Prayers and Meditations

April 23, 1914

All rules have vanished, the regularity of the discipline is gone, all effort has ceased; not by my own will nor, I believe, through negligence, but because circumstances are working together to bring this about. It seems that this inner will, always alert, like a steersman holding the rudder, has evaporated or fallen asleep, and my being is only something peacefully surrendered which lets itself be carried along by the stream. Till now, it seems to me, the course has always been in a straight line, and I would keep the hope that it is Thou, O Lord, who guidest the stream; but surely if I have erred at times through too great a rigidity, a lack of suppleness and spontaneity, it could very well be that now I err through the opposite excess. I have come to accept peacefully the state I am in and to tell myself that Thou wilt bestow upon me the true Consciousness, the absolute Consciousness when Thou thinkest it best.

I look at all this changing world as a game unfolding itself, and I take part in this game with the same energy and conviction with which I would if I believed it real and important. All this is very new. But what is certain is that never before were my mind and heart in so complete a repose. What will come out of that, I do not know. But I trust in Thee, O Lord; Thou knowest the best way of using and developing Thy instrument....

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