conquering oneself | dragfyre's blog archive

Posted on November 25, 2012.

Archived from dragfyre's long-running blog, doberman pizza.

Grabbed this wonderful quote from Melody on Facebook. (Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing much more than a few borrowed Facebook statuses starting in December, along with some other fairly significant changes.) Shoghi Effendi would know plenty about conquering the self, of course, having spent several years doing just that after he learned that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had named him to be the Guardian in His Will and Testament. I feel like I’ve been working on this myself for so long, and wish I was a little further along in my self-conquering work, but then don’t we all?

‘Now,’ he said, ‘Every Bahá’í in the world, every person in the world, has to do exactly that same thing. Whether you’re a Hand of the Cause, whether you’re a Knight of Bahá’u’lláh, whether you’re a member of a national Assembly, whether you’re a teacher, whether you’re a pioneer, whether you’re a administrator, regardless of what you are, with anything in the Cause, every Bahá’í must fight with himself and conquer himself. And when he has conquered himself, them he becomes a true instrument for the service of the Cause of God. And not until then! This is what every Bahá’i in the world should know.’

And this one of the main things I want you to get out of this talk tonight. The Guardian’s instructions that every individual must fight with himself, must conquer himself, must overcome his lower nature, must overcome his self, and turn himself over to God, so that the Holy Spirit can function through you. For when the Holy Spirit functions through you, then you will gain victory after victory. Because the Holy Spirit is the creative aspect of God and it cannot do other than win victories and make successes for the Cause.

(Extract from a talk by Hand of the Cause of God Leroy Ioas, transcribed from a recording made in Johannesburg, South Africa, October 31, 1958)