your marriage,
your children,
your wealth,
your titles,
your fame,
your achievements,
your wealth of knowledge,
your savings,
your possessions,
won't make you happy or bring you the peace and rest you truly long for.
It can be the beginning of great despair and depression, and disillusionment with the promises of the world, and can lead to a life of burying your head in the sand and dreaming of a better life, waiting for your next 'holiday'.
Life ceases to be holy, and we live a life of comfortable numbness. But at least we are 'normal' and 'fit in'.
Or, if faced head-on, and not turned away from, this disillusionment can actually be an invitation to that great liberation that is the discovery of a deeper, ever-present happiness, not dependent upon people, substances, objects, or life circumstances 'going your way', or time itself.
Breakdown can always point to the break-through of a deeper truth, since only that which is false in you can break down. Truth cannot break. Some call this recognition 'waking up', some call it 'self-realisation'. I call it natural sanity.
Remembering who you really are stops you living in suspense, longing for your next holiday, tired of life and waiting for retirement, and makes every day a holiday - a holy day.
Which it always was, of course.
"There is no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all before you really learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this because they saw no way except the pathways offered by the world. And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they could have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point and go beyond it.
It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is not the lesson in itself. The lesson has a purpose, and in this you come to understand what it is for.
Why would you seek to try another road, another person or another place, when you have learned the way the lesson starts, but do not yet perceive what it is for? Its purpose is the answer to the search that all must undertake who still believe there is another answer to be found.
Learn now, without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. But do not judge the lesson which is but begun with this. Seek not another signpost in the world which seems to point to still another road. No longer look for hope where there is none. Make fast your learning now, and understand you but waste time unless you go beyond what you have learned to what is yet to learn. For from this lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness in which you see the purpose of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp."
