maturity

• surrender of transient desires and personal pleasures for superior longings

100:1.1While re­li­gion pro­duces growth of mean­ings and en­hance­ment of val­ues, evil al­ways re­sults when purely per­sonal eval­u­a­tions are el­e­vated to the lev­els of ab­so­lutes. A child eval­u­ates ex­pe­ri­ence in ac­cor­dance with the con­tent of plea­sure; ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tional to the sub­sti­tu­tion of higher mean­ings for per­sonal plea­sure, even loy­al­ties to the high­est con­cepts of di­ver­si­fied life sit­u­a­tions and cos­mic re­la­tions.

• brings past and future together to illuminate true meaning of present
• unit of time consciousness in any given intellect

118:1.3There is a di­rect re­la­tion­ship be­tween ma­tu­rity and the unit of time con­scious­ness in any given in­tel­lect. The time unit may be a day, a year, or a longer pe­riod, but in­evitably it is the cri­te­rion by which the con­scious self eval­u­ates the cir­cum­stances of life, and by which the con­ceiv­ing in­tel­lect mea­sures and eval­u­ates the facts of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence.

118:1.4Ex­pe­ri­ence, wis­dom, and judg­ment are the con­comi­tants of the length­en­ing of the time unit in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. As the hu­man mind reck­ons back­ward into the past, it is eval­u­at­ing past ex­pe­ri­ence for the pur­pose of bring­ing it to bear on a pres­ent sit­u­a­tion. As mind reaches out into the fu­ture, it is at­tempt­ing to eval­u­ate the fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance of pos­si­ble ac­tion. And hav­ing thus reck­oned with both ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom, the hu­man will ex­er­cises judg­ment-de­ci­sion in the pres­ent, and the plan of ac­tion thus born of the past and the fu­ture be­comes ex­is­tent.

118:1.5In the ma­tu­rity of the de­vel­op­ing self, the past and fu­ture are brought to­gether to il­lu­mi­nate the true mean­ing of the pres­ent. As the self ma­tures, it reaches fur­ther and fur­ther back into the past for ex­pe­ri­ence, while its wis­dom fore­casts seek to pen­e­trate deeper and deeper into the un­known fu­ture. And as the con­ceiv­ing self ex­tends this reach ever fur­ther into both past and fu­ture, so does judg­ment be­come less and less de­pen­dent on the mo­men­tary pres­ent. In this way does de­ci­sion-ac­tion be­gin to es­cape from the fet­ters of the mov­ing pres­ent, while it be­gins to take on the as­pects of past-fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance.

118:1.6Pa­tience is ex­er­cised by those mor­tals whose time units are short; true ma­tu­rity tran­scends pa­tience by a for­bear­ance born of real un­der­stand­ing.

• enables more intense living in present while escaping its limitations

118:1.7To be­come ma­ture is to live more in­tensely in the pres­ent, at the same time es­cap­ing from the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent. The plans of ma­tu­rity, founded on past ex­pe­ri­ence, are com­ing into be­ing in the pres­ent in such man­ner as to en­hance the val­ues of the fu­ture.

118:1.8The time unit of im­ma­tu­rity con­cen­trates mean­ing-value into the pres­ent mo­ment in such a way as to di­vorce the pres­ent of its true re­la­tion­ship to the not-pres­ent—the past-fu­ture. The time unit of ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tioned so to re­veal the co-or­di­nate re­la­tion­ship of past-pres­ent-fu­ture that the self be­gins to gain in­sight into the whole­ness of events, be­gins to view the land­scape of time from the panoramic per­spec­tive of broad­ened hori­zons, be­gins per­haps to sus­pect the non­be­gin­ning, non­end­ing eter­nal con­tin­uum, the frag­ments of which are called time.

• surrender of transient desires and personal pleasures for superior longings

160:1.4So­cial ma­tu­rity is equiv­a­lent to the de­gree to which man is will­ing to sur­ren­der the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of mere tran­sient and pres­ent de­sires for the en­ter­tain­ment of those su­pe­rior long­ings the striv­ing for whose at­tain­ment af­fords the more abun­dant sat­is­fac­tions of pro­gres­sive ad­vance­ment to­ward per­ma­nent goals. But the true badge of so­cial ma­tu­rity is the will­ing­ness of a peo­ple to sur­ren­der the right to live peace­ably and con­tent­edly un­der the ease-pro­mot­ing stan­dards of the lure of es­tab­lished be­liefs and con­ven­tional ideas for the dis­qui­et­ing and en­ergy-re­quir­ing lure of the pur­suit of the un­ex­plored pos­si­bil­i­ties of the at­tain­ment of undis­cov­ered goals of ide­al­is­tic spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties.

• surrender of transient desires and personal pleasures for superior longings

160:1.13Prej­u­dice blinds the soul to the rec­og­ni­tion of truth, and prej­u­dice can be re­moved only by the sin­cere de­vo­tion of the soul to the ado­ra­tion of a cause that is all-em­brac­ing and all-in­clu­sive of one’s fel­low men. Prej­u­dice is in­sep­a­ra­bly linked to self­ish­ness. Prej­u­dice can be elim­i­nated only by the aban­don­ment of self-seek­ing and by sub­sti­tut­ing there­for the quest of the sat­is­fac­tion of the ser­vice of a cause that is not only greater than self, but one that is even greater than all hu­man­ity—the search for God, the at­tain­ment of di­vin­ity. The ev­i­dence of ma­tu­rity of per­son­al­ity con­sists in the trans­for­ma­tion of hu­man de­sire so that it con­stantly seeks for the re­al­iza­tion of those val­ues which are high­est and most di­vinely real.

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.

• multiplies fruits of life efforts

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.

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.