The Seed and the Shell

The Gods will suffer you to be crushed but never destroyed. When the harsh realities of the world seem to bear down with apparent cruel disregard for your life, your hopes, and all that you value; bear in mind that if the hard shell that serves to protect a seed is not removed it becomes a coffin. Some shells are so very hard that they may require many crushing blows before they fracture and release the life they imprison. It is inevitable, after being crushed, that you feel terribly exposed, vulnerable, and weak; and, to a degree, this is true but you cannot live forever within the protective shell of your own illusions, isolated from reality. Only genuine contact with true reality, or the reality that is True, can sustain you.

So often it is that apparent defeat and catastrophe go before growth and new life. Indeed, the New Life cannot be acquired without first letting go of the old. It is in this interregnum period, the transition period between the Old and the new – that moment when you now have neither, when all appears irredeemably lost, when anxiety and uncertainty become almost unbearable, that you discover the true power of your faith; for only faith can carry you from the old life into the new.

Faith enables you to find the Better Way and without faith the Better Way can never be made manifest. The Better Way cannot be found, much less walked, established, nor can a Better World built without faith; for Faith is, in truth, the very substance of things hoped for, the great seed from whence springs all good things and faith springs forth from the eternal and indestructible centre of our very being, that essence that no blow can destroy; moreover, each blow becomes a means of achieving new and ever greater realisations of hitherto unimagined potential.