🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀
✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj
CHAPTER 3 - THE FIRST RULE
🌻 KILL OUT AMBITION - Work as those work who are ambitious - 17 🌻
171. C.W.L. – Having put aside ambition for himself the man is then told to work as those work who are ambitious. There are usually three stages through which men pass. There is, first of all, the work for worldly result. Then comes the stage when the man begins to work, still for a result, but for a heavenly result.
That is put very much before us by the different churches. We are to give up this world to live for ever in heaven; we shall stand nearest to God’s throne, and so on. Most people pass through these two stages of working first for the worldly result and then for the heavenly result.
Some of them somewhat improve upon that second idea, because they work in order to please their Deity. Many Christians, for example, work for the love of Jesus, and that is admirable because it is unselfish; it is a higher stage than to work for a personal result, even though it be a heavenly one.
172. There is still a higher stage, that of doing the work for the work’s sake, but most people do not understand that yet. Many artists do; there are artists who work for the sake of art in whatever their line may be.
As one great poet said: “I do but sing because I must.” He meant that he must express that which came through him as a message to the world. Another, feeling the same thing, said that he- valued his poems not because they were his own, but because they were not.
So there are some who work for the sake of art – not for themselves or for their own renown, not to please other people, not even to please God as that idea would be commonly understood, but because they feel the message coming through them and they must give it. That is a high stage to have attained.
173. Then there is the highest stage of all, when a man works because he is part of the Deity and as part of Him he desires the fulfilment of the divine Plan.
People sometimes delude themselves and think they are working for that when they have still a considerable flavour of the lower ideas about them. We can always test ourselves with regard to that – best, perhaps, when we happen to fail, which occurs at times to all of us.
As our great President has often explained, if we are really working definitely and knowingly as part of the Deity, as part of the whole, we are not in the least disturbed by any failure that comes to us, because we know that God cannot fail. If for the time being a certain activity appears to be a failure, that is in the scheme and so is a necessary thing, and therefore is not really a failure.
Nothing can be a failure from His point of view, so we are not in the least distressed. The only question would be as to whether it was our fault; but if we have done our best and the thing is still a failure, we know that all is well.
174. Such considerations as these must not, however, cause us to become negligent or indifferent to time. It is part of our work to convert others from the doctrine of inertia to the path of service, and even one such gain means that some distinct advantage has been achieved for the world. Whatever is, is best certainly, but only when we have done our best.
If there is anybody who has failed to do his best in his share of that work, then whatever is, is not best, because it might have been better. It is only when we have done absolutely all, that we have the right to take refuge in that. “Well, I have done everything I can.
If after all I am not successful, I bow to a higher power than mine.” I am very sure that that which has been done is after all not lost, and whatever happens to all these people in the end is really what is best for them.
Continues...
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26 Nov 2020
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