LIGHT ON THE PATH - 43 : Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 5

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 43 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 2nd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 5 🌻

193. When we see a man showing selfishness and greed and lack of self-control, we say: “What a pity!” Yet it is a pity only in the same sense that we might say that it is a pity that a little child of four has not grown up to be a man.

If we allow ourselves to be uncontrolled, or to show greed and selfishness we might feel a sort of contempt for ourselves, because we know better, but it would be wrong to feel that for any other man.

If it seems that he ought to be doing better, probably he has not taken advantage of his opportunities; then we should feel sorry for him and try to help him, when we can, to see the better side, the higher possibilities, but it is the greatest mistake to draw away from him, though we cannot always help feeling repugnance towards the things that he does.

For example, if a man gets drunk it is because he is at that stage. He is a younger soul, therefore it is possible for him to yield to temptation of that kind instead of making a stand against it, as he ought to do.

In many cases he has tried, perhaps, but be has so far failed. All that we can do to help him should be thoroughly and entirely at his disposal, but we must not feel repugnance for him. It is the old Christian idea; we may hate the sin but we must be sorry for the sinner, otherwise we are doing worse than he, because we are losing the sense of brotherhood and destroying our power to help.

194. The one Life is behind all and we must respect it even in manifestations which we dislike and feel to be undesirable. We must never forget that it is divine. It is difficult to remember that sometimes when the things that are done are so very ungodlike; nevertheless we must try.

It is the old idea of the hidden Life, which was taught to us in the Egyptian mysteries thousands of years ago. The hidden Life was in every man, and however deeply it was buried and however little it showed forth, we were always to remember that it was there, even when we could not see it.

The hidden light in us could not shine upon and evoke the hidden light in another at once, but if we were sufficiently patient and sufficiently forceful we must call forth a response, sometime and somehow. In these days we put the teaching in somewhat different terms, but it is equally true now as then.

195. The man who lives in the Eternal sees what will be as well as what now is, and when he looks at a manifestation of Life which is eminently undesirable he says: “Yes, at present, from the point of view of time, that is what I see it to be – a low and unworthy manifestation; but the divine Life in sit will some day blossom out.” Many people do not think how very illusory a thing the present is. No sooner have we thought of it than it has passed.

We say: “Such and such a thing is in existence at present,” and while we are uttering the words that present moment has become the past. In reality there is no such time as the present; it is a kind of knife-edge between the past and future; it is merely a term which we use for convenience – the thing itself is shifting every second of time. v-

We must read the future into the present, and see what will be. If we could only get out of these bodies and these brains for a few moments into an altogether higher life and look down upon it, we should understand this matter exactly.

We should see that by thinking of that future we make it more easily attainable for the present. If we look at a man who is definitely sinning, and think of his sin, we fold that sin more closely about him, but if we look at him and think of the future, when he will have risen out of it, we open the way to that future for, him, and bring it more within his reach.

Continues...

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04 Dec 2020