A LONG THOUGHT

ON TRUST IN SELF

 

 

Trust in self is understanding of life. Trust in self is knowledge and understanding of the fact that existence and all life are ruled by immutable laws, which make any kind of divine arbitrariness impossible.

 

Trust in self is trust in the laws of freedom, unity, and self-realization. Trust in self is knowledge and understanding of the individual’s potential divinity, inalienable right to freedom, and the indestructible unity of all life.

 

Trust in self is trust in my unconscious as the source of all my light, of all my guidance. All powers of life are at my command. It is my task to find the ways in which these inexhaustible powers can be put to use.

 

Trust in self is the prime factor of development, the basis of self-determination and self-realization, a condition of that one-pointed purpose which implies an unwavering perseverance and efficiency in striving towards the goal.

 

Trust in self is not anything I simply assume. As a latent, previously acquired quality it manifests itself in unreflective directness and spontaneity. If it is not innate in me, I must acquire it through insight, work it forth into a matter of will-power by using thought and feeling.

 

Trust in self is independent of success or failure, the illusions that are shattered when put to trial, the praise or blame of men, or my own insufficient ability.

 

Trust in self is courage – physical courage, emotional courage, mental courage. Having trust in self I dare to be as I am: simple, unstudied, spontaneous, I dare to think, feel, act, I dare to be ignorant, dare to defend freedom and what is right. Having trust in self I am free from the stupidizing and paralysing fear of a wrathful, capricious god, the fear of the blows of fate, of bad reaping, of people, of making mistakes, of being deceived, of obeying noble impulses, of all hostile outer and inner powers.

 

Trust in self is trust in the self’s potential godhood, its unlosable share in the cosmic total con­sciousness. It is the task of the self to acquire an ever increasing conscious share in the cosmic total consciousness. It is by having experiences, by working upon experiences, and by making experiments that man develops. There is no cause for worry that time will not suffice: the number of incarnations the individual may use for his development is unlimited.

 

Trust in self is a quality that everybody must acquire sooner or later. The first prerequisite for a justified trust in your own judgement is that you have mastered hylozoics, the Pythagorean system of knowledge.

 

All life develops. All life is found on the ladder of development that stretches from ignorance and impotence to omniscience and omnipotence. On each level of development the individual is relatively perfect as compared with all lower, and relatively imperfect as compared with all higher. The individual has the imperfections that belong to his level. To judge is to blame a man for being where he is, for not having attained higher, for not having acquired the qualities missing in him. Any comparison with other individuals, higher or lower ones, is a proof of ignorance of life, is unjustified, and erroneous. The individual is inferior to all on higher levels, which he will reach in due course of time. To recognize one’s limitation is a sign of greater insight and understanding. Nobody who desires what is right is on the wrong track.

 

Man receives all the help he needs to develop. But the work for development he must, according to the law of self-realization, do himself.

 

At any cost man must learn to stand on his own feet and to do it all by himself. The law of self-realization is an unshakable law: man must learn to acquire self-reliance and self-determination before he is finished as a man. He must, independently of any other individual, solve the problems of life that occur in his worlds.

 

Seek the truth yourself and trust to your own judgement, however it is! That is better than bothering about what people say, think, and try to make you do. The individual must learn to trust to his reason and to his Augoeides, who enlightens him when he may do so.

 

The trust that Augoeides wants us to acquire is not the trust in another being, any“god”. It is the impersonal trust in our own potential godhood (god immanent), the knowledge of the fact that we shall some time become what we are potentially, the trust in “Life”, the trust in the unshakable laws of life.

 

My Augoeides: Lead me from unreality to reality, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death to immortality.