disappointment

110:7.10Dur­ing the mak­ing and break­ing of a con­tact be­tween the mor­tal mind of a des­tiny re­servist and the plan­e­tary super­vi­sors, some­times the in­dwelling Ad­juster is so sit­u­ated that it be­comes pos­si­ble to trans­mit a mes­sage to the mor­tal part­ner. Not long since, on Uran­tia, such a mes­sage was trans­mit­ted by a self-act­ing Ad­juster to the hu­man as­so­ciate, a mem­ber of the re­serve corps of des­tiny. This mes­sage was in­tro­duced by these words: “And now, with­out in­jury or jeop­ardy to the sub­ject of my so­lic­i­tous de­vo­tion and with­out in­tent to over­chas­tise or dis­cour­age, for me, make rec­ord of this my plea to him.” Then fol­lowed a beau­ti­fully touch­ing and ap­peal­ing ad­mo­ni­tion. Among other things, the Ad­juster pleaded “that he more faith­fully give me his sin­cere co-op­er­a­tion, more cheer­fully en­dure the tasks of my em­place­ment, more faith­fully carry out the pro­gram of my ar­range­ment, more pa­tiently go through the tri­als of my se­lec­tion, more per­sis­tently and cheer­fully tread the path of my choos­ing, more humbly re­ceive credit that may ac­crue as a re­sult of my cease­less en­deav­ors—thus trans­mit my ad­mo­ni­tion to the man of my in­dwelling. Upon him I be­stow the su­preme de­vo­tion and af­fec­tion of a di­vine spirit. And say fur­ther to my beloved sub­ject that I will func­tion with wis­dom and power un­til the very end, un­til the last earth strug­gle is over; I will be true to my per­son­al­ity trust. And I ex­hort him to sur­vival, not to dis­ap­point me, not to de­prive me of the re­ward of my pa­tient and in­tense strug­gle. On the hu­man will our achieve­ment of per­son­al­ity de­pends. Cir­cle by cir­cle I have pa­tiently as­cended this hu­man mind, and I have tes­ti­mony that I am meet­ing the ap­proval of the chief of my kind. Cir­cle by cir­cle I am pass­ing on to judg­ment. I await with plea­sure and with­out ap­pre­hen­sion the roll call of des­tiny; I am pre­pared to sub­mit all to the tri­bu­nals of the An­cients of Days.”

3:5.61. Is cour­age—strength of char­ac­ter—de­sir­able? Then must man be reared in an en­vi­ron­ment which ne­ces­si­tates grap­pling with hard­ships and re­act­ing to dis­ap­point­ments.

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.

195:9.7Self­ish men and women sim­ply will not pay such a price for even the great­est spir­i­tual trea­sure ever of­fered mor­tal man. Only when man has be­come suf­fi­ciently dis­il­lu­sioned by the sor­row­ful dis­ap­point­ments at­ten­dant upon the fool­ish and de­cep­tive pur­suits of self­ish­ness, and sub­se­quent to the dis­cov­ery of the bar­ren­ness of for­mal­ized re­li­gion, will he be dis­posed to turn whole­heart­edly to the gospel of the king­dom, the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

2:7.6In­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness can dis­cover the beauty of truth, its spir­i­tual qual­ity, not only by the philo­sophic con­sis­tency of its con­cepts, but more cer­tainly and surely by the unerring re­sponse of the ever-pres­ent Spirit of Truth. Hap­pi­ness en­sues from the rec­og­ni­tion of truth be­cause it can be acted out; it can be lived. Dis­ap­point­ment and sor­row at­tend upon er­ror be­cause, not be­ing a re­al­ity, it can­not be re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence. Di­vine truth is best known by its spir­i­tual fla­vor.

177:4.11Ju­das did not re­al­ize it at this time, but he had been a sub­con­scious critic of Je­sus ever since John the Bap­tist was be­headed by Herod. Deep down in his heart Ju­das al­ways re­sented the fact that Je­sus did not save John. You should not for­get that Ju­das had been a dis­ci­ple of John be­fore he be­came a fol­lower of Je­sus. And all these ac­cu­mu­la­tions of hu­man re­sent­ment and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment which Ju­das had laid by in his soul in ha­bil­i­ments of hate were now well or­ga­nized in his sub­con­scious mind and ready to spring up to en­gulf him when he once dared to sep­a­rate him­self from the sup­port­ing in­flu­ence of his breth­ren while at the same time ex­pos­ing him­self to the clever in­sin­u­a­tions and sub­tle ridicule of the en­e­mies of Je­sus. Ev­ery time Ju­das al­lowed his hopes to soar high and Je­sus would do or say some­thing to dash them to pieces, there was al­ways left in Ju­das’s heart a scar of bit­ter re­sent­ment; and as these scars mul­ti­plied, pres­ently that heart, so of­ten wounded, lost all real af­fec­tion for the one who had in­flicted this dis­taste­ful ex­pe­ri­ence upon a well-in­ten­tioned but cow­ardly and self-cen­tered per­son­al­ity. Ju­das did not re­al­ize it, but he was a cow­ard. Ac­cord­ingly was he al­ways in­clined to as­sign to Je­sus cow­ardice as the mo­tive which led him so of­ten to refuse to grasp for power or glory when they were ap­par­ently within his easy reach. And ev­ery mor­tal man knows full well how love, even when once gen­uine, can, through dis­ap­point­ment, jeal­ousy, and long-con­tin­ued re­sent­ment, be even­tu­ally turned into ac­tual hate.

177:4.10But it was ever just that way. Ju­das had long been en­gaged in this de­lib­er­ate, per­sis­tent, self­ish, and venge­ful con­scious­ness of pro­gres­sively build­ing up in his mind, and en­ter­tain­ing in his heart, these hate­ful and evil de­sires of re­venge and dis­loy­alty. Je­sus loved and trusted Ju­das even as he loved and trusted the other apos­tles, but Ju­das failed to de­velop loyal trust and to ex­pe­ri­ence whole­hearted love in re­turn. And how dan­ger­ous am­bi­tion can be­come when it is once wholly wed­ded to self-seek­ing and su­premely mo­ti­vated by sullen and long-sup­pressed vengeance! What a crush­ing thing is dis­ap­point­ment in the lives of those fool­ish per­sons who, in fas­ten­ing their gaze on the shad­owy and evanes­cent al­lure­ments of time, be­come blinded to the higher and more real achieve­ments of the ev­er­last­ing at­tain­ments of the eter­nal worlds of di­vine val­ues and true spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Ju­das craved worldly honor in his mind and grew to love this de­sire with his whole heart; the other apos­tles like­wise craved this same worldly honor in their minds, but with their hearts they loved Je­sus and were do­ing their best to learn to love the truths which he taught them.

100:6.6One of the most amaz­ing ear­marks of re­li­gious liv­ing is that dy­namic and sub­lime peace, that peace which passes all hu­man un­der­stand­ing, that cos­mic poise which be­to­kens the ab­sence of all doubt and tur­moil. Such lev­els of spir­i­tual sta­bil­ity are im­mune to dis­ap­point­ment. Such re­li­gion­ists are like the Apos­tle Paul, who said: “I am per­suaded that nei­ther death, nor life, nor an­gels, nor prin­ci­pal­i­ties, nor pow­ers, nor things pres­ent, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any­thing else shall be able to sep­a­rate us from the love of God.”

100:7.8He loved men as broth­ers, at the same time rec­og­niz­ing how they dif­fered in in­nate en­dow­ments and ac­quired qual­i­ties. “He went about do­ing good.”

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.

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.”

156:5.13God-know­ing in­di­vid­u­als are not dis­cour­aged by mis­for­tune or down­cast by dis­ap­point­ment. Be­liev­ers are im­mune to the de­pres­sion con­se­quent upon purely ma­te­rial up­heavals; spirit liv­ers are not per­turbed by the episodes of the ma­te­rial world. Can­di­dates for eter­nal life are prac­ti­tion­ers of an in­vig­o­rat­ing and con­struc­tive tech­nique for meet­ing all of the vi­cis­si­tudes and ha­rass­ments of mor­tal liv­ing. Ev­ery day a true be­liever lives, he finds it eas­ier to do the right thing.

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.

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.”

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.

26:10.2Those who are un­suc­cess­ful in the first ef­fort at De­ity at­tain­ment are ad­vanced from the cir­cle of fail­ure di­rectly to the sec­ond cir­cle be­fore they are re­turned to super­uni­verse ser­vice. Thus the coun­selors and ad­vis­ers also serve as the coun­selors and com­forters of these dis­ap­pointed pil­grims. They have just en­coun­tered their great­est dis­ap­point­ment, in no way dif­fer­ing from the long list of such ex­pe­ri­ences whereon they climbed, as on a lad­der, from chaos to glory—ex­cept in its mag­ni­tude. These are they who have drained the ex­pe­ri­en­tial cup to its dregs; and I have ob­served that they tem­porar­ily re­turn to the ser­vices of the super­uni­verses as the high­est type of lov­ing min­is­tra­tors to the chil­dren of time and tem­po­ral dis­ap­point­ments.

26:10.3Af­ter a long so­journ on cir­cuit num­ber two the sub­jects of dis­ap­point­ment are ex­am­ined by the coun­cils of per­fec­tion sit­ting on the pi­lot world of this cir­cle and are cer­ti­fied as hav­ing passed the Ha­vona test; and this, so far as non­spir­i­tual sta­tus is con­cerned, grants them the same stand­ing in the uni­verses of time as if they had ac­tu­ally suc­ceeded in the De­ity ad­ven­ture. The spirit of such can­di­dates was wholly ac­cept­able; their fail­ure was in­her­ent in some phase of the tech­nique of ap­proach or in some part of their ex­pe­ri­en­tial back­ground.

26:10.4They are then taken by the coun­selors of the cir­cle be­fore the chiefs of as­sign­ment on Par­a­dise and are re­manded to the ser­vice of time on the worlds of space; and they go with joy and glad­ness to the tasks of for­mer days and ages. In an­other day they will re­turn to the cir­cle of their great­est dis­ap­point­ment and at­tempt anew the De­ity ad­ven­ture.

171:2.4“Now, then, must each of you sit down and count the cost of be­ing my dis­ci­ple. From now on you will not be able to fol­low af­ter us, lis­ten­ing to the teach­ing and be­hold­ing the works; you will be re­quired to face bit­ter per­se­cu­tions and to bear wit­ness for this gospel in the face of crush­ing dis­ap­point­ment. If you are un­will­ing to re­nounce all that you are and to ded­i­cate all that you have, then are you un­wor­thy to be my dis­ci­ple. If you have al­ready con­quered your­self within your own heart, you need have no fear of that out­ward vic­tory which you must pres­ently gain when the Son of Man is re­jected by the chief priests and the Sad­ducees and is given into the hands of mock­ing un­be­liev­ers.

153:1.3The Mas­ter well knew that many of his fol­low­ers were slowly but surely prepar­ing their minds fi­nally to re­ject him. He like­wise knew that many of his dis­ci­ples were slowly but cer­tainly pass­ing through that train­ing of mind and that dis­ci­pline of soul which would en­able them to tri­umph over doubt and coura­geously to as­sert their full-fledged faith in the gospel of the king­dom. Je­sus fully un­der­stood how men pre­pare them­selves for the de­ci­sions of a cri­sis and the per­for­mance of sud­den deeds of coura­geous choos­ing by the slow pro­cess of the re­it­er­ated choos­ing be­tween the re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions of good and evil. He sub­jected his cho­sen mes­sen­gers to re­peated re­hearsals in dis­ap­point­ment and pro­vided them with fre­quent and test­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for choos­ing be­tween the right and the wrong way of meet­ing spir­i­tual tri­als. He knew he could de­pend on his fol­low­ers, when they met the fi­nal test, to make their vi­tal de­ci­sions in ac­cor­dance with prior and ha­bit­ual men­tal at­ti­tudes and spirit re­ac­tions.

157:4.1Since the oc­ca­sions of Je­sus’ bap­tism by John and the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine at Cana, the apos­tles had, at var­i­ous times, vir­tu­ally ac­cepted him as the Mes­siah. For short pe­ri­ods some of them had truly be­lieved that he was the ex­pected De­liv­erer. But hardly would such hopes spring up in their hearts than the Mas­ter would dash them to pieces by some crush­ing word or dis­ap­point­ing deed. They had long been in a state of tur­moil due to con­flict be­tween the con­cepts of the ex­pected Mes­siah which they held in their minds and the ex­pe­ri­ence of their ex­traor­di­nary as­so­ci­a­tion with this ex­traor­di­nary man which they held in their hearts.

158:5.4It was in­deed a dis­il­lu­sion­ment for the three apos­tles who had so re­cently en­joyed the spir­i­tual ec­stasy of the scenes and ex­pe­ri­ences of the trans­fig­u­ra­tion, so soon to re­turn to this scene of the de­feat and dis­com­fi­ture of their fel­low apos­tles. But it was ever so with these twelve am­bas­sadors of the king­dom. They never failed to al­ter­nate be­tween ex­al­ta­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion in their life ex­pe­ri­ences.

26:8.3Af­ter the at­tain­ment of the In­fi­nite Spirit, no more ex­am­i­na­tions are con­ducted. The tests of the in­ner cir­cles are the per­for­mances of the pil­grim can­di­dates when in the em­brace of the en­shroud­ment of the De­i­ties. Ad­vance­ment is de­ter­mined purely by the spir­i­tu­al­ity of the in­di­vid­ual, and no one but the Gods pre­sumes to pass upon this pos­ses­sion. In the event of fail­ure no rea­sons are ever as­signed, nei­ther are the can­di­dates them­selves nor their var­i­ous tu­tors and guides ever chided or crit­i­cized. On Par­a­dise, dis­ap­point­ment is never re­garded as de­feat; post­pone­ment is never looked upon as dis­grace; the ap­par­ent fail­ures of time are never con­fused with the sig­nif­i­cant de­lays of eter­nity.

151:0.1By March 10 all of the preach­ing and teach­ing groups had for­gath­ered at Beth­saida. Thurs­day night and Fri­day many of them went out to fish, while on the Sab­bath day they at­tended the syn­a­gogue to hear an aged Jew of Da­mas­cus dis­course on the glory of fa­ther Abra­ham. Je­sus spent most of this Sab­bath day alone in the hills. That Sat­ur­day night the Mas­ter talked for more than an hour to the as­sem­bled groups on “The mis­sion of ad­ver­sity and the spir­i­tual value of dis­ap­point­ment.” This was a mem­o­rable oc­ca­sion, and his hear­ers never for­got the les­son he im­parted.

48:7.2119. Anx­i­ety must be aban­doned. The dis­ap­point­ments hard­est to bear are those which never come.

48:6.36Even as mor­tals, so have these an­gels been fa­ther to many dis­ap­point­ments, and they will point out that some­times your most dis­ap­point­ing dis­ap­point­ments have be­come your great­est bless­ings. Some­times the plant­ing of a seed ne­ces­si­tates its death, the death of your fond­est hopes, be­fore it can be re­born to bear the fruits of new life and new op­por­tu­nity. And from them you will learn to suf­fer less through sor­row and dis­ap­point­ment, first, by mak­ing fewer per­sonal plans con­cern­ing other per­son­al­i­ties, and then, by ac­cept­ing your lot when you have faith­fully per­formed your duty.

192:2.10Then said the Mas­ter to Na­than­iel, “Na­than­iel, do you serve me?” And the apos­tle an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, and with an un­di­vided af­fec­tion.” Then said Je­sus: “If, there­fore, you serve me with a whole heart, make sure that you are de­voted to the wel­fare of my breth­ren on earth with tire­less af­fec­tion. Ad­mix friend­ship with your coun­sel and add love to your phi­los­o­phy. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you. Be faith­ful to men as I have watched over you. Be less crit­i­cal; ex­pect less of some men and thereby lessen the ex­tent of your dis­ap­point­ment. And when the work down here is over, you shall serve with me on high.”

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