... I think it would be so much better for me to learn something which would be useful to me in the army, as well as affording me exercise and amusement.
It's all about how can you take care of yourself when furthering your life's goals and ambitions, and purpose and whatever you choose - family, career - to maintain a really balanced, whole, healthy outlook.
I suppose I was about 20, and a crowd of us had been to a village hop and came back to make midnight cups of coffee. I was in the kitchen helping to dish up and having a fierce argument with one of the boys in the crowd when someone else interrupted to say: 'Of course Margaret, you will go into politics won't you?' I stopped dead. Suddenly it was crystalised for me. I knew.
How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desire, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice.
Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.
Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,--the sweet, without the other side,--the bitter.
If you overesteem great men, people become powerless. If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal. The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire, and creates confusion in those who think that they know. Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.