defeat

48:6.35From them you will learn to let pres­sure de­velop sta­bil­ity and cer­tainty; to be faith­ful and earnest and, withal, cheer­ful; to ac­cept chal­lenges with­out com­plaint and to face dif­fi­cul­ties and un­cer­tain­ties with­out fear. They will ask: If you fail, will you rise in­domitably to try anew? If you suc­ceed, will you main­tain a well-bal­anced poise—a sta­bi­lized and spir­i­tu­al­ized at­ti­tude—through­out ev­ery ef­fort in the long strug­gle to break the fet­ters of ma­te­rial in­er­tia, to at­tain the free­dom of spirit ex­is­tence?

176:3.9And how much like all self­ish mor­tals was this un­faith­ful ser­vant with the one tal­ent in that he blamed his sloth­ful­ness di­rectly upon his lord. How prone is man, when he is con­fronted with the fail­ures of his own mak­ing, to put the blame upon oth­ers, of­ten­times upon those who least de­serve it!

193:4.73. He never ac­quired a philo­sophic tech­nique for meet­ing dis­ap­point­ment. In­stead of ac­cept­ing dis­ap­point­ments as a reg­u­lar and com­mon­place fea­ture of hu­man ex­is­tence, he un­fail­ingly re­sorted to the prac­tice of blam­ing some­one in par­tic­u­lar, or his as­so­ciates as a group, for all his per­sonal dif­fi­cul­ties and dis­ap­point­ments.

25:8.9Many ad­di­tional ser­vices are per­formed by the Par­a­dise Com­pan­ions: If an as­cend­ing mor­tal should reach the cen­tral uni­verse alone and, while travers­ing Ha­vona, should fail in some phase of the De­ity ad­ven­ture, in due course he would be re­manded to the uni­verses of time, and forth­with a call would be made to the re­serves of the Par­a­dise Com­pan­ions. One of this or­der would be as­signed to fol­low the de­feated pil­grim, to be with him and to com­fort and cheer him, and to re­main with him un­til he re­turned to the cen­tral uni­verse to re­sume the Par­a­dise as­cent.

25:8.10If an as­cend­ing pil­grim met de­feat in the De­ity ad­ven­ture while travers­ing Ha­vona in the com­pany of an as­cend­ing ser­a­phim, the guard­ian an­gel of the mor­tal ca­reer, she would elect to ac­com­pany her mor­tal as­so­ciate. These ser­a­phim al­ways vol­un­teer and are per­mit­ted to ac­com­pany their long-time mor­tal com­rades back to the ser­vice of time and space.

25:8.11But not so with two closely as­so­ci­ated mor­tal as­cend­ers: If one at­tains God while the other tem­porar­ily fails, the suc­cess­ful in­di­vid­ual in­vari­ably chooses to go back to the evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ations with the dis­ap­pointed per­son­al­ity, but this is not per­mit­ted. In­stead, a call is made to the re­serves of the Par­a­dise Com­pan­ions, and one of the vol­un­teers is se­lected to ac­com­pany the dis­ap­pointed pil­grim. A vol­un­teer Par­a­dise Cit­i­zen then be­comes as­so­ci­ated with the suc­cess­ful mor­tal, who tar­ries on the cen­tral Isle await­ing the Ha­vona re­turn of the de­feated com­rade and in the mean­time teaches in cer­tain Par­a­dise schools, pre­sent­ing the ad­ven­tur­ous story of the evo­lu­tion­ary as­cent.

26:3.96. The Trans­port Per­son­al­i­ties. These be­ings, of ori­gin on cir­cuit num­ber six, usu­ally op­er­ate from planet num­ber forty in the out­er­most cir­cuit. It is they who take away the dis­ap­pointed can­di­dates who tran­siently fail in the De­ity ad­ven­ture. They stand ready to serve all who must come and go in the ser­vice of Ha­vona, and who are not space tra­versers.

149:4.4And then Je­sus dis­coursed on the dan­gers of cour­age and faith, how they some­times lead un­think­ing souls on to reck­less­ness and pre­sump­tion. He also showed how pru­dence and dis­cre­tion, when car­ried too far, lead to cow­ardice and fail­ure. He ex­horted his hear­ers to strive for orig­i­nal­ity while they shunned all ten­dency to­ward ec­cen­tric­ity. He pleaded for sym­pa­thy with­out sen­ti­men­tal­ity, piety with­out sanc­ti­mo­nious­ness. He taught rev­er­ence free from fear and su­per­sti­tion.

34:7.8Hav­ing started out on the way of life ev­er­last­ing, hav­ing ac­cepted the as­sign­ment and re­ceived your or­ders to ad­vance, do not fear the dan­gers of hu­man for­get­ful­ness and mor­tal in­con­stancy, do not be trou­bled with doubts of fail­ure or by per­plex­ing con­fu­sion, do not fal­ter and ques­tion your sta­tus and stand­ing, for in ev­ery dark hour, at ev­ery cross­road in the for­ward strug­gle, the Spirit of Truth will al­ways speak, say­ing, “This is the way.”

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.

26:5.3That, then, is the pri­mary or el­e­men­tary course which con­fronts the faith-tested and much-trav­eled pil­grims of space. But long be­fore reach­ing Ha­vona, these as­cen­dant chil­dren of time have learned to feast upon un­cer­tainty, to fat­ten upon dis­ap­point­ment, to en­thuse over ap­par­ent de­feat, to in­vig­o­rate in the pres­ence of dif­fi­cul­ties, to ex­hibit in­domitable cour­age in the face of im­men­sity, and to ex­er­cise un­con­quer­able faith when con­fronted with the chal­lenge of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble. Long since, the bat­tle cry of these pil­grims be­came: “In li­ai­son with God, noth­ing—ab­so­lutely noth­ing—is im­pos­si­ble.”

26:8.4Not many pil­grims ex­pe­ri­ence the de­lay of seem­ing fail­ure in the De­ity ad­ven­ture. Nearly all at­tain the In­fi­nite Spirit, though oc­ca­sion­ally a pil­grim from super­uni­verse num­ber one does not suc­ceed on the first at­tempt. The pil­grims who at­tain the Spirit sel­dom fail in find­ing the Son; of those who do fail on the first ad­ven­ture, al­most all hail from super­uni­verses three and five. The great ma­jor­ity of those who fail on the first ad­ven­ture to at­tain the Fa­ther, af­ter find­ing both the Spirit and the Son, hail from super­uni­verse num­ber six, though a few from num­bers two and three are like­wise un­suc­cess­ful. And all this seems clearly to in­di­cate that there is some good and suf­fi­cient rea­son for these ap­par­ent fail­ures; in re­al­ity, sim­ply un­escapable de­lays.

160:2.94. The en­hanced de­fense against all evil. Per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion and mu­tual af­fec­tion is an ef­fi­cient in­sur­ance against evil. Dif­fi­cul­ties, sor­row, dis­ap­point­ment, and de­feat are more painful and dis­heart­en­ing when borne alone. As­so­ci­a­tion does not trans­mute evil into righ­teous­ness, but it does aid in greatly less­en­ing the sting. Said your Mas­ter, “Happy are they who mourn”—if a friend is at hand to com­fort. There is pos­i­tive strength in the knowl­edge that you live for the wel­fare of oth­ers, and that these oth­ers like­wise live for your wel­fare and ad­vance­ment. Man lan­guishes in iso­la­tion. Hu­man be­ings un­fail­ingly be­come dis­cour­aged when they view only the tran­si­tory trans­ac­tions of time. The pres­ent, when di­vorced from the past and the fu­ture, be­comes ex­as­per­at­ingly triv­ial. Only a glimpse of the cir­cle of eter­nity can in­spire man to do his best and can chal­lenge the best in him to do its ut­most. And when man is thus at his best, he lives most un­selfishly for the good of oth­ers, his fel­low so­journ­ers in time and eter­nity.

182:3.10Je­sus’ hu­man­ity was not in­sen­si­ble to this sit­u­a­tion of pri­vate lone­li­ness, pub­lic shame, and the ap­pear­ance of the fail­ure of his cause. All these sen­ti­ments bore down on him with in­de­scrib­able heav­i­ness. In this great sor­row his mind went back to the days of his child­hood in Naz­a­reth and to his early work in Gal­i­lee. At the time of this great trial there came up in his mind many of those pleas­ant scenes of his earthly min­istry. And it was from these old mem­o­ries of Naz­a­reth, Ca­per­naum, Mount Her­mon, and of the sun­rise and sun­set on the shim­mer­ing Sea of Gal­i­lee, that he soothed him­self as he made his hu­man heart strong and ready to en­counter the traitor who should so soon be­tray him.

100:7.7Of Je­sus it was truly said, “He trusted God.” As a man among men he most sub­limely trusted the Fa­ther in heaven. He trusted his Fa­ther as a lit­tle child trusts his earthly par­ent. His faith was per­fect but never pre­sump­tu­ous. No mat­ter how cruel na­ture might ap­pear to be or how in­dif­fer­ent to man’s wel­fare on earth, Je­sus never fal­tered in his faith. He was im­mune to dis­ap­point­ment and im­per­vi­ous to per­se­cu­tion. He was un­touched by ap­par­ent fail­ure.

177:4.3Ju­das could not quite be­lieve that the mighty works of the Mas­ter had been wrought by the power of the prince of dev­ils, but he was now fully con­vinced that Je­sus would not ex­ert his power in self-ag­gran­dize­ment; he was at last con­vinced that Je­sus would al­low him­self to be de­stroyed by the Jew­ish rulers, and he could not en­dure the hu­mil­i­at­ing thought of be­ing iden­ti­fied with a move­ment of de­feat. He re­fused to en­ter­tain the idea of ap­par­ent fail­ure. He thor­oughly un­der­stood the sturdy char­ac­ter of his Mas­ter and the keen­ness of that ma­jes­tic and mer­ci­ful mind, yet he de­rived plea­sure from even the par­tial en­ter­tain­ment of the sug­ges­tion of one of his rel­a­tives that Je­sus, while he was a well-mean­ing fa­natic, was prob­a­bly not re­ally sound of mind; that he had al­ways ap­peared to be a strange and mis­un­der­stood per­son.

193:4.62. As a child, life had been made too easy for him. He bit­terly re­sented thwart­ing. He al­ways ex­pected to win; he was a very poor loser.

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.

196:3.29Re­li­gious in­sight pos­sesses the power of turn­ing de­feat into higher de­sires and new de­ter­mi­na­tions. Love is the high­est mo­ti­va­tion which man may uti­lize in his uni­verse as­cent. But love, di­vested of truth, beauty, and good­ness, is only a sen­ti­ment, a philo­sophic dis­tor­tion, a psy­chic il­lu­sion, a spir­i­tual de­cep­tion. Love must al­ways be re­de­fined on suc­ces­sive lev­els of mor­ontia and spirit pro­gres­sion.

130:6.1While they were up in the moun­tains, Je­sus had a long talk with a young man who was fear­ful and down­cast. Fail­ing to de­rive com­fort and cour­age from as­so­ci­a­tion with his fel­lows, this youth had sought the soli­tude of the hills; he had grown up with a feel­ing of help­less­ness and in­fe­ri­or­ity. These nat­u­ral ten­den­cies had been aug­mented by nu­mer­ous dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances which the lad had en­coun­tered as he grew up, no­tably, the loss of his fa­ther when he was twelve years of age. As they met, Je­sus said: “Greet­ings, my friend! why so down­cast on such a beau­ti­ful day? If some­thing has hap­pened to dis­tress you, per­haps I can in some man­ner as­sist you. At any rate it af­fords me real plea­sure to prof­fer my ser­vices.”

130:6.2The young man was dis­in­clined to talk, and so Je­sus made a sec­ond ap­proach to his soul, say­ing: “I un­der­stand you come up in these hills to get away from folks; so, of course, you do not want to talk with me, but I would like to know whether you are fa­mil­iar with these hills; do you know the di­rec­tion of the trails? and, per­chance, could you in­form me as to the best route to Phenix?” Now this youth was very fa­mil­iar with these moun­tains, and he re­ally be­came much in­ter­ested in telling Je­sus the way to Phenix, so much so that he marked out all the trails on the ground and fully ex­plained ev­ery de­tail. But he was star­tled and made cu­ri­ous when Je­sus, af­ter say­ing good-bye and mak­ing as if he were tak­ing leave, sud­denly turned to him, say­ing: “I well know you wish to be left alone with your dis­con­so­la­tion; but it would be nei­ther kind nor fair for me to re­ceive such gen­er­ous help from you as to how best to find my way to Phenix and then un­think­ingly to go away from you with­out mak­ing the least ef­fort to an­swer your ap­peal­ing re­quest for help and guid­ance re­gard­ing the best route to the goal of des­tiny which you seek in your heart while you tarry here on the moun­tain­side. As you so well know the trails to Phenix, hav­ing tra­versed them many times, so do I well know the way to the city of your dis­ap­pointed hopes and thwarted am­bi­tions. And since you have asked me for help, I will not dis­ap­point you.” The youth was al­most over­come, but he man­aged to stam­mer out, “But—I did not ask you for any­thing—” And Je­sus, lay­ing a gen­tle hand on his shoul­der, said: “No, son, not with words but with long­ing looks did you ap­peal to my heart. My boy, to one who loves his fel­lows there is an elo­quent ap­peal for help in your coun­te­nance of dis­cour­age­ment and de­spair. Sit down with me while I tell you of the ser­vice trails and hap­pi­ness high­ways which lead from the sor­rows of self to the joys of lov­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in the broth­er­hood of men and in the ser­vice of the God of heaven.”

130:6.3By this time the young man very much de­sired to talk with Je­sus, and he knelt at his feet im­plor­ing Je­sus to help him, to show him the way of es­cape from his world of per­sonal sor­row and de­feat. Said Je­sus: “My friend, arise! Stand up like a man! You may be sur­rounded with small en­e­mies and be re­tarded by many ob­sta­cles, but the big things and the real things of this world and the uni­verse are on your side. The sun rises ev­ery morn­ing to salute you just as it does the most pow­er­ful and pros­per­ous man on earth. Look—you have a strong body and pow­er­ful mus­cles—your phys­i­cal equip­ment is bet­ter than the av­er­age. Of course, it is just about use­less while you sit out here on the moun­tain­side and grieve over your mis­for­tunes, real and fan­cied. But you could do great things with your body if you would has­ten off to where great things are wait­ing to be done. You are try­ing to run away from your un­happy self, but it can­not be done. You and your prob­lems of liv­ing are real; you can­not es­cape them as long as you live. But look again, your mind is clear and ca­pa­ble. Your strong body has an in­tel­li­gent mind to di­rect it. Set your mind at work to solve its prob­lems; teach your in­tel­lect to work for you; refuse longer to be dom­i­nated by fear like an un­think­ing an­i­mal. Your mind should be your coura­geous ally in the so­lu­tion of your life prob­lems rather than your be­ing, as you have been, its ab­ject fear-slave and the bond ser­vant of de­pres­sion and de­feat. But most valu­able of all, your po­ten­tial of real achieve­ment is the spirit which lives within you, and which will stim­u­late and in­spire your mind to con­trol it­self and ac­ti­vate the body if you will re­lease it from the fet­ters of fear and thus en­able your spir­i­tual na­ture to be­gin your de­liv­er­ance from the evils of in­ac­tion by the power-pres­ence of liv­ing faith. And then, forth­with, will this faith van­quish fear of men by the com­pelling pres­ence of that new and all-dom­i­nat­ing love of your fel­lows which will so soon fill your soul to over­flow­ing be­cause of the con­scious­ness which has been born in your heart that you are a child of God.

130:6.4“This day, my son, you are to be re­born, re-es­tab­lished as a man of faith, cour­age, and de­voted ser­vice to man, for God’s sake. And when you be­come so read­justed to life within your­self, you be­come like­wise read­justed to the uni­verse; you have been born again—born of the spirit—and hence­forth will your whole life be­come one of vic­to­ri­ous ac­com­plish­ment. Trou­ble will in­vig­o­rate you; dis­ap­point­ment will spur you on; dif­fi­cul­ties will chal­lenge you; and ob­sta­cles will stim­u­late you. Arise, young man! Say farewell to the life of cring­ing fear and flee­ing cow­ardice. Has­ten back to duty and live your life in the flesh as a son of God, a mor­tal ded­i­cated to the en­nobling ser­vice of man on earth and des­tined to the su­perb and eter­nal ser­vice of God in eter­nity.”

130:6.5And this youth, For­tune, sub­se­quently be­came the leader of the Chris­tians in Crete and the close as­so­ciate of Ti­tus in his labors for the up­lift of the Cre­tan be­liev­ers.

130:6.6The trav­el­ers were truly rested and re­freshed when they made ready about noon one day to sail for Carthage in north­ern Africa, stop­ping for two days at Cyrene. It was here that Je­sus and Ga­nid gave first aid to a lad named Ru­fus, who had been in­jured by the break­down of a loaded ox­cart. They car­ried him home to his mother, and his fa­ther, Si­mon, lit­tle dreamed that the man whose cross he sub­se­quently bore by or­ders of a Ro­man sol­dier was the stranger who once be­friended his son.

195:9.3The teach­ings of Je­sus, even though greatly mod­i­fied, sur­vived the mys­tery cults of their birth­time, the ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion of the dark ages, and are even now slowly tri­umph­ing over the ma­te­ri­al­ism, mech­a­nism, and sec­u­lar­ism of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. And such times of great test­ing and threat­ened de­feat are al­ways times of great rev­e­la­tion.

156:5.17The mea­sure of the spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity of the evolv­ing soul is your faith in truth and your love for man, but the mea­sure of your hu­man strength of char­ac­ter is your abil­ity to re­sist the hold­ing of grudges and your ca­pac­ity to with­stand brood­ing in the face of deep sor­row. De­feat is the true mir­ror in which you may hon­estly view your real self.

101:3.62. Pro­duces a sub­lime trust in the good­ness of God even in the face of bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment and crush­ing de­feat.

127:6.12Je­sus is rapidly be­com­ing a man, not just a young man but an adult. He has learned well to bear re­spon­si­bil­ity. He knows how to carry on in the face of dis­ap­point­ment. He bears up bravely when his plans are thwarted and his pur­poses tem­porar­ily de­feated. He has learned how to be fair and just even in the face of in­jus­tice. He is learn­ing how to ad­just his ide­als of spir­i­tual liv­ing to the prac­ti­cal de­mands of earthly ex­is­tence. He is learn­ing how to plan for the achieve­ment of a higher and dis­tant goal of ide­al­ism while he toils earnestly for the at­tain­ment of a nearer and im­me­di­ate goal of ne­ces­sity. He is steadily ac­quir­ing the art of ad­just­ing his as­pi­ra­tions to the com­mon­place de­mands of the hu­man oc­ca­sion. He has very nearly mas­tered the tech­nique of uti­liz­ing the en­ergy of the spir­i­tual drive to turn the mech­a­nism of ma­te­rial achieve­ment. He is slowly learn­ing how to live the heav­enly life while he con­tin­ues on with the earthly ex­is­tence. More and more he de­pends upon the ul­ti­mate guid­ance of his heav­enly Fa­ther while he as­sumes the fa­therly role of guid­ing and di­rect­ing the chil­dren of his earth fam­ily. He is be­com­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in the skill­ful wrest­ing of vic­tory from the very jaws of de­feat; he is learn­ing how to trans­form the dif­fi­cul­ties of time into the tri­umphs of eter­nity.