Rodan of Alexandria

160:3.1The ef­fort to­ward ma­tu­rity ne­ces­si­tates work, and work re­quires en­ergy. Whence the power to ac­com­plish all this? The phys­i­cal things can be taken for granted, but the Mas­ter has well said, “Man can­not live by bread alone.” Granted the pos­ses­sion of a nor­mal body and rea­son­ably good health, we must next look for those lures which will act as a stim­u­lus to call forth man’s slum­ber­ing spir­i­tual forces. Je­sus has taught us that God lives in man; then how can we in­duce man to re­lease these soul-bound pow­ers of di­vin­ity and in­fin­ity? How shall we in­duce men to let go of God that he may spring forth to the re­fresh­ment of our own souls while in tran­sit out­ward and then to serve the pur­pose of en­light­en­ing, up­lift­ing, and bless­ing count­less other souls? How best can I awaken these la­tent pow­ers for good which lie dor­mant in your souls? One thing I am sure of: Emo­tional ex­cite­ment is not the ideal spir­i­tual stim­u­lus. Ex­cite­ment does not aug­ment en­ergy; it rather ex­hausts the pow­ers of both mind and body. Whence then comes the en­ergy to do these great things? Look to your Mas­ter. Even now he is out in the hills tak­ing in power while we are here giv­ing out en­ergy. The se­cret of all this prob­lem is wrapped up in spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, in wor­ship. From the hu­man stand­point it is a ques­tion of com­bined med­i­ta­tion and re­lax­ation. Med­i­ta­tion makes the con­tact of mind with spirit; re­lax­ation de­ter­mines the ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity. And this in­ter­change of strength for weak­ness, cour­age for fear, the will of God for the mind of self, con­sti­tutes wor­ship. At least, that is the way the philoso­pher views it.

160:3.2When these ex­pe­ri­ences are fre­quently re­peated, they crys­tal­lize into habits, strength-giv­ing and wor­ship­ful habits, and such habits even­tu­ally for­mu­late them­selves into a spir­i­tual char­ac­ter, and such a char­ac­ter is fi­nally rec­og­nized by one’s fel­lows as a ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These prac­tices are dif­fi­cult and time-con­sum­ing at first, but when they be­come ha­bit­ual, they are at once rest­ful and time­sav­ing. The more com­plex so­ci­ety be­comes, and the more the lures of civ­i­liza­tion mul­ti­ply, the more ur­gent will be­come the ne­ces­sity for God-know­ing in­di­vid­u­als to form such pro­tec­tive ha­bit­ual prac­tices de­signed to con­serve and aug­ment their spir­i­tual en­er­gies.

160:3.3An­other re­quire­ment for the at­tain­ment of ma­tu­rity is the co-op­er­a­tive ad­just­ment of so­cial groups to an ever-chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment. The im­ma­ture in­di­vid­ual arouses the an­tag­o­nisms of his fel­lows; the ma­ture man wins the hearty co-op­er­a­tion of his as­so­ciates, thereby many times mul­ti­ply­ing the fruits of his life ef­forts.

160:3.4My phi­los­o­phy tells me that there are times when I must fight, if need be, for the de­fense of my con­cept of righ­teous­ness, but I doubt not that the Mas­ter, with a more ma­ture type of per­son­al­ity, would eas­ily and grace­fully gain an equal vic­tory by his su­pe­rior and win­some tech­nique of tact and tol­er­ance. All too of­ten, when we bat­tle for the right, it turns out that both the vic­tor and the van­quished have sus­tained de­feat. I heard the Mas­ter say only yes­ter­day that the “wise man, when seek­ing en­trance through the locked door, would not de­stroy the door but rather would seek for the key where­with to un­lock it.” Too of­ten we en­gage in a fight merely to con­vince our­selves that we are not afraid.

160:3.5This new gospel of the king­dom ren­ders a great ser­vice to the art of liv­ing in that it sup­plies a new and richer in­cen­tive for higher liv­ing. It pre­sents a new and ex­alted goal of des­tiny, a su­preme life pur­pose. And these new con­cepts of the eter­nal and di­vine goal of ex­is­tence are in them­selves tran­scen­dent stim­uli, call­ing forth the re­ac­tion of the very best that is res­i­dent in man’s higher na­ture. On ev­ery moun­tain­top of in­tel­lec­tual thought are to be found re­lax­ation for the mind, strength for the soul, and com­mu­nion for the spirit. From such van­tage points of high liv­ing, man is able to tran­scend the ma­te­rial ir­ri­ta­tions of the lower lev­els of think­ing—worry, jeal­ousy, envy, re­venge, and the pride of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These high-climb­ing souls de­liver them­selves from a mul­ti­tude of the cross­cur­rent con­flicts of the tri­fles of liv­ing, thus be­com­ing free to at­tain con­scious­ness of the higher cur­rents of spirit con­cept and ce­les­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the life pur­pose must be jeal­ously guarded from the temp­ta­tion to seek for easy and tran­sient at­tain­ment; like­wise must it be so fos­tered as to be­come im­mune to the dis­as­trous threats of fa­nati­cism.