When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it, or conquer it,
and you only set up more resistance. I am very certain now that…
if I truly become what I wish to be, the burden will fall away.
The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with one’s whole being,
is that you alone control nothing.
To be able to put yourself in tune or rhythm with the forces beyond,
which are the truly operative ones, that is the task
— and the solution, if we can speak of “solutions.”
One thing I don’t worry about… is what people think,
how they misinterpret things. There’s nothing you can do about that…
What amazes me more and more is how much people do understand
when you give them the full dose, when you hold back nothing.
One has to permit people to become desperate, to become wholly lost,
that only then are they ready for the right word, only then can they
avail themselves of the truth. To withhold it then is a crime.
But to nurse them along is a worse crime. And there is where much
of the conflict centers, about that point. The human instinct to spare
the other person his agony (which is his means of salvation,
in any sense of the word) is a fallacious instinct. Here the subtle temptations,
the vicious and insidious ones, because so confused and entangled,
enter in. On this so-called human plane it is the ego which commands —
often in the most amazing disguises. The temptation to be good,
to do good, gets us all some time or other.
It’s the last ruse, I feel, of the ego.
This clamor and agitation which I seem to create all about me,
even from a distance,
proceeds from me.
I know it.
Have I not become more and more aware latterly that the things
I deeply desire come without struggle? …
All the struggle, then, is phantom play.
The fighting with shadows.
This I know.
~ Henry Miller
from A Literate Passion:
Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller
with thanks to The Marginalian by Maria Popova
photo Henry Miller on his bike
