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God & Greatness

“The prophets and seers and great men and women, past and present, were made great by what they received from God, not by what they were taught by men.” ~ Wallace D. Wattles from The Science of Being Great

Emerson says the same thing in his genius essay Self-Reliance (btw: that essay’s also available for free on the site (in both PDF and an MP3 recording of me reading it). I’ve read it dozens of times. It’s hot.):

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much... Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.”

So, remember: you will be made great by what you receive FROM GOD, not from your teachers. That doesn’t mean that our teachers don’t offer assistance in our paths, but it DOES mean that WE need to take the final step alone, hand-in-hand with God. We need to have the courage to go beyond the books and fully express our own unique manifestation of the Divine within us. Fun. :)