The Self-Discipline That Leads to Freedom
Robert Crosbie
The question of personality is so large that
it might seem as though its successful solution should resemble the working out
of a complicated mathematical problem. But the greatest truths are the
simplest. And if we reflect a moment on what impersonality is not, perhaps that
will help us to see what it is.
Some orate forcibly
against personality. That does not prove they are free from it.
Some say little, but
the effect of what is said is to imply that they are impersonal. They seem so
modest, but are only politic.
Some are afraid to
talk about personality, thinking that it must be shunned as an ogre.
Yet others preach a
doctrine of impersonality which takes everything human out of life and makes of
it a cold negation. This doctrine has no patience with evolution - all faults
must disappear at a single stroke.
Impersonality isn’t
talking; it isn’t silence; it isn’t insinuation; it isn’t repulsion; it isn’t
negation. Above all, it isn’t a diplomacy which masks ambition.
Impersonality means
freedom from personality, but none of us are going to attain that, right away;
we are doing well enough if we are persistently, albeit slowly, overcoming.
For practical purposes:
if we are developing the child-heart; if we are learning to love things
beautiful; if we are becoming more honest and plain and simple; if we are
beginning to sense the sweet side of life; if we are getting to like our
friends better and extending the circle; if we feel ourselves expanding in
sympathy; if we love to work for Theosophy and do not ask position as a reward:
if we are not bothering too much
about whether we are personal or impersonal -
this is traveling on the path of impersonality.
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The
above text is reproduced from the book “The Friendly Philosopher”, by Robert
Crosbie, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles, 416 pp., 1945 / 2008, pp. 127-128.
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In September 2016, after
a careful analysis of the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students
decided to form the Independent Lodge of
Theosophists, whose priorities include the building of a better future in
the different dimensions of life.
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