy, the conqueror of sin and sorrow, no more tormented by regret and remorse, and whom even temptation can never reach. And yet even the sage is drawn on, by a still more glorious vision, that of the saviour, actively manifesting his knowledge in selfless works, and rendering his divinity more potent for good, by sinking himself in the throbbing, sorrowing, aspiring heart of mankind. And this only is true service. To forget oneself in love towards all, to lose oneself in working for the whole, O thou vain and foolish man, who think us that thy many works can save thee, who chain to all error, talk as loudly of thyself, thy work and thy many sacrifices, and magnificent thine own importance, know this, that though thy fame fill the whole earth, all thy work shall come to dust, and thou thyself be reckoned lower than the least in the kingdom of truth. Only the work that is impersonal can live. The works of self are both powerless and perishable. Where duties, howsoever humble, are done without self-interest, and with joyful sacrifice, there is true service, and enduring work. Where deeds, however brilliant and apparently successful, are done from love of self, there is ignorance of the law of service, and the work parishes. It is given to the world to learn one great and divine lesson, the lesson of absolute unselfishness. The saints, sages and saviors of all time, are they who have submitted themselves to this task, and have learned and lived it. All the scriptures of the world are framed to teach this one lesson. All the great teachers reiterate it. It is too simple for the world, which, scorning it, stumbles along in the complex ways of selfishness. A pure heart is the end of all religion and the beginning of divinity. To search for this righteousness is to walk the way of truth and peace, and he who enters this way will soon perceive that immortality, which is independent of birth and death, and will realize that in divine economy of the universe the humblest effort is not lost. The divinity of a Krishna, a Gautama, or a Jesus, is the crowning glory of self-abnegation, the end of the soul's pilgrimage in matter and mortality, and the world will not have finished its long journey until every soul has become as these, and has entered into the blissful realization of its own divinity. Great glory crowns the heights of hope by arduous struggle one. Bright honor rounds the hoary head that mighty works hath done. Fair riches come to him who strives in ways of golden gain, and fame enshrines his name, who works with genius glowing brain. But greater glory waits for him, who in the bloodless strife gains self and wrong adopts in love the sacrificial life, and brighter honor rounds the brow of him who mid the scorns of blind idolaters of self accepts the crown of thorns. And fairer, purer riches come to him who greatly strives to walk in ways of love and truth to sweeten human lives, and he who serveth well mankind exchanges fleeting fame for light eternal, joy and peace and robes of heavenly flame. End of CHAPTER VI


Greetings, friends. Welcome to CTUCC Conference Cast for February 27, 2015, the regular podcast of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. Whoever you are and wherever you may be on life's journey at this very moment, you are welcome here. The video edition returns this week in order to best include one of our stories, and you'll find out more about that later in the podcast. We begin this week's conference cast with this meditation from the Reverend Eric Anderson, Associate Conference Minister for Proclamation, Identity and Communication, and your podcast host. In the eighth chapter of Mark's Gospel, Peter objects when Jesus predicts a hostile reception from the chief religious leaders in Jerusalem.  One of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies is Doug, the cheerful golden retriever in the 2009 Disney Pixar animated movie Up. A creature of indefatigable high spirits and loyal charity, the only thing that distracts him is the presence or mere mention of one particular creature, a squirrel. And it's not just Doug. All the dogs in the film, the moment a squirrel is mentioned, immediately freeze, point, and stare at some random spot where a squirrel might be. Squirrel sounds the call, and abruptly everything stops. It's the best distraction of all time. In my office, there are days which Associate Editor Drew Page and I declare with shaking heads to be squirrel days. They're those days that are filled with distractions, phone calls, emails, questions, problems, computers crashing and gadgets misbehaving. We strive to put our heads into a project and suddenly another item clamors for attention. When we've cleared that emergency away, we go back to what we were doing, to find that the slightest movement in the room or in our minds will sweep us away from that and leave us staring helplessly at the spot where that benighted squirrel must be. That's a squirrel day. When Jesus starts to warn his friends about the coming trial he will face, he must have felt like he was surrounded by dugs and dogs, all fascinated by a squirrel. They'll give their attention to anything except what he just said. Peter, who clearly had a talent for denial, seeks to distract Jesus by taking him aside and contradicting him. I can almost hear him shouting squirrel. But Jesus may have had the greatest capacity for focus of all time. No, he says. And please bear with my paraphrase here. I will not be distracted. There aren't any squirrels here. There's who I am and there's what I must do. There's what I will do and there's what will happen because I do it. And there's what I summon you to do. Keep your eye on the prize. Don't be fascinated by distractions. Don't be deterred by risk. I'm going ahead. Get behind me. Watch my steps and follow. The crises, the cacophony, the craziness, lay them aside. Follow me. No squirrels. Here is a prayer for this week. Everyone, we do not possess your power of focus. We grant priority to the strangest things. Some are pleasures, some misdeeds. So we ever pray to you for guidance through the disorder of existence, to do and to strive in harmony with your will, and to pass the chattering squirrels, leaving them aside. Amen. And the news this week. The 40 days of Lent have begun with Ash Wednesday observances in Connecticut's churches last week. Some congregations gathered with others, as First Church of Christ UCC in Simsbury did with the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church of Hartford. Metropolitan AMEZ's associate pastor, the Reverend Shirley Moon Childs, delivered the good news of Christ's overflowing love from Simsbury's pulpit. Further west and south, five UCC congregations shared worship and ashes together. The United Church of Christ in Southbury, the South Britain Congregational Church UCC, the Roxbury Congregational Church UCC, First Congregational Church UCC of Woodbury, and North Congregational Church UCC also of Woodbury. Four more churches in the Nehaven area gathered in a large circle at Church of the Redeemer UCC in the Elm City. And in Hartford during the day, pastors by accepted the mark of ashes from pastors, the Reverend DeMaris Whitaker and the Reverend Joseph Bradley, as those two braved the February chill before the front steps of Center Church UCC. Whether administered on the street or in a sanctuary, during the bright light of day or the shadows of evening. These ashes served as reminders both of the power of God who created life from dust and of our human mortality, which God's grace transforms through Christ. Moral Monday Connecticut, inspired by the campaigns in North Carolina in support of marriage equality and in Ferguson, Missouri against police violence, held its first action at Hartford City Hall this past Monday. Just over 25 participated in a die-in after marching from Christchurch Episcopal just down Main Street. Hartford police directed protesters to leave the street as they returned to the cathedral. And for some tense minutes, officers actually entered the church for conversations with organizers, Bishop John Selders of Amistad UCC and the Reverend Stephen Camp of Faith Congregational Church UCC, both of the capital city. There were no arrests and organizers planned further actions in other cities around the state in coming months. Also on Monday, the Connecticut conference launched its first crowdsourced funding campaign to develop the leadership studio, a meeting space here at United Church Center in Hartford that will facilitate resource sharing and skills building both here and in the virtual world. But let's turn to the Reverend Kent Salati and the Reverend David McAllister to tell you more about it. Vision, purpose, inspiration, direction, comprehension, connection, imagination, interdependence, conceiving a better way to be, perceiving a path to get there, energizing and engaging others to join in the work. These are the elements of leadership. We're creating a new tool to empower the leaders of the Connecticut conference. It's a space we call the leadership studio where we can gather clergy and lay ministers of the state to learn and grow so that our congregations can learn and grow. It's a real space for gathering in the real world and it will be a virtual space for gathering in the virtual world in real time. We'll create video resources here. We've already begun producing two video series, vantage point and conference cast right here in the leadership studio. But we need help to get this studio fully functioning. We need to patch some holes in the wall. We need curtains to control light and street noise. We need a screen and cameras for holding video conferences. We need sound equipment so you'll hear every word. Our financial goal, $15,000. Our real goal, engaged, empowered, inspired leaders in the Connecticut conference, shepherding vital congregations who serve the people of their communities, building toward the kingdom of God. Thank you for your help. As of this Friday morning, contributors have already given just shy of $3,000. This micro campaign runs until March 31st. You can learn more about all these stories and contribute to the leadership studio campaign by visiting us at ctucc.org slash news. Learn about radical hospitality with youth, a stepping stones workshop which will be held March 9th in South Glastonbury. All the stepping stones workshops are described at ctucc.org slash stepping stones. Clergy and lay people have a truly valuable opportunity to learn about the ethics of ministry and church life with the UCC's general counsel, Don Clark. During his visit with us over the weekend, there's a workshop for clergy the morning of March 13th in Southington. And you can see clergy ethics, the musical that evening in South Glastonbury. Reviews from those who've seen it are fantastic. So don't miss it if you can possibly be there. On Saturday the 14th, Don Clark will lead a workshop on governing boards and safe conduct policies for church lay leaders in Middlefield. Make sure to reserve your place for these special events. Young people have an opportunity to prepare to be a counselor in training at Silver Lake with a weekend conference March 13th through 15th. Registration is open for Super Saturday. This day of workshops features keynote speaker, the Reverend Ruben Duran, who promotes new church development for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This joint venture with the Massachusetts conference will be held at March 21st in Ludlow, Massachusetts. The women's yoga and spirit retreat is at Silver Lake March 27th through the 29th, as is the maple sugary weekend for young people of middle school age. Stepping Stones offers part one of keeping our churches safe on April 9th in Hartford. Registration is also open for stewardship in the changing church from consumerism to generosity. This year's Ecumenical Stewardship event, which runs April 17th and 18th in Boxborough, Massachusetts. Silver Lake's spring action weekend is May 1st through 3rd at our outdoor ministry center in Sharon. And the conference youth revival is May 3rd in Bloomfield. Registration is also open for the New England Association of United Church Educators event, running May 5th through 7th in Craigville, Massachusetts. To learn more about these events or to register, visit us at ctucc.org slash events. Our spirited Wednesday thought comes from the Reverend Jack Shackles, pastor of the Taftville Congregational Church, UCC. Raised not to question authority, he has come to wonder when he's disappointed with God if God can cope. He writes, no lightning strike, no heavenly paddle. Can it be that God's love for me can bear even my disappointment? My disappointments, failures, or frustrations are transformed into hope and trust. And if I am still and quiet, I will hear God's voice again. Call me, beloved. And that brings this conference cast to a close. Thanks to you for listening and to GarageBand for our music. Primary funding for conference cast comes from your congregation's gifts to our church's wider mission, basic support, changing lives through the United Church of Christ. This is Eric Anderson, the associate conference minister for proclamation, identity, and communication for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, praying that your days this week may be filled with the presence, the guidance, and the grace of God.