24
CHAPTER OF LETTERS
I
We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying: "I want nothing but to give——" ... To be able to say this without an answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits with his dogs.
To be free—that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be—how the proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold....
One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral merely. You can enjoy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you.
Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions—you but do what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube. It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others.
We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure; until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices of personal self, which is subject to death.
It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying. We have to silence the self to hear the Master.