The Library
It is easy to attain a kind of artificial serenity while seated in the comfort of an armchair and reading a philosophic book, but to keep calm in the midst of provocation or peril is the test. So the would-be philosopher will try to keep an even mind at all times, to chill its passions and control its agitations.
15.24.2.16Listen Seek the centre of inner gravity and try to stay in it. Try to avoid being pulled out of it by emotions and passions, whether your own or other people’s, by anxieties and troubles–in short, by the ego.
15.24.2.21Listen He sets up the ideal of meeting events, be they favourable or adverse, with equanimity.
15.24.2.36Listen He should learn to cultivate the feelings of peace whenever they are strongly present. He should give himself to them completely, putting aside everything else. For they will bear to him something hidden inside of them that is even still more valuable.
15.24.2.38Listen If at any time he feels the touch of Peace, he should stay where he is, forget all else, and surrender to it.
15.24.2.39Listen If his daily life makes him feel that it is taking him farther away from this peace, this inner harmony, he may have to reconsider his situation, environment, and activities.
15.24.2.51Listen No pleasure which is brief, sensual, and fugitive is worth exchanging for equanimity and peace, not even if it is multiplied a thousand times during a lifetime's course.
15.24.2.52Listen The worst result of all this hurry and tumult and preoccupation with externals is that it leaves no time for intuitive living.
15.24.2.56Listen He must find and keep a centre within himself which he is determined to keep inviolate against the changes, alarms, and disturbances of the outside world. Human life being what it is, he knows that troubles may come but he is resolved that they shall not invade this inner sanctuary and shall be kept at a mental distance.
15.24.2.60Listen But such calm, such satisfying equanimity, can only be kept if he does not expect too much from others, does not make too many demands on life, and is not too fussy about trifles.
15.24.2.63Listen If the world tires you, if the evil deeds of others torment you, you can find blessed peace and healing refuge by turning within.
15.24.2.69Listen Remember to recess back into consciousness, to the centre, when other persons are present. This instantly subjugates nerve strain and self-consciousness.
15.24.2.74Listen When confronted by turmoil, he will remember to remain calm. When in the presence of ugliness, he will think of beauty. When others show forth their animality and brutality, he will show forth his spiritual refinement and gentleness. Above all, when all around seems dark and hopeless, he will remember that nothing can extinguish the Overself's light and that it will shine again as surely as spring follows winter.
15.24.2.78Listen When the evils or tribulations or disappointments of life become too heavy a weight, if he has made some advance he has only to pause, turn away and inward, and there he can find a radiant peace of mind which offsets the dark things and counterbalances the menacing depressions.
15.24.2.80Listen He who attains this beautiful serenity is absolved from the misery of frustrated desires, is healed of the wounds of bitter memories, is liberated from the burden of earthly struggles. He has created a secret, invulnerable centre within himself, a garden of the spirit which neither the world's hurts nor the world's joys can touch…
15.24.2.97,Listen As his centre moves to a profounder depth of being, peace of mind becomes increasingly a constant companion. This in turn influences the way in which he handles his share of the world's activities. Impatience and stupidity recede, wrath at malignity is disciplined; discouragement under adversity is controlled and stress under pressures relaxed.
15.24.2.98Depression cannot coexist with this realization of the presence.
15.24.2.100Listen The fruits of the Spirit are several but the list begins with inner peace. The agitation and anxiety, the desires and passions are enfeebled or extinguished.
15.24.2.106Listen The man who is established in the Overself cannot be deflected from the calm which it gives into passions, angers, hatreds, and similar base things. Calmness has become his natural attitude.
15.24.2.113Listen If he has real inner peace he will never know the mental shock and nervous collapse which come to numbers of people when bereavement or loss of fortune comes. Such a calamity may not be preventable, but the emotional suffering it causes may be cut off at the very start by a philosophic attitude toward life generally.
15.24.2.128Listen As the inner peace advances, the outer problems recede…
15.24.2.131,Listen It is not correct to believe that the stricken body of a sage suffers no pain. It is there and it is felt, but it is enclosed by a larger peace-filled consciousness. The one is a witness of the other. So pain is countered but not removed.
15.24.2.150Listen The more he practises this inward calm, the less he shows concern about outward situations. If this seems to lead to a kind of casualness, it actually leads to inner peace.
15.24.2.154Listen Holding on to the future in anxiety and apprehension must be abandoned. It must be committed to the higher power completely and faithfully. Calmness comes easily to the man who really trusts the higher power. This is unarguable.
15.24.2.158Listen Think of the Overself as an ever-deepening calm. It may seem to come spontaneously after you have practised it much and found the helpfulness.
15.24.2.160Listen With sufficient intelligence, reverent devotion, and personal purification, it is possible to enter one day into this experience of being enclosed within the divine mystery, enravished by the divine peace.
15.24.2.161Listen This moving of consciousness to a higher level will come about by itself, if the calm is patiently allowed to settle itself down sufficiently, and if there has been preparation by study, aspiration, and purification.
15.24.2.162Listen Before the Overself can stay with you, the feelings must be brought to a condition of calm, the thoughts must be turned inwards and centered there. Otherwise the outer difficulties will not let go of your attention…
15.24.2.164,Listen … This inner work leads the practitioner--if he is willing to go so far--deeper within the self. What does he find there if efforts are successful? A beautiful quietude, an unearthly sense of having moved to another plane of being, a closer communion with spirituality…
15.24.2.164,Listen He has brought over from earlier births a number of subconscious memories, tendencies and complexes, unfulfilled desires and unexpressed aspirations. These have to be dealt with, either by increasing eradication or by diminishing satisfaction, so that they no longer interrupt the calm tenor of the mind.
15.24.2.167Listen The closer he comes to the source of his being, the farther he goes from depression and despair.
15.24.2.168Listen When one knows that the Real always is and that all disappear back into it because there is nowhere else to go, then one ceases his terrific hurry to get somewhere and takes events more calmly. Patience comes with the fragrance of the eternal. One works at self-improvement all the same, but there need not be any desperate bother about the task. There is plenty of time. One can always do tomorrow what one needs to do today.
15.24.2.188Listen If you would become a philosopher in practice, then the first step is to cultivate calmness.
15.24.2.193Listen With the passage of well-spent time and the coming of well-deserved Grace, he will finally reach the serenity and mastery that characterize the last stages of the path.
15.24.2.197Listen
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