Failure

Long Quotes

Every failure started out as a good idea—something that would lead in a preferred direction, something that would further a personal cause. Let your failures in life, then, disillusion you and sober you, temper you and open your eyes. Accept your failures. Call them failures. They are failures. Let them renew you. Let them clear your vision. Let them free you from future failure. Let them give you discernment. Let them teach you discretion. Let them take you back to truth, which is what you needed to begin with.

• GCS, chap. 8, p. 89

Why take the easy and comfortable way? That only leads to a great failure at the end of your life, a failure that will cause you much distress and unhappiness throughout your life. There is no comfort in comfort. There is no escape in escape. There is no relief in passivity. There is no luxury in luxury. Unless you can fulfill your mission and purpose here, a misery will attend you that no amount of pleasure, luxury, avoidance, comfort or passivity can allay.

• GCS, chap. 10, pp. 119-20

Even if the Greater Community were not present in the world today, your failure to take these steps [toward unification of all humanity] would lead to the destruction of your environment and the loss of your opportunity to live in this world. Two great tragedies. The possibility for that failure now is great; the risks are high.

• GCS, chap. 11, p. 134

In learning the Way of Knowledge

Potential pitfalls

ambition

impatience

unwillingness to learn

unwillingness to fit oneself into appropriate placement

misguided associations ("the wrong people in the wrong ways")

attempt to use rather than be used by the truth

lack of discernment

indiscretion

grandiose imaginations about one's role or abilities

• GCS, pp. 76-77

Metaphors

The one who is taking the real steps to Knowledge and is learning them correctly will pass you by. And you will become broken down by the side of the road, unable to participate and unable to move forward.

• GCS, p. 77