Rodan of Alexandria

160:4.1While you have an eye sin­gle to the at­tain­ment of eter­nal re­al­i­ties, you must also make pro­vi­sion for the ne­ces­si­ties of tem­po­ral liv­ing. While the spirit is our goal, the flesh is a fact. Oc­ca­sion­ally the ne­ces­si­ties of liv­ing may fall into our hands by ac­ci­dent, but in gen­eral, we must in­tel­li­gently work for them. The two ma­jor prob­lems of life are: mak­ing a tem­po­ral liv­ing and the achieve­ment of eter­nal sur­vival. And even the prob­lem of mak­ing a liv­ing re­quires re­li­gion for its ideal so­lu­tion. These are both highly per­sonal prob­lems. True re­li­gion, in fact, does not func­tion apart from the in­di­vid­ual.

160:4.2The es­sen­tials of the tem­po­ral life, as I see them, are:

160:4.31. Good phys­i­cal health.

160:4.42. Clear and clean think­ing.

160:4.53. Abil­ity and skill.

160:4.64. Wealth—the goods of life.

160:4.75. Abil­ity to with­stand de­feat.

160:4.86. Cul­ture—ed­u­ca­tion and wis­dom.

160:4.9Even the phys­i­cal prob­lems of bod­ily health and ef­fi­ciency are best solved when they are viewed from the re­li­gious stand­point of our Mas­ter’s teach­ing: That the body and mind of man are the dwell­ing place of the gift of the Gods, the spirit of God be­com­ing the spirit of man. The mind of man thus be­comes the me­di­a­tor be­tween ma­te­rial things and spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties.

160:4.10It re­quires in­tel­li­gence to se­cure one’s share of the de­sir­able things of life. It is wholly er­ro­neous to sup­pose that faith­ful­ness in do­ing one’s daily work will in­sure the re­wards of wealth. Bar­ring the oc­ca­sional and ac­ci­den­tal ac­quire­ment of wealth, the ma­te­rial re­wards of the tem­po­ral life are found to flow in cer­tain well-or­ga­nized chan­nels, and only those who have ac­cess to these chan­nels may ex­pect to be well re­warded for their tem­po­ral ef­forts. Pov­erty must ever be the lot of all men who seek for wealth in iso­lated and in­di­vid­ual chan­nels. Wise plan­ning, there­fore, be­comes the one thing es­sen­tial to worldly pros­per­ity. Suc­cess re­quires not only de­vo­tion to one’s work but also that one should func­tion as a part of some one of the chan­nels of ma­te­rial wealth. If you are un­wise, you can be­stow a de­voted life upon your gen­er­a­tion with­out ma­te­rial re­ward; if you are an ac­ci­den­tal ben­e­fi­ciary of the flow of wealth, you may roll in lux­ury even though you have done noth­ing worth while for your fel­low men.

160:4.11Abil­ity is that which you in­herit, while skill is what you ac­quire. Life is not real to one who can­not do some one thing well, ex­pertly. Skill is one of the real sources of the sat­is­fac­tion of liv­ing. Abil­ity im­plies the gift of fore­sight, farsee­ing vi­sion. Be not de­ceived by the tempt­ing re­wards of dis­hon­est achieve­ment; be will­ing to toil for the later re­turns in­her­ent in hon­est en­deavor. The wise man is able to dis­tin­guish be­tween means and ends; oth­er­wise, some­times over­plan­ning for the fu­ture de­feats its own high pur­pose. As a plea­sure seeker you should aim al­ways to be a pro­ducer as well as a con­sumer.

160:4.12Train your mem­ory to hold in sa­cred trust the strength-giv­ing and worth-while episodes of life, which you can re­call at will for your plea­sure and ed­i­fi­ca­tion. Thus build up for your­self and in your­self re­serve gal­leries of beauty, good­ness, and artis­tic grandeur. But the no­blest of all mem­o­ries are the trea­sured rec­ol­lec­tions of the great mo­ments of a su­perb friend­ship. And all of these mem­ory trea­sures ra­di­ate their most pre­cious and ex­alt­ing in­flu­ences un­der the re­leas­ing touch of spir­i­tual wor­ship.

160:4.13But life will be­come a bur­den of ex­is­tence un­less you learn how to fail grace­fully. There is an art in de­feat which no­ble souls al­ways ac­quire; you must know how to lose cheer­fully; you must be fear­less of dis­ap­point­ment. Never hes­i­tate to ad­mit fail­ure. Make no at­tempt to hide fail­ure un­der de­cep­tive smiles and beam­ing op­ti­mism. It sounds well al­ways to claim suc­cess, but the end re­sults are ap­palling. Such a tech­nique leads di­rectly to the cre­ation of a world of un­re­al­ity and to the in­ev­i­ta­ble crash of ul­ti­mate dis­il­lu­sion­ment.

160:4.14Suc­cess may gen­er­ate cour­age and pro­mote con­fi­dence, but wis­dom comes only from the ex­pe­ri­ences of ad­just­ment to the re­sults of one’s fail­ures. Men who pre­fer op­ti­mistic il­lu­sions to re­al­ity can never be­come wise. Only those who face facts and ad­just them to ide­als can achieve wis­dom. Wis­dom em­braces both the fact and the ideal and there­fore saves its devo­tees from both of those bar­ren ex­tremes of phi­los­o­phy—the man whose ide­al­ism ex­cludes facts and the ma­te­ri­al­ist who is de­void of spir­i­tual out­look. Those timid souls who can only keep up the strug­gle of life by the aid of con­tin­u­ous false il­lu­sions of suc­cess are doomed to suf­fer fail­ure and ex­pe­ri­ence de­feat as they ul­ti­mately awaken from the dream world of their own imag­i­na­tions.

160:4.15And it is in this busi­ness of fac­ing fail­ure and ad­just­ing to de­feat that the far-reach­ing vi­sion of re­li­gion ex­erts its su­preme in­flu­ence. Fail­ure is sim­ply an ed­u­ca­tional episode—a cul­tural ex­per­i­ment in the ac­quire­ment of wis­dom—in the ex­pe­ri­ence of the God-seek­ing man who has em­barked on the eter­nal ad­ven­ture of the ex­plo­ration of a uni­verse. To such men de­feat is but a new tool for the achieve­ment of higher lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity.

160:4.16The ca­reer of a God-seek­ing man may prove to be a great suc­cess in the light of eter­nity, even though the whole tem­po­ral-life en­ter­prise may ap­pear as an over­whelm­ing fail­ure, pro­vided each life fail­ure yielded the cul­ture of wis­dom and spirit achieve­ment. Do not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing knowl­edge, cul­ture, and wis­dom. They are re­lated in life, but they rep­re­sent vastly dif­fer­ing spirit val­ues; wis­dom ever dom­i­nates knowl­edge and al­ways glo­ri­fies cul­ture.