What man needs more than anything else is balance. Unless man is a bump of walking egoism that nobody could endure, he knows in his striving and in his yearning that there is something more waiting for him; that there is something he should have had which he has not had.
There is a peculiar timidity that is born in our blood, passed down for generations. Men have not faith enough in themselves to bring themselves to the point of challenge and self-analysis. Think of the fear that people carry through life — the fear of death, of suffering, of poverty, etc. Fear consumes a great deal of man's brain-oil and dissipates much of his energy and power.
Once man's consciousness of his own essential divinity is aroused, it is like a new circulation of the blood; it makes new life; it gives new vision; it creates new hope; it can and does reflect itself on to the physical body. With this awakening to new and better things come revelations so sacred that no words can describe them.
We have scarcely begun to think yet. We touch the fringe of great truths; but it takes human hands and human hearts to bring these truths closer to our understanding.
If our journey through life can be so solidly true that every note in thought and act is pure and every motive unselfish, then we shall be able to hear some of the undertones and overtones of the great harmonies of life: we shall have our spiritual awakening.
Then there will come stealing into our natures, into our hearts, our heads and our intentions, a larger charity for those who err.
We will close our eyes at night knowing that something quite new and all our own has been born of our thought and our will-power — not from our criticism, our intellectual harshness and severity, but from the softness, the tenderness and the gentleness of our own hearts.
(From Sunrise magazine, November 1951; copyright © 1951 Theosophical University Press)