July 4th. Few things are less understood than the conditions of the
spiritual life. The distressing incompetence of which most of us are
conscious in trying to work out our spiritual experience is due perhaps
less to the diseased will which we commonly blame for it than to
imperfect knowledge of the right conditions. It does not occur to us how
natural the spiritual is. We still strive for some strange transcendent
thing; we seek to promote life by methods as unnatural as they prove
unsuccessful; and only the utter incomprehensibility of the whole region
prevents us seeing fully--what we already half-suspect--how completely we
are missing the road. Natural Law, Environment, p. 256.
July 5th. Living in the spiritual world . . . is just as simple as living
in the natural world; and it is the same kind of simplicity. It is the
same kind of simplicity for it is the same kind of world--there are not
two kinds of worlds. The conditions of life in the one are the conditions
of life in the other. And till these conditions are sensibly grasped, as
the conditions of all life, it is impossible that the personal effort
after the highest life should be other than a blind struggle carried on
in fruitless sorrow and humiliation.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62