Let us investigate what is required of us — what it takes to become New in mind and heart. This true self-transformation requires a new kind of courage to search out and to "stand" in a new place within ourselves.

How do we arrive in this new "place"? Those of us who seek the Truth of ourselves, of God's life within us, must search out a whole new order of self-reliance. In order to make the real interior Changes needed, we must agree to test the ground ourselves in a new fashion, and not to question our brother or life for what befalls us. Here's how it works: Through the purifying tests of higher self-reliance we come, surprisingly, to the end of what we can do of ourselves for ourselves. It is only within this rarefied air that we may learn to call upon the Secret Source of ourselves and be refreshed and empowered in its flow.

How do we scale these new heights? When finding our self insufficient to the moment's needs, we must not only stop searching for reasons as to why we are the way we are, but we must dare to remain with this unwanted self-awareness. We must not allow negative states to step in, redefine us, and "save" us from our own perceived weakness with a newly contrived self.

The unseen Truth hidden in this order of self-reliance is that we may only truly possess what we need to be strong or wise as we are willing to deliberately reach the end of our imagined strength or wisdom. Here begins the Work. We must stand "there," hands open and empty — in supplication to the Cause that brought us thus far. This petition to the Source of ourselves, raised to awareness by our having reached the bottom of what we call "I," is the first step in realizing our Real "I." This Higher order of Self is what we seek within ourselves. This "I" belongs to a part of us that is unlimited. It is the Self we have always been, but have never seen or known.

This is why — if we're ever to find a true and lasting strength — we must cease to dream of powers and realize our temporary inner poverty instead. Powers imagined create imaginary gods. These are false deities who secretly tremble (within us) before their own deception and its work. Only true self-knowledge, the fruit of self-reliance, can detect and deflect these false forces that would play out our lives and steal from us our rightful heritage of being fearless, God-centered individuals. Refusing the illusion of power begins with realizing the real powers inherent in self-reliance.

We only become fully self-reliant when, at last, we are no longer ourselves, but are willing to take our place, consciously, in the inexorable movement of Life. We need never accept defeat as long as we're willing to learn the Truth, for every truth discerned takes us past the self that was stopped.