Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the March - April 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Excessive Happiness." Quest  91.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2003):42.

viewpoint

By Betty Bland, National President

To be free is to be happy without seeking happiness, to act with a spontaneous motion which is the resultant of an inward grace.

—N. Sri Ram, Thoughts for Aspirants

In the movie Patch Adams, based on actual events, Patch, a medical student, is almost expelled from school because he is guilty of "excessive happiness." When one is dealing with life and death matters, one must be serious. And yet the patients with whom he cavorts respond better to treatment and are generally happier and more cooperative because they are treated as unique individuals and because they can laugh—even in the midst of suffering. Humor has broken the clouds of despair and let the sunshine of grace pour in. The patients did nothing but become open to that grace. And their laughter created the opening for it to enter their lives.

Grace is a great thing to have, but how does one work for it? Or even put oneself in the firing line of grace, when by its very definition it is unmerited pine assistance? How can one earn something that is not earnable?

The secret is that grace is not something to be received, but something inside each of us to be discovered. Every living person has a seed of grace planted within, a seed that will sprout and come into full flower with care and feeding.

What can we feed this mysterious little seed? We want to force-feed it, to check every few days to see if it has grown yet. But attention is one of the things that smother it. Grace can only grow when left alone. What a dilemma! We can't force it; we can't control it; but we can become open to that which is all around and within us. We can let it happen.

I have already given one hint about how this might be so by mentioning that humor supports grace. A good belly laugh a day can surely keep the doctor away. Yet there are several additional ways to cultivate that illusive lily of life—namely, silence, thankfulness, and service.

First consider silence. In the silence is a profound stillness that gives rise to deep connections with the source of all life and joy. As it says in the Bible, "Be still and know that I am God." Under the gentle blanket of silence, our seed of grace sends down strong roots and shoots upward toward the sun. Yet, keeping silent can be a difficult task.

A friend recently confessed that she had no luck in meditating. Thoughts were always popping into her head, and she couldn't keep from fidgeting. She supposed that it was just beyond her. "But," she said, "I breathe little prayers of thanksgiving all day long. Every day I see the many good things and joys in life that far outweigh the bad, and I say a little thank-you."

You can be sure that I told her that breathing "little prayers of thanksgiving" is one of the most powerful meditations one can do. With this kind of prayerful attitude, the opening to joy is a natural outgrowth. Frequent acknowledgment that life and everything that comes with it are a gift, brings to us the treasure of a richer life—through grace.

If one has had any success at all with humor, silence, and thankfulness, then the conditions will be right for grace to flower in all of its splendor. The petals will unfold naturally in an outward-turned attitude of service. Such service does not necessarily involve intense activity, as one might have expected, although it may. It may just occur in very quiet ways, depending on one's circumstances. Universally, however, it incorporates a gentle sharing of oneself in the calm assurance that all will be well:

When all life becomes a poem of service, in the true, pure, inward sense, then all life grows exceedingly beautiful; it unfolds like a flower.

—N. Sri Ram,(Thoughts for Aspirants)

May the grace of excessive happiness bloom in your heart.

Originally printed in the March - April 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Bruteau, Beatrice. "Mysticism, Self-Discovery, and Social Transformation." Quest  91.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2003):56-59, 66.

By Beatrice Bruteau

The Kingdom of God is "within you"? or "among you"? Why not both? Why not necessarily both? We tend to think that the inner life is one thing and worldly, or active, life is something else entirely. But they imply one another. To make meaningful efforts to improve the world, we must first correct ourselves, and if we have succeeded in reaching some degree of spiritual insight, we will see that we must take care of the rest of the world. 

So, is mysticism the cure for social ills? If the chain of reasoning I am going to present here is correct, that is what it comes down to. We behave the way we do because we value the way we do, and we value the way we do because we take reality for granted the way we do. When we come to realize that we have made a fateful mistake in the way we have taken our reality for granted, then this entire structure has to shift. And indeed it cannot make any notable shift in what even now we consider a desirable direction until this fundamental reorientation has taken place.

We preach "Love your neighbor as yourself," and many of us manage to do that to some degree, and a few people do it to a large degree, but our cultures, our "civilizations," are not characterized by it because our overall perception of one another is not "there is another like myself," let alone "there is 'myself' in another guise." We don't see the neighbor as "self" but as another outsider, stranger, foreigner, potential or actual enemy. This is the origin of social ill.

What social ills do we suffer from? War, tyranny, oppression, deprivation of social, civil, personal, or human rights. Even poverty, disease, and pollution are related to the way our social relations are structured and functioning. The over-all pattern can be generalized as powerful people dominating less powerful or powerless people.

Why do we have this structure? The sociologists tell us that the basic value is social status. All other values are in service to this one. Strength isn't valuable unless it is admired and obeyed. Beauty is worthless if it doesn't give you preferment. Wealth has limited value in itself; mostly it buys social standing and respect. Some forms of social respect cannot be obtained by any means under our control but depend on the accidents of birth, which determine sex and race. Whole populations suffer from the deprivations, material and emotional, deriving from such categorizations. But even here human beings have made the choice to give advantage to one category or another.

Again we ask why? Why do human beings want high social standing? Why does the value have to lie in the contrast? Why do we have to be "better than" someone else? There are biological, evolutionary, and economic points to be made here; humans aren't the only social animals to organize and value themselves this way. Breeding rights have a lot to do with it, quick response through recognized authority in case of crisis and danger, covering all the needed tasks by established castes, and so on. But the human situation is amenable to human understanding and freedom and so requires discussion in a more extensive context.

Briefly, then, and here we come to the nub, people want social standing because of our sense of selfhood and self-worth. Those biological, economic, and other social dimensions go a long way toward defining who we think we are and what value we have. In particular, the dominant class and the dominant persons in our society and our personal life determine—or try to determine—this definition and this value for us. If they don't let us hold influential positions in our society, or vote, or take certain kinds of jobs, or obtain education or health care, or own property or travel freely, or be named respectfully—or any number of other instances of injury, deprivation, slights, or contempt you can easily cite from around the world—then the self-image and the self-respect of the despised group is severely diminished. Only by such means can the dominant individuals and classes maintain their positions of advantage and their sense of their own value. You know you're good when you're better than the others. And you know you're worthless when you can't fulfill yourself freely and creatively.

So back this social struggle is the real culprit: the assumption that our selfhood actually is defined by our social standing, the belief that the contrast value of the different ranks of social respectability is the only way to find value. If we were to change the way we deeply experience and thus conceive our selfhood, all this superstructure could — would have to — change.

That's what mysticism does. It liberates us from this way of defining and valuing ourselves. It enables us to experience that we are not merely finite beings with a very insecure hold on Being. It convinces us, and repositions us, with respect to Ultimate Reality. We discover, in a way we cannot doubt, that we are related to Infinite Being. There are various ways of saying this in different theological settings, but the crucial point for our self-discovery and its consequent social transformation power is that we are secure in being. We do not have to grasp at aids to our existence, do not have to make ourselves bigger and better than others, do not have to try to acquire value, because we already possess absolutely secure existence and immeasurable value.

How can we come to such a convincing, liberating, repositioning experience? We can't command it, but we can believe in it, and we can practice to put ourselves well in the way of being open to it. There is a negative way, then a positive way, and again another negative way.

The first negative way, removing false beliefs. Many, if not most, of us were brought up to believe that our worth and any approval we might receive were highly conditional. Our value depended on our natural endowment and our accomplishment. These constitute our "descriptions." The kind of thing you tell (or hide from) people who ask you about yourself. A useful exercise is to make a list of these descriptions and then imagine yourself with alternatives to them, or simply without them. If you try this, you will discover that the "real you" is quite independent of all these descriptions. You are still you whether they are present or not. Along with this, you will become able to release yourself from other people's evaluations of you. Their beliefs about you will no longer "stick to" you.

A popular form of meditation is useful here. You simply relax deeply and gather yourself into your central being, beyond the descriptions, and savor the freedom, peace, security, and sense of reality that you find there. To help you stay focused you use a word or short phrase that brings you back to this peaceful, confident, happy center. Say it as you breathe, or say it only when you need to refocus.

The positive way opens at this point. In your central being, being the real you, free of the descriptions, you notice that you transcend those finite characteristics. There is something about you that is unmodified, ineffable. This is where you are embedded in the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Unconditioned. Consider that the Absolute Being must be Unconditional Love—that is, communication of life to all without stint and without favoritism and without the possibility of withdrawal from this commitment. If this is so, then you yourself must be so loved. Your existence, your consciousness, and your capacity for joy testify to it. So give yourself permission to believe this, and open yourself to the gift of experiencing it. Especially if you think that your soul may have been culturally conditioned to feel insecure, make an intention to let yourself feel secure in the warm embrace of this Unconditional Love.

If you have your own private way of thinking, of imagining, affectively relating to this Ground of Being, whether styled "God" or not, whether personalized or not, enter into this consciousness with full confidence and even fervor. The power of love is your real being, just as it is that of the Ground, so you can express yourself ardently. You can yearn mightily for a full experience of your union with this, your Source and your Meaning. Give yourself the opportunity to develop your meditation practice in this way.

As you do this, you will find that the second negative way is also a positive way into the Heart ofReality. You have no description; the Absolute has no description. As you rest your centered consciousness in the embrace of the Unconditioned, your mind will grow empty of contents and your sense of your reality as personal consciousness will become intense. It is not what we are conscious of that matters but that we are conscious at all. We are conscious of consciousness itself, consciousness that continues to exist even when it is not conscious of anything in particular. This is a revelation of our true personhood and a first intimation of our immortality and incomparable value. This consciousness is the Absolute Consciousness alive in us.

Two important conclusions follow this experience. First, your value is a value in itself, not by being compared with anyone or anything. You are good, not because you are "not-evil" or because you are"better than." You are good because you are you, the expression of the Absolute Good. Nothing can change this or destroy it. Put it this way if you like: God loves you; you don't have to do/be anything to deserve/win it, and there's nothing you can do to lose it — or avoid it! It is the bottom truth about your situation in existence. When you realize this, you have been repositioned. You look out on the world of descriptions from a totally new point of view.

And second, whatever is true of you is true of everyone else without exception. (It may well be true beyond the human race.) This means that you now experience the others as somehow "your self." We don't have a proper language for it. You feel that their "insides" must be even as yours, at the deepest level beyond the descriptions. So you are in a position to practice compassion and forgiveness and to offer unconditional love in your turn as the expression of the Absolute to another expression of the Absolute. You are no longer deceived by appearances, by descriptions. You are no longer tempted to judge. You find making comparisons and taking them seriously laughable. Each one is a person, a being that exists in the heart of the Ultimate Reality and is endowed with immeasurable value in just being that person — just as you are.

And now your social behavior will be accordingly different from what it was when you believed you were your descriptions. You can't hurt anyone, for you value them too much and you can feel their hurts. You can't even neglect anyone. You are eager to share, to be helpful, to enjoy others, to let them be themselves safely with you. You wouldn't dream of trying to dominate them.

Is this the "Kingdom of God"? both "within us" and "among us"? Yes, and just as fast as we relate to one another this way, the Kingdom will be present. It consists of our interrelations so it can't be here until we do this, but when we do it, it is here. It isn't an intervention from outside, it's our own being, our own loving, our own behavior. It's all of us together.

How does it show? The first thing that is clear is that as persons we are all equal, so our social relations will reflect that. Every person will be respected as a most precious and honorable being. Social status is one of the descriptions lost on the way into the Heart of God. People still have various talents, though, and we appreciate all of them and arrange to let people develop them and share them. There is sufficient variety — and intelligence — that we can get all the really necessary tasks done. We won't have to devote energy to deceiving others into doing things to make us rich, so we will all be able to relax and enjoy one another's gifts in peace.

Politically, we won't need wars, hot or cold, military or economic, so we will save a bundle to spend on making life better for a multitude of folks who have been short-changed for ages. Creative skills will be liberated all over, so there will be a great deal of happy activity, invention, discovery, knowledge, art, playfulness. As people realize that they are securely loved, have enormous value in themselves, they can stop putting so much energy into self-protection, compensation, self-augmentation, competition, and release it into creative exploration—doing what we naturally like to do.

Culturally, we will share and appreciate the diversity in goodness. Others don't have to be wrong in order for us to be right. The world is large and wonderful, and God is beyond anybody's set of doctrines. But we can find benefit in learning how one another think and feel.

Economically, we will work together to preserve the planet and distribute the good of life to all. It can be done. We're intelligent. We can find ways to make abundance and share it. As long as some of us don't have to have a whole lot more than the others.

Sounds great. Can we get there from here? What can we say? It's not impossible. Only we can do it. Nobody's going to come down from heaven and force it upon us. We can talk about it, explain how it could work, set up models on small scales, work out scenarios for larger scales. We just have to remember to start at the bottom, with people discovering that they are valuable in themselves right now. Until we are convinced of that we will not be free enough to get very far with such an enticing program. Trying to force programs of sharing a little, by redistributive taxation and voluntary charity and responsible development and so on. But to really turn the system around we will have to do the necessary transformation at the deep level.

To the extent that any of us do go through that transformation of self-discovery we will find that we can't avoid expressing that discovery in our thoughtful behavior. We will work at trying to spread such a repositioned consciousness in a liberating way. Even this can't be done by imposing on others and trying to "convert" them. The way to the change has itself to be consonant with the change. Good example that encourages others to copy it is the best, together with explanations such as I've tried to give here in very condensed form.

There is, in spite of the terrible state the world is in, a lot of effort in this direction, a great deal of wisdom-practice going on and being taught. Anyone can get into it, make such discoveries in their own way, share with their neighbors in their own way. We need to be in touch with each other, not in competition with one another in this effort as we are in other organizational, ideational, economic enterprises. Let's not claim that our insight, our practice, our tradition is the only right one, or even the best or most.

Beatrice Bruteau has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. Among the most recent of her ten books are What We Can Learn from the East, The Easter Mysteries, The Grand Option: Personal Transformation and a New Creation, and Radical Optimism. This article's theme is further developed in "The Holy Thursday Revolution" (in progress).

the view from Adyar

Originally printed in the March - April 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Burnier, Radha. "Delight as a Form of Yoga." Quest  91.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2003):68-69 

By Radha Burnier 

DELIGHT IS THE ONE TRUE SOURCE OF ACTION. This statement by St. Augustine has been worded some what differently by other teachers. Some have said "Love and do what you will." Delight is intrinsic to love. To be with what one loves, to give to or receive from a loved person is delight. Action that expresses delight or love is not action based on an idea but rather is the manifestation of a state of being. We all know that people who are unhappy, frustrated, or insecure act awkwardly and create problems. One may, of course, respond that even those who are cheerful make problems, but they do so because their cheerfulness is not real; it is tainted by self-centeredness. The mind that is not self-preoccupied is serene and undisturbed, and it sheds gladness on others. 

Pain—physical or psychological—does not make anyone feel well. The feeling that there is something wrong when there is pain is universal. Why is that so? Why do we take it that everything is right when the mind is contented and happy? No logic or reasoning or answer is needed, because the fact is self-evident.

Pure joy and delight are the nature of the Self when it is undistorted. Because delight is the nature of our being, not only our true being, but the unalloyed, unspoiled state of being anywhere, we too are glad when we come into contact with it. A child plays, a bird sings, a little boy shouts with joy, and we too are happy.

Krishnamurti, translating Nature's delights into words, fills the hearts of the reader with rapture:

The stream, joined by other little streams, meandered through the valley noisily, and the chatter was never the same. It had its own moods but never unpleasant, never a dark mood. The little ones had a sharper note, there were more boulders and rocks; they had quiet pools in the shade, shallow with dancing shadows and at night they had quite a different tone, soft, gentle and hesitant. . . . the bigger stream had a deep quiet tone, more dignified, wider and swifter. . . . One could watch them by the hour and listen to their endless chatter; they were very gay and full of fun, even the bigger one, though it had to maintain a certain dignity. They were of the mountains, from dizzy heights nearer the heavens and so purer and nobler; they were not snobs but they maintained their way and they were rather distant and chilly. In the dark of the night they had a song of their own, when few were listening. It was a song of many songs.

The seventeenth century mystic Thomas Traherne describes the exaltation of letting go of the self:

You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in scepters, you never enjoy the world.

Our real nature is ananda, "delight." Why then do we persistently renounce our birthright? Contentment is so rare. A constant and deep contentment is said to be the mark of the Yogi. True Yogis do not seek anything or want anything. Abandoning all the desires of the heart, they are satisfied in the Self by the Self (Bhagavad Gita 2.55). They are happy whatever happens; wherever they are. Why are not we so? Is it not strange that we seek a special technique to be ourselves, to know the absolute felicity of just being what we are. The name sadananda, "being-delight," is beautiful, for it points out that to be is to be full of delight—unbroken delight—and that is right and good.

Maybe one can change from restlessness and discontentment to deep unspoiled delight very quickly, almost overnight if we are serious about it. We can try it just for a while. Put aside even for a short time the thought of being in want, lacking this and that, having less or more in comparison to others. Just be! Not be something: I have done this and failed in that; I have not gone far or I have achieved. Let every picture be put aside, the idea of needing, as well as of having achieved. This is meditation. When the thought of oneself as being in want of anything, physical or spiritual dies, the mind is free, bright, and calm. That serenity is delight, a grace that is pine. That state of grace is called prasada in the Bhagavad Gita (2.64-5).

One can start by being aware with the heart, not as a mental idea, of the brightness and beauty of life. There is a happy aspect to everything. After getting bruised by a fall, instead of complaining and annoying others by self-pity, one can be happy that a bone is not broken. In At the Feet of the Master, which speaks of cheerfulness as a qualification, we are told, "However hard it is, be thankful that it is not worse." Let us learn to part with things gladly; the good side of parting is that it loosens the mind's hold on transient objects and makes one aware of the illusion of possession.

"All the world is a stage." The world drama goes on, changing between tragic and comic, with scenes of beauty as well as of horror. The spectator sees many disguises that the producer has fashioned. Whether the scene is sad or cheerful, the total effect is to delight the viewer, but the viewer must be detached to see through the disguises and the roles, and to hear the tale with the message of the master producer.

Mystics say that all creatures on earth joyously hymn the glory of life. Each creature is manifesting inits own unique way the marvelous content of the universal mind. Human beings are unable to do this spontaneously because we think of ourselves as independent of the source of all life. Therefore we miss the hymn of life.

When we train ourselves to see the bright and the good and take delight in the drama, even though the villain has faults, when we no longer want what is not there, we will become happy people and make others happy. But the happiness must be real, born out of a mind that has ceased to want. Delight is the state of not wanting, the beatitude of being, but not being somebody. It is the Yoga of learning to be simple, natural, and in tune with every bit of life.

Radha Burnier is the international President of the Theosophical Society. As a young woman she was an exponent of classical Indian dance and as such was featured in the film The River, by Jean Renoir. This column is a summary of a lecture she delivered at Adyar on December 30, 1996.

Originally printed in the March - April 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Coady, Mary Frances. "The Little Flower St. Thérèse of Lisieux." Quest  91.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2003):52-55.

By Mary Frances Coady

The basilica, perched like a gaudy oversized crown on the top of a hill, is the first thing you see as the train approaches Lisieux, 180 kilometers west of Paris. A 1920s attempt at baroque splendor, the edifice seems out of place in this modest town, which is otherwise indistinguishable from all the other towns in Normandy that were decimated during World War II and then rebuilt. Whatever one may think of its architectural qualities, however, the basilica does signal something extraordinary about Lisieux.

Lisieux is a remarkable town because a young woman grew up there, entered a Carmelite monastery near the center of town, and died there in 1897 at the age of twenty-four. Her name was Thérèse Martin, known as Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus after she became a nun. Twenty-eight years later, Thérèse was canonized and became the most popular saint in the history of Catholicism. Her statue, depicting a young nun in brown-and-cream-colored robes with an armful of roses (she called herself the "Little Flower" and declared that she would shower roses upon the earth after her death) graced one Catholic church after another.

The unlikely popularity of this obscure nun was the result of several factors: the Catholic appetite at the time for piety (especially when it came packaged in a person of youthful attractiveness), some shrewd work on the part of the nuns after her death (three of whom were Thérèse's own sisters), and, most enduringly, her own writing.

A few years before her death, Thérèse—the product of staunchly devout, royalist stock (not popular in the anticlerical republican France of the time)—was asked by one of her sisters (who was also her religious superior at the time) to write a short account of her childhood. This she did in a school exercise notebook, which she gave to her sister. It was put aside and forgotten until a few months before her death, when she was asked to continue writing.

The result was an astonishing account of her own spiritual development in what she called the "Little Way," a spiritual path that emphasized simplicity and childlikeness, acceptance of her own failings, and an almost light-hearted trust in God. It was not an easy path to forge: her monastery, built on a small patch of ground, with a tall green fence enclosing the garden, was cloistered (that is, the nuns made virtual prisoners of themselves, never leaving the monastery grounds and receiving visitors in parlors where heavily veiled grilles prevented them from being seen). The nuns she lived with, far from being saints, were living exemplars of every kind of neurosis. She suffered bouts of anguish over reports of her father's deteriorating mental condition (he was eventually confined to an institution in the nearby city of Caen). And, as Thérèse herself revealed, she spent most of her nine years in the monastery in a numbing state of spiritual murkiness known as "the dark night of the soul," a state that was often accompanied by nagging doubts about the existence of God.

Not much about the town of Lisieux reflects the spirit of this tough-minded young woman who clung to her faith with little support while living a way of life that many would now label meaningless. Her own nuns, capitalizing on the sensation caused by her autobiographical writing (which was published under the title Story of a Soul), had cards printed depicting a sweet-faced, kewpie-doll nun. Actual photographs, many of them taken by her sister Caline, who brought a camera with her when she entered the monastery, were touched up in order to give her an acceptable prettiness. The shops around town reflect this flowery treatment of Thérèse, with souvenir plastic statues, cheap rosaries, and kitschy bric-a-brac.

The Carmelite monastery, however, still exists in much the same way as it did when Thérèse lived there. There is still a cloistered community of nuns, although occasionally one or two can be seen outside the monastic enclosure, dressed now in a habit consisting of a simplified dress and veil, a disappointment to some visitors who would like them to remain unchanged from the way they dressed in Thérèse's day. Inside the monastery, seen only with permission, is the great iron door notable for the absence of a handle. It was this door upon which, according to a customary ritual, the fifteen-year-old Thérèse knocked when she sought admission to the cloister. The door was opened from the inside and swung shut behind her.

Inside the monastery chapel, a marble tomb flanked by lighted candles and huge vases of roses contains Thérèse's mortal remains. Above the tomb her effigy lies in gilded state, the model of a pretty young nun with rosy cheeks, a garland of flowers around her head. In a small museum beside the monastery, Thérèse's long blonde ringlets, cut off when she received the Carmelite habit, are on display. (The hair of the young women entering the monastery, cut as a sign of their renunciation of worldly vanity, was often made into wigs that were worn for plays during recreation; Thérèse herself was photographed in a wig for a play she wrote about St. Joan of Arc.) Also in the museum is a priest's vestment made from the rich brocade of the bridal gown she wore for the ceremony at which she was given the habit (marking the first stage in becoming a "bride of Christ"), as well as a rough serge robe and a pair of wooden clogs typical of the nuns' garb of the time.

The abbey school she attended was destroyed by Allied bombs. Her childhood home, called Les Buisonnets, still stands, however. Many of the family's possessions still remain, including Thérèse's dolls.

In the climate of theological awakening that followed the second Vatican Council in the 1960s, many Catholics cast aside the sugary cult of Thérèse, and her statue was often among the first relegated to the church basement. In recent decades, however, critical editions of her story, restored to its original state, have appeared, as well as her extant letters and the original photographs showing a young nun in a slightly askew habit looking sometimes impish, sometimes pensive. Serious analyses of her work and thought are published with remarkable regularity.

In her writing, if one sifts through the flowery French style of the nineteenth century, one discovers the essence of her spiritual path. She herself pointed to the voice of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs as her inspiration: "You that are simple, turn in here!" One finds this path of simplicity in many spiritual traditions. It is echoed in today's twelve-step programs: give everything over to the Higher Power. A similar message appears in the form of contemporary slogans: Don't sweat the small stuff. Let go and let God. Hand it over.

The yearning for such a path can be heard in many people's desire for the simple life, for solitude and quiet, for relief from the violent jangling of city noise and the drivel of the world of advertising, from the compulsion to grasp and consume. In the midst of everyday struggles and personal ambition, there is a quest for meaning, a longing to see beyond oneself, to view the world with compassion through the eyes of the heart. Beneath our daily striving, despite the belief that we can have it all and that we are self-made human beings, is the recognition that in the end we are weak and powerless. Wise spiritual guides, Thérèse among them, tell us to embrace that powerlessness and surrender it to what the Buddhists call the Ground of our being—or in Thérèse's Christian language, the loving hands of God. This is the path: simple but not easy. Wise guides also acknowledge that the journey down this path is a lifelong effort.

In the town of Lisieux, despite the souvenir shops, life carries on normally: coffee shops and pubs flourish, children go to school, townspeople hurry home with armfuls of bread and market produce. And inside the monastery chapel, the nuns' voices can be heard singing every day at prayer time. Their hidden lives remain dedicated to her timeless message of joyful trust.

From my earliest days I have believed that the Little Flower would be plucked in the springtime of her life. But today my only guide is self-abandonment. I have no other compass. I no longer know how to ask passionately for anything except that the will of God shall be perfectly accomplished in my soul. I can repeat these words of our Father, St. John of the Cross: "I drank deep within the hidden cellar of my Beloved and, when I came forth again, I remembered nothing of the flock I used to look after. My soul is content to serve Him with all its strength. I've finished all other work except that of love. In that is all my delight."

Or rather: "Love has so worked within me that it has transformed my soul into itself."

. . . I know that the Kingdom of God is within us. Jesus has no need of books or doctors of the Church to guide souls. He, the Doctor of doctors, can teach without words. I have never heard Him speak, but I know that He is within me. He guides and inspires me every moment of the day. Just when I need it, a new light shines on my problems. This happens not so much during my hours of prayer as when I'm busy with my daily work.