Prayer

What is the message, then, of what we may call the stream of the future, when we transform it into feeling and perception? This speaks even more emphatically and definitely to us. In looking back over the past, our feelings assert themselves in the form of a judgment of rejection, of regret or shame, but only after the event. In relation to the future, however, we deal at once with the feelings of fear and anxiety, hope and joy, but the actual events to which these feelings refer are not yet existent. We cannot see through to them and it is thus easier in this case to transform the idea into a feeling, something the soul does of itself. As it can, in relation to the future, give no more than the feeling of reality, these feelings exist as something born from an unknown stream of which we know only that it may have different effects and bring different hopes. If we can transform into a right feeling what comes so surely to us from the lap of the future, and if we experience its course into our souls and the way in which our own perceptions meet it, we shall realize how our souls are always being kindled anew by the experiences approaching from the future. Here, above all, we feel how our souls can become richer and more comprehensive. Even now in the present we can know that in the future our souls will have an infinitely richer and mightier content. We feel ourselves akin to the future. We must feel it. We must feel our souls to be equal to everything the future can give.