make love and joy unreal, or destroy the consciousness of what says
within us, "This Is I." Our one hope then is not to be deceived or
beguiled or bewildered by the complexity and intricacy of life; the
path of each of us lies clear and direct through the tangle.

And thus, as I have said, our task is not to be defrauded of our
interior peace. No power that we know can do more than dissolve and
transmute our mortal frame; it can melt into the earth, it can be
carried into the depths of the sea, but it cannot be annihilated; and
this is infinitely more true of our spirits; they may undergo a
thousand transformations and transmutations, but they must be
eternally there.

So let us claim our experience bravely and accept it firmly, never
daunted by it, never utterly despairing, leaping back into life and
happiness as swiftly as we can, never doubting that it is assured to
us. The time that we waste is that which is spent in anxious, trivial,
conventional things. We have to bear them in our burdens, many of us,
but do not let us be for ever examining them, weighing them in our
hands, wishing them away, whining over them; we must not let them
beguile us of the better part. If the despairing part of us cries out
that it is frightened, wearied, anxious, we must not heed it; we must
again and again assure ourselves that the peace is there, and that we
miss it by our own fault. Above all let us not make pitiable excuses
for ourselves. We must be like the woman in the parable who, when she
lost the coin, did not sit down to bewail her ill-luck, but swept the
house diligently until she found it. There is no such thing as loss in
the world; what we lose is merely withheld until we have earned the
right to find it again. We must not cultivate repentance, we must not
yield to remorse. The only thing worth having is a wholesome sorrow
for not having done better; but it is ignoble to remember, if our
remembrance has anything hopeless about it; and we do best utterly to
forget our failures and lapses, because of this we may be wholly sure,
that joys are restored to us, that strength returns, and that peace
beyond measure is waiting for us; and not only waiting for us, but as
near us as a closed door in the room in which we sit. We can rise up,
we can turn thither, we can enter if we will and when we will.

XXII

EXPERIENCE

It is very strange to contemplate the steady plunge of good advice,
like a cataract of ice-cold wa