All of us learn, usually at an early age, to gorge ourselves on everything that gratifies our ego.

Soon we are disqualified as humans. We forget love, justice and mercy for each moment.

In the twinkling of an eye we lose altitude and forget who and what we are. Then, for a long time, we see very little, except troubles and woes, guilts and fears that grow and grow.

We finally exhaust our only two possible alternatives for dealing with problems and dangers. We try being nice, then we try getting mad, but neither works.

We try to conquer what was conquering us, and we only become a bigger animal, and more afraid because of what we did in order to overcome.

We try to give up or hide, only to grow more afraid because of our failure to meet life at all.

We cannot really succeed in our attempts to become a bigger bully or a bigger hero. Even as heroes we shall feel afraid, because

what we have done to be brave is simply to win the admiration of fools, needing (yet maybe hating) their applause as evidence of our courage.

If we manage to accept their homage as truth, we become dependent upon their applause for our illusion of virtue and courage, and separate ourselves further and further from reason.

All fear intensifies as it drives us to compensate for our lack of patience. That is, it tempts us to wrestle with problems on the animal level (devolution for us), minus the quiet intercession of reason.

"Either to judge or to accept praise is egotism, and puts our soul at war with our Creator."

To get into this rat race, of course, you had to be excited to choose wrongly. Your forebears obliged you in this by feeding you lies that you accepted as true because of a latent egocentric propensity.

Perhaps you believed that you were the perfect child of God and you resented those who did not pay you proper homage (rejected you).

You judged them for this and resented them. You may still be spending most of your life energy on forcing them to give you your

divine due (even though they might now have to give it to you from their graves).

Either to judge or to accept praise is egotism, and puts our soul at war with our Creator. This is the sole reason for fear.

Those who live without discretion are simply extending what was passed on to them. They either enjoy their evil and wickedness or do not know how to get out of their rut.

They may see the suffering they have caused, but simply do not know how to prevent themselves from inflicting it upon you or others.

Your resentment of them involves you with them and causes you to follow suit. You will surely become just like them unless you find the way to stop resenting them.

When you do, you may save them, as well as yourself, by not feeding back to them a reason to continue judging you in order to feel right about themselves.

Seeing our weakness, we must cry inwardly for guidance.