Some mystics hold that perfection in dispassion is the source of that power by which miracles (so-called) are performed, and truly he who has gained such perfect control of all his interior forces that no shock, however great, can for one moment unbalance him, must be capable of guiding and directing those forces with a master-hand.

To grow in self-control, in patience, in equanimity, is to grow in strength and power; and you can only thus grow by focusing your consciousness upon a principle.  As a child, after making many and vigorous attempts to walk unaided, at last succeeds, after numerous falls, in accomplishing this, so you must enter the way of power by first attempting to stand alone.  Break away from the tyranny of custom, tradition, conventionality, and the opinions of others, until you succeed in walking lonely and erect among men.  Rely upon your own judgment; be true to your own conscience; follow the Light that is within you; all outward lights are so many will-o’-the-wisps.  There will be those who will tell you that you are foolish; that your judgment is faulty; that your conscience is all awry, and that the Light within you is darkness; but heed them not.  If what they say is true the sooner you, as a searcher for wisdom, find it out the better, and you can only make the discovery by bringing your powers to the test.  Therefore, pursue your course bravely.  Your conscience is at least your own, and to follow it is to be a man; to follow the conscience of another is to be a slave.  You will have many falls, will suffer many wounds, will endure many buffetings for a time, but press on in faith, believing that sure and certain victory lies ahead.  Search for a rock, a principle, and having found it cling to it; get it under your feet and stand erect upon it, until at last, immovably fixed upon it, you succeed in defying the fury of the waves and storms of selfishness.

For selfishness in any and every form is dissipation, weakness, death; unselfishness in its spiritual aspect is conservation, power, life.  As you grow in spiritual life, and become established upon principles, you will become as beautiful and as unchangeable as those principles, will taste of the sweetness of their immortal essence, and will realize the eternal and indestructible nature of the God within.

    No harmful shaft can reach the righteous man,
      Standing erect amid the storms of hate,
    Defying hurt and injury and ban,
      Surrounded by the trembling slaves of Fate.

    Majestic in the strength of silent power,
      Serene he stands, nor changes not nor turns;
    Patient and firm in suffering’s darkest hour,
      Time bends to him, and death and doom he spurns.

    Wrath’s lurid lightnings round about him play,
      And hell’s deep thunders roll about his head;
    Yet heeds he not, for him they cannot slay
      Who stands whence earth and time and space are fled.