T. 21. I. 3 – 7. Jesus: “There is no need to learn through pain! Gentle lessons are joyously acquired, and are remembered gladly. What you are sure will give you happiness is what you want to learn and not forget. It is not this you would deny.
The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustments to it. They think they know their way about in it. They learned it, not through joyous lessons, but through the stern necessity of limits they believed they could not overcome. And still believing this, they hold those lessons dear, and cling to them because they cannot see. They do not understand that clinging to the lessons from the past keeps them blind. This they do not believe. And so they keep the world they ‘learned to see’ in their imagination, believing that their choice is that or nothing. Yet they hate the world they learned through pain. And everything they think is in it serves to remind them that they are incomplete and bitterly deprived! Thus they define their life by where they live, adjusting to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they have.
And so it is with all who see the body as all they have and all their brothers have! They try to reach each other in the ways they’ve learned before; and they fail, and fail again. And they adjust to their loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save ‘the little’ that they have. Listen, and try to think if you remember what we will speak of now.
Listen; perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten; and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular.
But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you. The notes are nothing. Yet you have kept them with you, not for themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep if you remembered how dear it was to you.
You could remember, yet you are afraid, believing you would lose the world you learned since then. And yet you know that nothing in the world you’ve learned is half so dear as this. Listen, and see if you remember an ancient song you knew so long ago and held more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish since!”