Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Only insanity could confuse brute force with power.

And yet there is enough heroism on earth today to turn earth into a heaven. If the energy and time that have been wasted in warlike preperations had been given to preparations for peace, our nations would be stronger now than ever they were and infintely better protected.  The soul of a nation----the living essence of its being----is the aggregation of its thoughts, feelings, actions, and ideals, backed by the divine quality of the god within.  To the dergee that the people of any country nourish their national soul with thought of that spiriual and god like kind, to that degree their country is protected, beyond the reach of violation.  Look at it rationally and you must see that this is truth; but hug your mind and heart the old contemptible fallacy that moral victories can be won by force and you will go on being duped by foolishness and creating misery for yourself by sowing the seeds of war. 

Nation against nation, brother against brother, and family against family, we shall  be at war as long as we place dependence on our lower natures----on physical force or on selfish interest----for the adjustment of those affairs which can only be settled by the spiritual side of man's nature.  We are the progeny, spiritually as well as physically, of our ancestors as they are of theirs.  Century after century men have been living in ignorance and with faces, turned away from the universal plan of life, which is brotherhood----an ideal we might uphold, one would think, with at least half the interest we take in our narrow nationalisms and proccupations with war. The influence of the past lies dark on the present.  For ages humanity his been accustoming itself to unbrotherliness, selfishness, and injustice, and men have been growing, not nearer together, but farther apart.   

This is true of all, so that when war breaks out we have no right to blame this or that man or nation.  We must do way with this sitting in judgement on our neighbors if we are to find the divine light in our selves.  We cannot draw upon, we cannot support or awaken the soul, the part that is worthwhile, in our own nation while our minds are so busied concerning themselves with the faults and various failings of some other nation.  Those who have learded to distinguish between the mortal and the immortal within themselves are the most charitable people on earth: they know how easy it is for one unacquainted with his own divine nature to drift in the wrong direction. 

Many are ready enough to see the duality in another but are blind to it in themselves: they will not disciminate between the two sides, nor recognize as such the obstacles that eternally overthrow them, or they would be free from the vice of faultfinding.  There only adverce criticism would be for themselves, and hence they would have freedom of spirit and enlightment of the mind. 

Men and nations, it is this continual thought of self that is our undoing.  We excuse ourselves; often we believe that we would scrifice our very lives for humanity when really we would not sacrifice the smallest whim.  Sometimes some insignifcant personal desire may turn the whole nature and add unspeakable weight to the burden of the future, and we cannot see it and have no notion it is weighing us down.   We sow the seeds of our misfortions in the moments when we can not sacrifice the small things we have set our hearts on. 

We should not stand in awe at the presumption of our fellows if they excused in themselves what we excuse lightly enough in ourselves because, as we think, we stand well in others respects.  We lay up burdens for ourselves with little unexpected things we hide away in our mental life and think are of little moment.  We cannot imagine they can grow to anything in us, and so we hold onto them.  But it is the little disturbing influences that break down the most magnificent enterprises, and petty evils eat away the heart-life of man.  There never was a mob yet but one or two began it; then came two or three more, and then others and others, until what had gathered together you would think composed not of human beings but of lunatics.  And as it is with individuals so it is with nations.  Great empires have fallen disinegrarted by the small selfishtnesses of insignficant people; and the neglect of some duty by one man, may defeat the progress of a nation. 

Self-analysis should bring us to an inexhaustible compassion.  We should have it in mind always that every living thing is an expession of the infinite, no matter what its outward aspects may be.  Our suposed enemies, or men or nations that we blame, have been educated, as we have, to look on life wholly from the outside.  It has been impressed on us all, generation by generation, till the taint runs in our very blood and being, that conquest by force is sometimes possible and legitimate.  And now we have quite forgotten the spiritual powers by which alone success can be achieved. 


              Thank you Katherine Tingley.   One truth, many paths.  Be good, do good.

                                                         Louis DiVirgilio

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