You who are weary and bruised and beaten down, you who fall, who think perhaps that you are defeated, listen to the voice of a friend.  He knows your sorrows, he has shared them, he has suffered like yourselves from the ills of the earth; he has like you crossed deserts under the burden of day, he has known hunger and thirst, solitude and abandonment, and, most cruel of all, the destitution of the heart: alas!  he has known too hours of doubt, he has the experience of errors, failings, flinchings, all kinds of weakness.

But he says to you: Courage!  hearken to the lesson that, every morning, the rising sun brings to the earth in its first rays.  It is a lesson of hope, it is a message of consolation.

You who weep, you who suffer, you who tremble, not daring to forsee the term of your ills, the issue of your pangs, behold!  There is no night without daybreak, when darkness is thickest dawn is ready;  there is no fog that the sun does not dissipate, no cloud that it does not gild, no tear that it does not one day dry, no storm after which its bow of triumph does not lift up its rays, no snow that it does not melt, no winter that it does not change into radiant spring.

And for you likewise, there is no affliction which does not bring forth its counterpoise of glory, no distress that cannot be transformed into joy, no defeat that does not turn into victory, no downfall that does not change into an ascension to greater heights, no solitude that does not resolve into harmony; sometimes it is the misunderstanding between two minds which obliges two hearts to open themselves for communion; in short, there is no weakness so infinite that it cannot change into power.  Even it is in supreme weakness that it pleases the All-Powerful to reveal Himself.

Listen, my little child, who feel yourself so broken, so fallen, who have nothing, nothing any more to cover your misery and nourish your pride, yet never before have you been so great!  How close is he to the summits who awakes in the depths!  For the deeper the abyss, the more the heights reveal themselves.

If ordeal and fault have flung you down, if you have sunk into an abysm of suffering, do not at all be grieved, for it is there that the divine affection, the supreme benediction will reach you!  Because you have passed through a crucible of purifying sorrows, for you are the glorious ascents.

You are in the wilderness: well, listen to the voices of the silence. The noise of eulogistic words and applause from outside has gladdened your ears, but the voices of the silence will gladden your soul, awakening in you the echo of the depths, the chant of divine harmonies!

When you have nothing left, all will be given to you. For those who are sincere and straight, out of the worst emerges always the best.

-An excerpt from “The Supreme Discovery”, by Mother Aurobindo