What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and HappinessTrine, Ralph Waldo
Religion
What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness
Trine, Ralph Waldo
Character; Christian life; Conduct of life
Yes, we are at life from the wrong side. We have been giving all time
and attention to the mere physical, the material, the external, the mere
outward means of expression and the things that pertain thereto, thus
missing the real life; and this we have called living, and seem, indeed,
to be satisfied with the results. No wonder the cry has gone out again
and again from many a human soul, Is life worth the living? But from one
who has once commenced to _live_, this cry never has, nor can it ever
come; for, _when the kingdom is once found, life then ceases to be a
plodding, and becomes an exultation, an ecstasy, a joy_. Yes, you will
find that all the evil, all the error, all the disease, all the
suffering, all the fears, all the forebodings of life, are on the side
of the physical, the material, the transient; while all the peace, all
the joy, all the happiness, all the growth, all the life, all the rich,
exulting, abounding life, is on the side of the spiritual, the
ever-increasing, the eternal,--that that never changes, that has no end.
Instead of crying out against the destiny of fate, let us cry out
against the destiny of self, or rather against the destiny of the
mistaken self; for everything that comes to us comes through causes
which we ourselves or those before us have set into operation. Nothing
comes by chance, for _in all the wide universe there is absolutely no
such thing as chance_. We bring whatever comes. Are we not satisfied
with the effects, the results? The thing then to do, is to change the
causes; for we have everything in our own hands the moment we awake to a
recognition of the true self.
We make our own heaven or our own hell, and the only heaven or hell that
will ever be ours is that of our own making. The order of the universe
is one thing: we take our lives out of harmony with and so pervert the
laws under which we live, and make it another. The order is the all
good. We pervert the laws, and what we call evil is the result,--simply
the result of the violation of law; and we then wonder that a just and
loving God could permit such and such things. We wonder at what we term
the "strange, inscrutable dispensations of Providence," when all is of
our own making. We can be our own best friends or we can be our own
worst enemies; and the only real enemy one can ever have is the self,
the very self.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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