Magick Without Tears

INTRODUCTION 5 unknown, and the power of rapid and irrevocable decision without counting the cost. I think that it is altogether wrong to allow yourself to be worried by "psychological, moral and artistic problems." It is no good your starting anything of any kind unless you can see clearly into the simplicity of truth. All this humming and hawing about things is moral poison. What is the use of being a woman if you have not got an intuition, an instinct enabling you to distinguish between the genuine and the sham? Your state of mind suggests to me that you must have been, in the past, under the influence of people who were always talking about things, and never doing any real work. They kept on arguing all sorts of obscure philosophical points; that is all very well, but when you have succeeded in analyzing your reactions you will understand that all this talk is just an excuse for not doing any serious work. I am confirmed in this judgment by your saying: "I don't know if I want to en ter into a great conflict. I need peace." Fortunately you save yourself by adding: "Real peace, that is living and not stagnant ." All life is conflict. Every breath that you draw represents a victory in the struggle of the whole Universe. You can't have peace without perfect mastery of circumstance; and I take it that this is what you mean by "living, not stagnant." But it is of the first consequence for you to summon up the resolution to stamp on this sea of swirling thoughts by an act of will; you must say: "Peace be still." The moment you have understood these thoughts for what they are, tools of the enemy, invented by him with the idea of preventing you from undertaking the Great Work-the moment you dismiss all such considerations firmly and decisively, and say: "What must I do?" and having discovered that , set to work to do it, allowing of no interruption, you will find that living peace which (as you seem to see) is a dynamic and not a static condition. (There is quite a lot about this point in Little ,Issays Toward Truth, and also in The Vision and the Voice.