Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Markings, Part 12

What is this?


56. Vanity rears its ridiculous little head and holds up the distorting mirror in front of you. For an instant, the play actor adjusts his smile and his features to the role. For a mere instant -- but one too many. It is at such times that you invite defeat and betray Him whom you serve. (144)

57. You ask yourself if these notes are not, after all, false to the very Way they are intended to mark. 
These notes? -- They were signposts you began to set up after you had reached a point where you needed them, a fixed point that was on no account to be lost sight of. And so they have remained. But your life has changed, and now you reckon with possible readers, even, perhaps, hope for them. Still, perhaps it may be of interest to somebody to learn about a path about which the traveler who was committed to it did not wish to speak while he was alive. Perhaps -- but only if what you write has an honesty with no trace of vanity or self-regard. (144)

58. Forward! Thy orders are given in secret. May I always hear them -- and obey.
Forward! Whatever distance I have covered, it does not give me the right to halt.
Forward! It is the attention given to the last steps before the summit which decides the value of all that went before. (145)

59. We act in faith -- and miracles occur. In consequence, we are tempted to make the miracles the ground for our faith. The cost of such weakness is that we lose the confidence of faith. Faith is, faith creates, faith carries. It is not derived from, nor created, nor carried by anything except its own reality. (145)

60. Be grateful as your deeds become less and less associated with your name, as your feet ever more lightly tread the earth. (146)

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