If Darkness Cannot Conquer You, Nothing Can

The point of life is victory over oneself.  Faith and truth and courage are all resources for the journey — the more of each of these the better.  

Evidence that the above is true is when we arrive at a peace that comes furnished with hope and joy.  

Victory over oneself is an indefatigable spiritual reality, where we get something we cannot lose because we gave up everything we could not keep.  

In the final reckoning, the upside-down reality prevails: life is a spiritual conquest.  Life is not in things of material conquest.  

The victory over oneself is living the reality that if darkness cannot conquer you, nothing can.  

Finally, we see the power of truth that sets us, in the finality of things, free.  

Truth sets us free if only we can face it, and no truth in and of itself can destroy us.  But it takes faith to step into the reality of truth and remain there.  

Faith will set us free because faith faces truth.  

Now, there’s no problem when and if we balk.  We will.  Many times life and its tests will be too much for us.  We will try and we will fail.  

When Edison invented the incandescent light bulb he didn’t fail the notional 10,000 times, he just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.  

We are destined to fail amid the dark night of the soul.  But none of these failures is terminal in and of itself.  There is always the ‘do over’ to contemplate and prepare for.  

When finally we resolve that the only things worth working and fighting for are the spiritual growth opportunities, we view boxes full of darkness differently.  

Anything, really, that will help us view these evils curiously so that they don’t crush us.  That’s the point.  If the scariness cannot scare us, we have little or nothing to be afraid of.  Imagine living fearlessly.  Without worrying about failure.  

And loss teaches us this with quiet repetitive repose.  We’re simply learning a victory over oneself — to accept the life we possess in all its present truth.