DEVELOPING THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS: Page 64

impulsion from within is pushing you on. This is the I Desire to achieve happiness which is a distorted reflection on the physical plane of your own blissful self that is on the spiritual. It is the natural magnetism of your real self that is drawing you up. Ends ascend as Nature descends, said Swedenbourg, the Mystic. All things are in a scale; and begin where we will, ascend and ascend. All things are symbolical; and what we call results are beginnings : Emerson, on Plato, the philosopher. So long as you are flung about under the influence of passions your progress will be clogged. The soul is under the thrall of matter, just as a muscular pair of wrists may be loaded with fetters. It is trying to burst the shackles that chain it down. It is passing through a transition stage. Its continued effort to free itself thoroughly and entirely is the promise of the future. Conquest comes. Yes! Conquest comes. I have not read these two words. I do not repeat them to you like a parrot. It has been given to me to feel the fact. Do not say "I cannot. It is beyond me;" say "I can. It is in me So will you conquer. This ascension of the soul is the development of the Spiritual Consciousness. It is not intellectualism: nor spiritualism: nor su-pernaturalism: nor any other ism. It is the quickening of your evolution on the spiritual plane by the up-keep of a systematized line of thought activity plus the self-determined exercise of volition.