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Docta Ignorantia LXXXII Trust In God And Promotions As I said about promotions, try to put this out of your mind. We are not hoping you will get promotions because we know you will get promotions, plenty and fully and all in good time. Remember that slow and steady wins the race. Classmates are going to be competing and doing this and that, not always above-board, to get themselves ahead in the promotion rush. Let them go. They will burn themselves out and their ambition will destroy their plans. Work hard and always do your best, but never be ambitious. Ambition is a weakness. It means you do not trust God and want to take destiny into your own hands, which are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Trust always in the omniscient and omnipotent hands of God and you will always be happy. Trust What and Who is truly powerful. You cannot go wrong. And just as you are happy when your subordinates trust you and have confidence to follow your advice, God is happy when you trust Him and have confidence to follow His advice, which usually comes to you in the form of the course of events -- which you have to observe carefully in order to discern the lessons He is teaching you -- and sometimes comes in the form of a spoken word. Usually God's presence is to us the actual course of events. This is the lesson of the Prophets. Life itself is the great Teacher. So trust life and trust the course of events and you will always be right. Providence guides all. Rely on Sai. Let others burn up their minds and destroy the sweetness of their hearts by fostering their ambition. Your brother officers' wives will be especially prone to this tragic error. They will eventually destroy their husbands' careers by being ambitious for them. Everyone hates the ambitious, and rightly so. An ambitious person is weak, they can be led around, they cannot be relied upon because they have only self interest. Ambitious people are horrible officers because they never think about their troops, only themselves. Their troops hate them and make them miserable. Be competitive but not ambitious. And compete with yourself, not with others. Do your absolute best all the time. Then, when you know you have done that, no events can destabilize you. You will take everything in stride and life to compete another day and eventually win the race on account of steadiness. Steadiness and single-pointedness are the great virtues and the real definitions of 'Character." Foster steadiness and single-pointedness. Compete with yourself to increase your adherence to these principles. This will make you highly in demand as an officer and send your promotion soaring and all without an ounce of ambition. It will all be based on strength. Slow and steady wins the race. Let the people who want to destabilize you so they can get ahead go about their weak natures. Wanting to get ahead of another is a weakness. Remember that a fighter pilot wants to be behind the enemy, not in front of him. Same with a ground soldier. You don't want to face an enemy. You want to get behind them and roll them up from the flank and rear. Let them ambitious go ahead and waste themselves. Compete with yourself to do your absolute best at everything. Then you will always be happy, I assure you. Stonewall Jackson wrote almost these very words in the famous diary he kept for himself while a Cadet. You will have more promotion than you can presently envision, believe me. Do you work now, enjoy it to the fullest and let God take care of the future. He will give you a very happy one, believe me, full of promotion, on His timetable and in ways He knows will truly benefit you. He knows what you need and when and will not fail to provide it for you, especially as your trust in Him is implicit and unshakable.
Adwaitha Hermitage
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