The Principles

Different is the attitude toward life and things when inner revelation strikes like lightning.
 
Following the steps slowly, meditating on what has been said and what has yet to be said, you may convert the non-meaning into meaning. It is not indifferent what you do with your life. Your life, subject to laws, is open to possibilities among which you can choose. I do not speak to you of liberty. I speak to you of liberation, of movement, of process. I do not speak to you of liberty as something static, but of liberating yourself step-by-step, as those who approach their city become liberated from the road already traveled. Thus, “what one must do” depends not upon distant, incomprehensible, and conventional morals, but upon laws: laws of life, of light, of evolution.
 
Here are the “Principles” which can help you in your search for internal unity:

  1. To go against the evolution of things is to go against yourself.
  2. When you force something toward an end, you produce the contrary.
  3. Do not oppose a great force. Retreat until it weakens, then advance with resolution.
  4. Things are well when they move together, not in isolation.
  5. If day and night, summer and winter are well with you, you have surpassed the contradictions.
  6. If you pursue pleasure, you enchain yourself to suffering. But as long as you do not harm your health, enjoy without inhibition when the opportunity presents itself.
  7. If you pursue an end, you enchain yourself. If everything you do is realized as though it were an end in itself, you liberate yourself.
  8. You will make your conflicts disappear when you understand them in their ultimate root, not when you want to resolve them.
  9. When you harm others you remain enchained, but if you do not harm anyone you can freely do whatever you want.
  10. When you treat others as you want them to treat you, you liberate yourself.
  11. It does not matter in which faction events have placed you. What matters is that you comprehend that you have not chosen any faction.
  12. Contradictory or unifying actions accumulate within you. If you repeat your acts of internal unity, nothing can detain you.
You will be like a force of Nature when it finds no resistance in its path. Learn to distinguish a difficulty, a problem, an obstacle, from a contradiction. While those may move you or spur you on, contradiction traps you in a closed circle with no way out.
 
Whenever you find great strength, joy, and kindness in your heart, or when you feel free and without contradictions, immediately be internally thankful. When you find yourself in opposite circumstances, ask with faith, and the gratitude you have accumulated will return to you transformed and amplified in benefit.