The wisdom of the appearance of the spirit in the body is this: the human spirit is a Divine Trust, and it must traverse all conditions, for its passage and movement through the conditions of existence will be the means of its acquiring perfections.
Interpretation
The human spirit is a sacred entity that grows through various life experiences.
This quote emphasizes that the human spirit is entrusted with a divine purpose, and its journey through different life conditions serves as a means for personal development and perfection. Abdu'L-Bah suggests that it is through facing and navigating the challenges of existence that one acquires wisdom and spiritual growth.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development.
Illnesses which occur because of physical causes should be treated by doctors with medical remedies; those which are due to spiritual causes disappear through spiritual means. Thus an illness caused by affliction, fear, nervous impressions, will be healed more effectively by spiritual rather than physical treatment. Hence, both kinds of treatment should be followed; they are not contradictory.
If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men.
Love gives life to the lifeless. Love lights a flame in the heart that is cold. Love brings hope to the hopeless and gladdens the hearts of the sorrowful. In the world of existence there is indeed no greater power than the power of love
Truthfulness is the foundation of all the virtues of mankind
The confirmations of the Spirit are all those powers and gifts which some are born with (and which men sometimes call genius), but for which others have to strive with infinite pains. They come to that man or woman who accepts his life with radiant acquiescence.
The primary, the most urgent requirement is the promotion of education. It is inconceivable that any nation should achieve prosperity and success unless this paramount, this fundamental concern is carried forward. The principal reason for the decline and fall of peoples is ignorance. Today the mass of the people are uninformed even as to ordinary affairs, how much less do they grasp the core of the important problems and complex needs of the time.
The distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuth hounds conceive.
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.
A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined.
The secret of contentment is the realization that life is a gift, not a right. Next to faith this is the highest art - to be content with the calling in which God has placed you.
When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.
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