Meister Eckhart on How We Should Not Let Feelings of Worthlessness Trouble Us

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From The Talks of Instruction, by Meister Eckhart

Many people are daunted and troubled by the toughness and severity of our Lord Jesus Christ's life and that of his saints, as they are by the fact that they lack the strength to emulate them and are not called upon to do so. Seeing themselves as unequal to the task, many thus regard themselves as being far from God, whom they are not strong enough to follow. But no one should think this!

We should in no way regard ourselves as being far from God, neither on account of our weakness or our failings or anything else. And if your great sins have ever driven you so far from him that you regard yourself as not being close to God, then you should still regard God as being close to you. It can be very destructive if we regard God as being distant from us since, whether we are far from or near to him, he is never far from us and is always close at hand. If he cannot remain within, then he goes no further than the door.

The same applies to the discipline of following God. Note the form which your discipleship takes. You should observe, and have observed, in which direction God urges you most of all to go, for, as St Paul says, not all people are called to follow the same path to God. If you find then that the shortest way for you does not lie in many outward works, great endurance and privation (which things are in any case of little importance unless we are particularly called to them by God or unless we have sufficient strength to perform them without disrupting our inner life), if you do not find these things right for you, then be at peace and have little to do with them.

But then you might say: if they are not important, why did our forebears, including many saints, do these things? Consider this: if our Lord gave them this particular kind of devotional practice, then he also gave them the strength to carry it through, and it was this which pleased him and which was their greatest achievement. For God has not linked our salvation with any particular kind of devotion. Any one devotional practice has things which others lack, but the effectiveness of all good practices comes from God alone and is denied to none of them, for one form of goodness cannot conflict with another.

Meister Eckhart on How We Can Always Find God by Surrendering to His Will

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From The Talks of Instruction, by Meister Eckhart

You should know too that a good will cannot fail to find God, although the mind sometimes feels that it misses him and often believes that he has departed. What should you do then? Do exactly the same as you would if you were experiencing the greatest consolation: learn to so the same in the greatest suffering, and behave in exactly the same way as you did then. There is no better advice on how to find God than to seek him where we left him: do now, when you cannot find God, what you did when last you had him, and then you will find him again.

But a good will can never lose God or fail to find him. Many people say that their will is good when they do not have God's will but wish to have their own will and to instruct our Lord to do this or that. But that is not a good will. We should seek from God what his most precious will is. And it is God's wish in all things that we should give up our own will. […]

And nothing makes us true so much as the giving up of our will. Truly, without giving up our will in all things, we can achieve nothing at all for God. Indeed, if we went so far as to give up the whole of our will, daring to abandon all things for God's sake, both inner and outer, then we would have accomplished everything, and not before.[...]

Indeed, the more we are our own possession, the less we are God's possession. If someone has gone out of what is theirs, then they can never fail to find God in all that they do. But if such a person were to make a slip or speak out of turn, or unjust things were to happen to them, then, if it was God who was the origin of the deed, it is he who would have to take the hurt upon himself; although in no way should you let up in your efforts. In this life we can never be entirely free of such assaults. But just because tares sometimes grow among the corn is no reason to throw away the good corn. Truly, whoever is in the right state of mind and knows God's ways, all such suffering and assaults will prove to be for their profit, since for the good all things work to the good.