Success and progress¹⁸

Confidence in myself I need. Assurance from God I need. Confidence tells me that eventually I can become a perfect instrument of God. Assurance tells me that this goal of mine is within my easy reach.

Confidence means to have the key to God's Kingdom. Assurance means to have the willingness and devotedness to open the door. Once I have opened the door, I see the face of success and feel the heart of progress.

Success is in the desire-world. Progress is in the aspiration-world. We succeed in life. We succeed in fulfilling our ambitions. But in outer success there is no assurance that we will be happy, even if we have great success, greater success and greatest success. Whereas with progress, even when we make just an iota of progress, we become happy, and our happiness is abiding.

Success belongs to our earth-consciousness. Progress belongs to our Heaven-consciousness. Success makes us feel that we have the capacity, that we can do everything. In success we feel that it is we who are the actual doers. Progress makes us feel that we are not the doers. It makes us feel that there is an unseen force deep within us that encourages and inspires our progress, and that inside this progress is our constant happiness. This unseen force is the doer; God is the doer. This is what we learn from our progress.

The seeker marches along the road of success, but that road ultimately fails to show him the destination. Then the seeker walks along the other road, progress. Here at every moment he meets with joy and satisfaction, for at every moment he sees a destination. Needless to say, this destination is only the starting point for a further, more illumining and more fulfilling goal.

Success makes the individual feel that might is right. So in the world of success, the individual human being comes first and God comes next. This is what success tells us. But progress tells us that might is God's Compassion and right is also God's Compassion. Progress also tells us something else most significant: God is first and God is last; in between is the seeker's place.

Man finds his eternal place between God the Leader and God the Follower. God the Leader and God the Follower grant him a place in the inmost recesses of the Universal Heart. In this place, the seeker at every moment sees that God the Leader and God the Follower are taking him to his destination, where he will become one with the transcendental Vision and the universal Reality that he has been longing for throughout Eternity.