Benjamin Teixeira by the Spirit Gustavo Henrique.
Did you fail? Rise up immediately and take the lead, at the front of the battle and service. Do not surrender to whining or defection: they imply further losses, even greater than those you already had. If you act with consciousness, applying everything that you learned from the suffered debacle, you could rise again from ashes, much better than before, precisely by bringing the experience learned from the mistake and the encouragement to not incur in the error provoked by the pain of defeat.
I know that this is easier to be said than done. But, even so, understand that only by tireless attempts, we will reach the condition of unshakable winners of virtue. The learning does not happen immediately. Repetitions are mandatory for the good fixation of the new knowledge. Therefore, do not intend that things work differently with you.
Today, you failed again. You suffered a slip that you didn’t expect to commit anymore, you realized you are as weak as ever and you sadden yourself. But put yourself together. There is always tomorrow, and tomorrow is never a mere repetition of yesterday, when we know how to live fully today. As the principle of quantum leap reveals, when we least expect, we see ourselves in the next level of consciousness, moving forward to new parameters not in a linear, sequential or logical way, but suddenly, as the result of subliminal complex processes, in the undergrounds of our psyche.
In this way, have patience if your moment of change has not arrived. Nobody controls revolutions: they simply appear, and it is only due to us to enjoy them and manage their strength, when they arise. As for waiting, however, it is not a passive experience, but a conscious way of learning, assimilating all possible contents for personal growth.
Ignore the number of times that you have wronged before. The mistake is not a failure of you as a person; it is only a necessary experience for your development. Those who win are not those who do not make mistakes, but those who slipped more in errors, in this or other lives, because only by making mistakes is that we learn, and only by learning we can succeed. In this manner, change your focus regarding your theme of success and defeat. Looks can be deceiving. The essential is not to be discouraged or weaken by laziness. Strive, exert and dedicate yourself, be persistent. Your mistakes are your best teachers; receive them with open heart and without sterile self-reproach. Depression and discouragement which befall over you, as a result of seeing yourself at fault, can very well be an elaborated mechanism of evasion of responsibility and work. Nobody has ever proposed that you should abandon human condition to be a member of Heaven, immediately. It will be by your poor, modest, but constant achievements, in the field of good deeds, being continuously determined to serve and to be useful, that you will be conferred the insignias of merit and virtue.
Do little, but do it always. If you cannot do a lot today, do it less. If you cannot do it with the quality standard that you would like to, do it with the one which is feasible to you. If you really cannot do anything, do it tomorrow and compensate yourself for what you failed to perform today. But the idea is: if you wait for ideal opportunities to accomplish good, they will never come, even because it is precisely in difficult opportunities that we develop new skills to make better and more intensely the good we aspire.
Today is your day of change, through the accomplishment of feasible, even that only in the invisible field of ideal. Do and give your best, still today. Do not let for tomorrow, because tomorrow, perhaps there is no more energy like now, perhaps the mystical chain that sustained alive the ideal has been broken, exactly because of the improper postponing that you have entrusted yourself.
Now is your moment. It is in this moment of darkness that everything seems to happen. If you have regrets, because the darkness confuses you, be aware that it is precisely amid of the dark night of the soul, as said by Saint John of the Cross, that all that it is said to be impracticable, amid times of crisis, become expanded and consolidated: tenacity, enthusiasm, will, persistence, spirit of ideal, optimism and combativeness. If all is fine, nothing propels to growth. Therefore, only when everything seems to block evolution is that, paradoxically, it has greater chances to happen, effectively, prodigally, at quantum leaps, amid revolutions.
Smile for the Heavens, which sent you a difficult situation as a challenge to your astuteness, intelligence, maturity and common sense. And, facing it, ask yourself, with your mind and heart open: Lord, what do you want to teach me or suggest to me amid this pain? In doing this, you will easily create psychological patterns that will allow you to see how life is rich in opportunities of growth and happiness, how we have so much to be thankful for and so little to complain about (almost always in relation to ourselves – when we already have enough lucidity to notice that we are the center of every bad or good thing that happens in our lives.).
Be happy and do not give up, especially if you are in a difficult moment – difficult moments are key moments of openness, transcendence and victory. Even if everything seems to exactly indicate the opposite direction.
(Text received on December 21st, 2000.)