The first test is this: he should not dislike the thought of death, for no friend shrinks from going to see a friend.
Courage
Courage is often perceived as the inner strength and resolve to act righteously in the face of adversity, often driven by a higher purpose or divine guidance. It’s not merely about confronting external challenges but also about mastering inner fears, struggles, and doubts. Many traditions view courage as a virtue essential for spiritual growth, emphasizing its role in pursuing truth, justice, and divine connection against all odds.
What you hear with one ear preach from your rooftops. For no one lights a lamp and sets it under a basket or hides, but rather it is placed on a lamp stand so that everyone who comes and goes will see its light.
It remains the peculiar mark of the good man to love and welcome what befalls him and is the thread fate spins for him; not to soil the divinity seated within his breast nor to disquiet it with a mob of imaginations, but to preserve and to propitiate it, following God in orderly wise, uttering no word contrary to truth, doing no act contrary to justice. And if all men disbelieve that he lives simply, modestly, and cheerfully, he is not angry with any one of them nor diverted from the road that leads to the goal of his life, at which he must arrive, pure, peaceful, ready to depart, in effortless accord with his own birth-spirit.
Instead of provoking and stirring it up, they ought to avoid it by yielding. Oh! Jupiter, our Father! If you would deliver men from all the evils that oppress them, Show them of what daemon they make use. But take courage; the race of humans is divine. Sacred nature reveals to them the most hidden mysteries. If she impart to you her secrets, you will easily perform all the things which I have ordained thee. And by the healing of your soul, you wilt deliver it from all evils, from all afflictions.
Live out your life without restraint in entire gladness even if all men shout what they please against you, even if wild beasts tear in pieces the poor members of this lump of matter that has hardened about you. For, in the midst of all this, what hinders the mind from preserving its own self in tranquillity, in true judgement about what surrounds it and ready use of what is submitted to it, so that judgement says to what befalls it: 'this is what you are in reality, even if you seem other in appearance'.
If you suffer pain because of some external cause, what troubles you is not the thing but your decision about it, and this it is in your power to wipe out at once. But if what pains you is something in your own disposition, who prevents you from correcting your judgement? And similarly, if you are pained because you fail in some particular action which you imagine to be sound, why not continue to act rather than to feel pain? 'But something too strong for you opposes itself. Then do not be pained, for the reason why the act is not done does not rest with you. 'Well, but if this be left undone, life is not worth living? Depart then from life in a spirit of good will, even as he dies who achieves his end, contented, too, with what opposes you.
The ceasing of action, impulse, judgement is a pause and a kind of death, not any evil. Now pass to the ages of your life, boyhood for instance, youth, manhood, old age; for each change of these was a death; was it anything to be afraid of? Pass now to your manner of life under your grandfather, then under your mother, then under your (adoptive) father, and when you dis- cover many another destruction, change, and ending, ask yourself: ‘Was it anything to be afraid of?’ So then even the ceasing, pause, and change of your whole life is not.
Just as those who oppose you as you progress in agreement with right principle will not be able to divert you from sound conduct, so do not let them force you to abandon your kindness towards them; but be equally on your guard in both respects, in steady judgement and behaviour as well as in gentleness towards those who try to hinder you or are difficult in other ways. For to be hard upon them is a weakness just as much as to abandon your course and to give in, from fright; for both are equally deserters from their post, the man who is in a panic as well as the man who is alienated from his natural kinsman and friend.
In your angry fits have the maxim ready that it is not passion that is manly, but that what is kind and gentle as it is more human so is it more manly, and that this is the character which has strength and sinews and fortitude, not that which is indignant and displeased; for as this is nearer to imperturbability so it is nearer to power; and as grief is a mark of weakness, so also is anger, for both have been wounded and have surrendered to the wound.
This is a stirring call to disdain of death, that even those who judge pleasure to be good and pain evil, nevertheless disdain death.
For him whose sole good is what is in due season, who counts it all one to render according to right reason more acts or fewer, and to whom it is no matter whether he beholds the world a longer or a shorter time-for him even death has lost its terrors.
So, do not feel insecure or afraid - we are all HELD FIRMLY IN THE INFINITE MIND OF THE ALL, and there is naught to hurt us or for us to fear. There is no Power outside of THE ALL to affect us. So we may rest calm and secure. There is a world of comfort and security in this realization when once attained.
Thou shalt not exalt thyself, neither shalt thou put boldness into thy soul.
If thou art able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord, thou wilt be perfect; but if thou art not able, what thou art able, that do.
They are but a phantom. Then cast away thy heart's terror, and labour for wisdom; why shouldst thou vainly torture thyself in hell?
Happiness is hard to win, pain comes readily; there is no escape from life save by pain; then be firm, O my spirit!
There is nothing which practice cannot make easy; so by practice in slight sufferings we learn to bear great pains.
Even in pain the wise man will not let the calm of his spirit be disturbed; for he is at war with the Passions, and in war suffering abounds.
They who overcome their foes by presenting their bosoms to the enemy's blows are "victors," "heroes"; the rest are "slayers of the slain."
My present tribulation is not so heavy, and will be very gainful; let me be glad of a suffering that redeems the world from its suffering.
The spirit that knows not despair, the troops of the Army, devoted heed, self-submission, equal esteem of self and others, and regard of others in place of self are the supports of strength.