Of the messages that may be quoted, there remain only a few detached statements, removed from their personal context, but reproduced because of their general interest or significance.
“Don’t worry about C——” was one bit of specific advice, given in March, before any of the Lessons had been received. “She will have her troubles, but she must dree her own weird. You might save her some pain, but life’s purpose may not be taught. It must be fought for, with blood and sweat. Let C—— get her wounds in her own way. You may then soothe the pain. But don’t try to spare her the fight. That has to do with the larger questions of life and eternity.”
“‘Life’s purpose may not be taught,’ but the laws underlying the search for it may be?”
“Of course. We are trying now to wake the world to consciousness that these laws exist. Most people, broadly speaking, have forgotten them, in the general contempt for laws where they are not enforced, and in the general hatred of them where they are enforced in oppression and fear.”
A few days later, another person, writing of another and much younger girl, said: “She may have a hard time over the conflicting purposes. Everybody does. But with you to give her a foundation, I do not fear for her.... Her struggles will only make her stronger. Do not try to save her from pain. Remember that it is her mother who says this. Let her meet life fully and work her way upward. She will always yield in the end to the sublime purpose.”
On a later occasion, this same person said: “We help all we can, but even when you want us to, we are unwilling to hold back the larger and vital development in order to hasten some smaller conclusion. Even when the small conclusion is important to you, it must be your own choice that helps you; and if the choice is wrong at the moment, it still helps in the end.”
“She’s too sympathetic for her own good,” was said of another young woman. “She’d do the vicarious atonement act for all creation, if she could. What she needs is to have this purpose business driven into her. Every fellow has to do his own fighting, and his own atonement, and his own climbing, and take what’s coming to him while he does it. She’s always trying to soften the path and take the swipes herself, and it can’t be done. She gets the blow and the strain and the struggle, all right, but it impedes her and gets the other fellow nowhere. It helps nobody to save them the consequences of their own choice. The way to help is to call to their constructive purpose and give them a chance. If they choose not to take it, then let them take all the consequence that’s coming. If that doesn’t teach them, there’s nothing more to do, except to turn them over to somebody who can arouse their purpose, if they have any. Anyhow, making a buffer of yourself just batters up good material for no gain in force or purpose.”
Again, another person to another group. “Let any fighting force do his own fighting. Suggest, enlighten, encourage, but don’t try to carry the burden of another’s life. You can’t hurry their development, and you impede your own and that of others of your own purpose.... You are like the fellow in the fable, who finished by carrying not only the pack, but the donkey, too. It’s a very sweet and unselfish disposition, but do you think it improves the donkey for his station in life? Not that I’m calling S—— a donkey, but like all mankind, he carries a pack. You can’t carry both, and he won’t learn to apply his force evenly here if you do it for him there. Lots of people develop unevenly and have to even up somewhere. Why delay the process by vicarious labor, especially when it only exhausts you and doesn’t develop his muscles any? Selah!”
“You can train O—— to carry physical temptations, if you begin early,” a man said, writing of his nephew. “Don’t let him yield to impulse or desire when it is destructive. Make him build his body first, as a boy. Make him respect it and its promise. That’s a bully thing for a boy to know at the beginning. He reasons from that to other things. A boy is a brute first, but a thinking brute. If he respects the flesh, he respects all things in time.”
“What is my purpose?” a young man asked, one day.