Course XXI - Teaching 15: Monologue as Preparation for Meditation

“I AM WHAT I AM.” Experiences of every moment forcefully teach us that we are in bondage in a world of psychological chains that are strange to our own will. How many times we say, “I’ll get rid from my habits”, and never we achieve it. Truly, we are something, not only something present, but also something that becomes and strives for being. This struggle in a maze of difficulties is the spiritual way of every being.
At daybreak, as soon as one wakes up and is clean and tidy, we go to job through lonely streets, and our soul vibrates with peace and inner joy more intensely and more healthy than with a good meditation. Seemingly life is so beautiful, and we ourselves do not believe to be so bad. These minutes in the morning and with fresh air seem a promise of what could be life any time and in whatever circumstance, if and when we are able to forget habits of previous actions. As the sleep retrieves and cleans, so also we wish that our daily living and our continuous yearning of the soul for the conquest of freedom could someday transform life into a perpetual morning.
Truly, every one is what is, such as things occur, with all defects, but someday one will be what one wants to be, or what God wishes us to be. Meanwhile we are what life leads us from one end to another; but we should recognize that at no other time than early morning we feel so satisfied with ourselves and with things.
You cannot be yourself if before you do not learn how to forget and to leave things aside. You discover that when you are against some force, this force increases and imposes stronger efforts; you understand that this is all right, but demands your inner efforts gradually to increase more and more. To overcome the enemy is not enough; the important thing is that you may become bigger through struggle. And how can your soul become bigger through those gradual, stronger efforts to do in order to overcome? It is Heracles' image fighting against the Hydra; as soon as he cut one head, two other heads went out of its gullet. The important thing is to become stronger and more strenuous, and not the disappearance of the enemy. Enemies are instruments of destiny for our total growth. Only through fight you can conquer the gift of your own individuality.