Spiritual Pilgrimage

Well just as predicted, I had to rely on the expertise of my brother in order to get back on here. I have a strange feeling that it all didn't need to be as complicated as it proved to be. But nuff said. The point is that I am here.

A passage taken from a personal letter written by Leo Tolstoy. A piece that I read a while back ago and absolutely fell in love with...

" "What about you, Lev Nikolayevich, you preach very well, but do you carry out what you preach?" This is the most natural of questions and one that is always asked of me; it is usually asked victoriously, as thought it were a way of stopping my mouth. "You preach, but how do you live?" And I answer that I do not preach, that I am not able to preach, although I passionately wish to. I can preach only through my actions, and my actions are vile... And I answer that I am guilty, and vile, and worthy of contempt for my failure to carry them out.
At the same time, not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say: "Look at my present life and then at my former life, and you will see that I do attempt to carry them out. It is true that I have not fulfilled one thousandth part of them (Christian precepts), and I am ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill them not because I do not wish to, but because I was unable to. Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help me and I will fulfill them; even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them.
"Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather then the path I follow and which I point out to anymore who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the right way, then show me another way, but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully:'Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!' No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support"

Couldn't have said it better myself...
Goodnight