There is generally a tendency seen in those treading the spiritual path to feel discouraged at having bad impressions upon their heart of their own faults and shortcomings. And they begin to feel that they are too unworthy to have anything to do with things of a sacred nature. But it is a great error, in spite of all the virtue humility has in it.
When we acknowledge something wrong in ourselves, we give that wrong a soul out of our own spirit. And by withdrawing from all that is good and beautiful, spiritual and sacred, instead of developing the spirit of rejecting all errors, in time we become receptacles of what is wrong. We go on disapproving and yet collecting errors, so producing within the self a perpetual conflict that never ends. When we become helpless before our infirmities, we become a slave to our errors, and feel within ourselves an obedient servant to our adversary.
The greater the purity developed in the heart the greater becomes one's power. As great the power of one within oneself, so great becomes one's power on others. A hair's breadth can divide power from weakness, which appear to have as wide a gulf between them as between land and sky.
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