Self-Development and the Way to PowerRogers, L. W. (Louis William)
Religion
Self-Development and the Way to Power
Rogers, L. W. (Louis William)
Theosophy
People who fail to assert the will and bring the body into complete
subjection probably little realize what a price they pay for a
trifling physical pleasure; for until we voluntarily take the right
course we have not escaped the evolutionary necessity of compulsion
and may reasonably expect sooner or later to be thrown into an
environment that will apply the stimulus we still need to arouse the
will. It may be unpleasant while it is occurring, but what better
fortune could befall an indolent man than to find himself in
circumstances where his poverty or other necessity compels him to
subordinate bodily comfort to the reign of the will? Nature provides
the lessons we require. We may wisely co-operate with her and thus
escape the sting. But so long as we need the lesson we may be quite
sure that it awaits us.
All the business activities of the world are developing the will.
Through them will and desire work together in evolving latent powers.
Desire arouses will power. A man desires wealth and the desire plunges
him into business activities and stimulates the will by which he
overcomes all the difficulties that lie in his way. Ardent desire for
an education arouses the will of the student and the awakened will
triumphs over poverty and all other barriers between him and the
coveted diploma. If a man stands at a lower point in evolution where
he has not the ambition for intellectual culture nor for fame nor for
wealth, but only the desire for shelter and food, still that primitive
desire forces him into action; and while his will power will be
evolved only in proportion to the strength of the desire that prompts
him, it must nevertheless grow. Instead of rising at a certain hour
because the will decrees it he may rise only because he knows his
livelihood depends upon it. But he is learning the same lesson--the
overcoming of the inertia of the physical body--albeit it is
compulsory instead of voluntary. But all this is unconscious
evolution. It is the long, slow, painful process. It is the only way
possible for those who are not wise enough to co-operate with nature
in her evolutionary work and thus rise above the necessity of
compulsion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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