We Cannot Achieve Greatness Unless We Lose

To Consider Persons And Events And Situations Only In The Light Of Their Effect On Me Is To Live On The Doorstep Of Hell. Selfishness Is Doomed To Frustration Centered As It Is Upon A Lie. To Live Exclusively For Myself, I Must Make All Things Bend Themselves To My Will As If I Were A God.

And It Is In This Darkness, When There Is Nothing Left In Us That Can Please Or Comfort Our Own Minds, When We Seem To Be Useless And Worthy Of All Contempt, When We Seem To Have Failed, When We Seem To Be Destroyed And Devoured, It Is Then That The Deep And Secret Selfishness That Is Too Close To Us For Us To Identify Is Stripped Away From Our Souls. It Is In This Darkness That We Find Liberty. It Is In This Abandonment That We Are Made Strong. This Is The Night Which Empties Us And Makes Us Pure.

Some Of Us Need To Discover That We Will Not Begin To Live More Fully Until We Have The Courage To Do And See And Taste And Experience Much Less Than Usual... And For A Man Who Has Let Himself Be Drawn Completely Out Of Himself By His Activity, Nothing Is More Difficult Than To Sit Still And Rest, Doing Nothing At All. The Very Act Of Resting Is The Hardest And Most Courageous Act He Can Perform.

To Desire Him To Be Merciful To Us Is To Acknowledge Him As God. To Seek His Pity When We Deserve No Pity Is To Ask Him To Be Just With A Justice So Holy That It Knows No Evil And Shows Mercy To Everyone Who Does Not Fly From Him In Despair.

We Are Already One. We Just Think We Are Separate.