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Question: Can character
and true strength ever really be taught?
Answer: The only higher
facts that can transform our lives are those that have been made our own through
firsthand experience. Until a child learns to walk for himself, he cannot move
from place to place on his own, regardless of how many people he has seen walk.
In the same way, memorized ideas woven into a person's thinking without any true
understanding will be of no help during a crisis. Surface ideas that have not
taken hold in a person's heart cannot grow and mature so that they touch all of
a person's life with guidance and wisdom. Parroted ideas do not provide real
strength any more than the word "sugar" painted on a lemon makes it sweet.
When you see a truth from
yourself, however, through your own experience, it becomes a part of you. It
proves itself to you again and again through more wide-ranging examples that you
yourself discover, and it attracts other truths to it. With time your clarity of
vision grows, and because it is based on Truth, it cannot be shaken. What starts
as one right idea - a single drop of refreshing water - grows to a generously
flowing fountain that nourishes and sustains you for life.
Most people want very much
to be strong, but do not seem to be able to find the real strength they yearn
for. Instead, they find qualities that pass themselves off as strength, but
secretly leave these people feeling weak. Here are some examples of false
strength:
lashing out in anger when
frustrated demanding that we are
right blaming someone else for
causing the problem being loud and
intimidating, or cold and critical feeling confident because
of any contrived appearance
By contrast, here are some
examples of real strength:
remaining calm in a crisis never feeling the need to
prove ourselves to anyone seeking to solve the
problem rather than placing blame enjoying self-command
regardless of uncertain circumstances seeing all setbacks as
necessary steps to Higher success
Study these two lists and
try to see their great difference, not only in the individual areas of strength,
but also with regard to the whole human character from which they arise. What a
different kind of life would be led by someone who displayed the qualities in
the second list as compared to the first. It is possible for any of us to
achieve that different kind of life, but only in proportion to our willingness
to see the difference between real and false strength. Our growing understanding
of the difference is key, for it brings about an inner change that puts us in an
entirely new relationship with life.
Question: What are the
recognizable aspects of true character?
Answer: Our true nature can
never really be defined, only realized in varying degrees depending upon the
individual's receptivity, but let's consider just a few characteristics of this
True Nature as an awakened person might experience them. They include an abiding
sense of the Eternal, which is never apart from one's own self; the direct
knowledge that 'you‰ are somehow situated in the center of the universe and, as
such, that everything in life is not only created just for you, but waits for
you to claim it; and certainly not last, and by no means least, a deep awareness
of participating in a great purpose and plan to life, coupled with an unshakable
confidence that nothing can interfere with its success.
Question: Do we develop
character by working to eliminate bad habits, or is it only by creating good
habits in the first place that character is built?
Here is a short poem:
"Thoughts turn to acts and
habits are born;
from habits the shape of character is formed."
We drop self-defeating
behavior by coming awake to the fact that each negative act to which we give our
life is first a bit of life stolen from us. It is not well understood, but
before it is possible to defeat ourselves, we are in unconscious relationship
with a defeated nature that is not our own. By working to be awake to ourselves
in the moment, our awareness of these destructive energies permits us to
actually experience their dark nature before that nature has a chance to deceive
us. And how does it deceive us? With its promise of relief from the very pain
its presence within us has produced! Once you can see this truth, you will also
see that all self-defeating acts are the effects of our unawareness. Awareness
ends this downhill relationship and sets us upon the Upper Path where our
developing True Character ensures that our dark days are put behind us. | 
