The beginning and the end is in us

The discovery that lies in self-knowledge is arduous, for the beginning and the end is in us. To seek happiness, love, hope outside of us leads to illusion, to sorrow; to find happiness, peace, joy within requires self-knowledge. We are slaves to the immediate pressures and demands of the world, and we are drawn away by all that and dissipate our energies in all that, and so we have little time to study ourselves. To be deeply cognizant of our motives, of our desires to achieve, to become, demands constant, inward awareness. Without understanding ourselves, superficial devices of economic and social reform, however necessary and beneficial, will not produce unity in the world but only greater confusion and misery.