Spiritual Trial

"Spiritual trial is the struggle and the anguish involved
in venturing out beyond one's assumed capacities or
generally approved expectations" Kierkegaard

Is it wise to break away from convention? I suppose
it depends on where most people are headed. If the
pack is heading for a cliff, it's best not follow.
Although, striking off on your own has it's potential
of misfortune.

Yet what is misfortune? Is misfortune unsatisfied
expectations, circumstances that set one back, or
something entirely different? Emerson stated in
his essay on "Worship","he learns to welcome misfortune,
learns that adversity is the prosperity of the great."
Perhaps what the writer was trying to convey was
what we judge as misfortune is just part of the game of
life. People try to avoid misfortune by not taking risks,
but it is the person who is actually doing something
that can lead to greatness. As Pastor Robert Schuller
states,in "Don't Throw Away Tomorrow", " a goal-less person
is a god-less person"

What is this greatness? I believe it comes from understanding
that one gets from the quest. The understanding of who he
comes from. The path of the quest as Joseph Campbell points
out, in "A Hero With A Thousand Faces", is not discovery,
but re-discovery. It going from believing to knowing that
you are a child of God.

Whether the obstacles we come across are from our own Karmic
effects or circumstances in the external world, it is faith
through the misfortune, that brings us to the realization. Faith
that God works through us, and misfortunes bring us to that point
of understanding. If everything went well, we wouldn't need God.
That is why faith is so important.

Another point, from Emerson's "Self-reliance", that every voyage
of the best ship is a zig zag line of a hundred tacks". This tells
us that advancing into the future, there is no straight line.
Misfortune puts us on our own genius, to change, to redirect,
to lighten the load we carry, and compensate as we continue to
head for the goal. That goal is what God puts in our heart.
This is our spiritual trial, time and time again, to get there.

"Faith is the highest passion in a person" Kierkegaard