When you know in your heart that you must keep going but your feet just aren’t getting the message, self-understanding can open and carry you through doors that self-insistence cannot. The key to leaving behind our self-created and self-limited world is found in our willingness to keep going, even when it “feels” like something bad is happening to us or that we’re going “nowhere fast.” The idea of quitting or turning back is the unfortunate option that occurs only when we have an incomplete understanding of any given situation. This is where higher self-knowledge becomes so important for our real inner progress.

Every sustained effort you make to grow beyond yourself—to help effect a real change in your present level of consciousness—brings up in you a host of negative thoughts and feelings that can’t wait to point out the negatives as to why this can’t be done. We’ve all heard their whine within. They cry out, “no way,” “why try?” “too tough”—on and on it goes. Unexamined, these inner voices appear to have our best interests in mind. But they lie, and to see the truth of this deception is vital in our quest for self-victory. We need only persist with our wish to wake up, let go, and know the truth of ourselves and—in spite of their vigorous protest—these same resistant reactions will be forced to reveal themselves as the hulking giants of fear and despair that they have always been! They are not your friends. In fact, their only appointed task is to see to it that you turn back. These fierce but fake fiends usually accomplish their task by making you believe that you can’t go any further with them blocking the way.

Here is the beauty and the secret way in which higher self-knowledge “rescues” the one who actualizes it. You don’t have to “do” anything else. Your part in the process is done. All you need to do is to listen to the voice of truth and do what it tells you to do. Listen, now: you don’t have to do anything about what tries to disturb you. You are safe in the conscious awareness of your fears. Now you know better than to run from one scary doubt right into the arms of another. Practice this lesson in perfecting higher patience in the trying moments of life. Remember that inner progress is not measured by what you do with any scary thoughts or feelings, but by how well you understand this new instruction: there is nothing that needs to be done with any dark state, except for you to stay awake and watchful. Whatever wants to frighten you or make you despair will eventually fade into the nothingness from out of which it came in the first place. Let the world inside of yourself go by. All you need do is to act from what you can see is true. Then, just like sunlight, victory comes to you.