It is a great deliverance to lose one's self. There is no heavier millstone than self-consciousness. It is so easy to become introverted and coiled around ourselves in our spiritual consciousness. There is nothing that is so easy to fasten onto as our misery: there is nothing that is more apt to produce self-consciousness than suffering. Then it becomes almost a settled habit to hold onto our burden and pray it unceasingly into the very face of God until even our prayer saturates us with our own misery. Rather, we should ask for power to drop ourselves altogether and leave ourselves in His loving hands and know that we are free. Then we may rise into the blessed liberty of His higher thoughts and will and demonstrate His love and care for others. The very act of letting go of ourselves lifts us into a higher place and relieves us from the thing that is hurting. This habit of prayer for others, and especially for the world, brings its own recompense and leaves upon our hearts a blessing, like the fertility which the Nile deposits upon the soil of Egypt as it flows through to its ultimate goal.
