asping at happiness, every reaching out of the soul
toward objects, ideas and ideals, is an effort to realize it. But the world
does not realize this Love at present because it is grasping at the
fleeting shadow and ignoring, in its blindness, the substance. And so
suffering and sorrow continue, and must continue until the world, taught by
its self-inflicted pains, discovers the Love that is selfless, the wisdom
that is calm and full of peace.

And this Love, this Wisdom, this Peace, this tranquil state of mind and
heart may be attained to, may be realized by all who are willing and ready
to yield up self, and who are prepared to humbly enter into a comprehension
of all that the giving up of self involves. There is no arbitrary power in
the universe, and the strongest chains of fate by which men are bound are
self-forged. Men are chained to that which causes suffering because they
desire to be so, because they love their chains, because they think their
little dark prison of self is sweet and beautiful, and they are afraid that
if they desert that prison they will lose all that is real and worth
having.

"Ye suffer from yourselves, none else compels,
None other holds ye that ye live and die."

And the indwelling power which forged the chains and built around itself
the dark and narrow prison, can break away when it desires and wills to do
so, and the soul does will to do so when it has discovered the
worthlessness of its prison, when long suffering has prepared it for the
reception of the boundless Light and Love.

As the shadow follows the form, and as smoke comes after fire, so effect
follows cause, and suffering and bliss follow the thoughts and deeds of
men. There is no effect in the world around us but has its hidden or
revealed cause, and that cause is in accordance with absolute justice. Men
reap a harvest of suffering because in the near or distant past they have
sown the seeds of evil; they reap a harvest of bliss also as a result of
their own sowing of the seeds of good. Let a man meditate upon this, let
him strive to understand it, and he will then begin to sow only seeds of
good, and will burn up the tares and weeds which he has formerly grown in
the garden of his heart.

The world does not understand the Love that is selfless because it is
engrossed in the pursuit of its own pleasures, and cramped within the
narrow limits of perishable interests mistaking, in its ignorance, those
pleasures an