Man’s past exer­cises great power over his exis­tence in the present. Yet, the past no longer exists. Mankind can­not alter the past with all the power in the uni­verse. But like the chains of Marley’s ghost man often insists upon drag­ging the past into the present. Man cre­ates his own bur­dens. He is never really in the present because he will never let go of the past long enough to truly be free. Every sec­ond is spent slightly out of sink because he is never really entirely in the moment. He is con­sis­tently dis­tracted and eschewed from the full­ness of the moment because he insists upon drag­ging the past in his own think­ing. Only one power can release him, and set him free. Only one key may unlock those chains. For­give­ness will set us free. Not our own judg­men­tal abso­lu­tion but only the for­give­ness may release him from the bur­dens he has locked into his own soul, in his mind, and to his heart with the chains of impa­tience and judgment.

Should you worry about the future? Our con­cern about the future which has not yet arrived makes us a slave to our thoughts. We imag­ine the future on the screen of your own mind with lit­tle knowl­edge or aware­ness of who is con­trol­ling the pro­jec­tion of that dis­play. You think there­fore you imag­ine you under­stand. What stan­dard can mark the path of your think­ing? What light can reveal true knowl­edge from the false? Can you purify your thoughts
with right rea­son by the use of your own think­ing alone? Shall we eat of the tree of knowl­edge and decide good and evil?

The present is the only place you will find a solu­tion for the future or the rem­edy for the past.

Van­ity is like dark­ness. Like dark­ness, it has no power against the light. Like dark­ness, which can­not pen­e­trate the light, van­ity is merely the absence of the pos­i­tive power of humil­ity. Humil­ity is where the real power lies and van­ity is merely the lack of humil­ity. The hum­ble, by nature, come to serve rather than be served, think it is bet­ter to give than receive, bet­ter to for­give rather than to judge, bet­ter to love rather than be loved.

Man has been enticed to believe that free­dom is the absence of tyranny. He there­fore believes that if he fights against tyrants and over­comes them he will obtain free­dom. This is an erro­neous con­clu­sion because good is not the result of the absence of evil, evil is the result of the absence of good.

If tyranny is the result of the absence of a pos­i­tive force within real­ity what is miss­ing? Tyranny is the exer­tion of force in the main­te­nance of self love. It includes the tak­ing of life from oth­ers because you have no per­sonal source of life. Self love results from the absence of our love of the Higher Force that some call God.

Pit­ting our­self against evil is a great temp­ta­tion, but it actu­ally may have the effect of strength­en­ing evil. As long as you oppose tyranny you will not be free because you will be occu­pied at the whim of tyrants. But that does not mean that we do noth­ing. It only means that we have to give God a chance to do His thing instead of usurp­ing him with our own effort to be God.

Free­dom is the right to do as you choose, not an immu­nity from the cause and effect. Tyrants are merely a symp­tom in the world in which we exist that some­thing is miss­ing. Nature abhors a vac­uum. If we react to tyrants on their level they and we become part of a mutual cause and effect reality.

We must become what the tyrant is miss­ing. The best way to nul­lify the effects of tyrants is to rid our own hearts and minds from the ele­ments of tyranny. Where a tyrant is self­ish, we must be char­i­ta­ble; where a tyrant is proud we must be hum­ble; where a tyrant is intol­er­ant we must be patient; where s tyrant is unfor­giv­ing we must for­give; where a tyrant is cov­etous we must be benevolent.