LE

Nevertheless it is very grievous to be generally despised of the World,
and to be trampled upon by men as the very offscouring thereof.

MASTER

That which now seems so hard and heavy to thee, thou wilt yet hereafter
be most in love with.

DISCIPLE

How can it ever be that I should love that which hates me?

MASTER

Though thou lovest the Earthly Wisdom now, yet when thou shalt be
clothed upon with the Heavenly Wisdom, then wilt thou see that all the
wisdom of the World is folly; and wilt see also that the World hates not
so much thee, as thine enemy, which is this mortal life. And when thou
thyself shalt come to hate the will thereof, by means of a habitual
separation of thy mind from the World, then thou also wilt begin to love
that despising of the mortal life, and the reproach of the World for
Christ's sake. And so shalt thou be able to stand under every
temptation, and to hold out to the end by the means hereof in a course
of life above the World and above sense.

In this course thou wilt hate thyself, and thou wilt also love thyself,
I say, love thyself, and that even more than thou ever didst yet.

DISCIPLE

But how can these two subsist together, that a person should both _love_
and _hate_ himself?

MASTER

_In loving thyself_, thou lovest not thyself _as thine own_, but thou
lovest the divine ground in thee, as given thee from the Love of God. By
which, and in which, thou lovest the Divine Wisdom, the Divine Goodness,
the Divine Beauty; thou lovest also by it God's works of wonders; and in
this ground thou lovest also thy brethren. But _in hating thyself_, thou
hatest only that which is _thine own_, and wherein the Evil sticks close
to thee. And this thou dost, that so thou mayest wholly destroy that
which thou callest _thine_, as when thou sayest I or MYSELF do this, or
do that. All which is wrong and a downright mistake in thee; for nothing
canst thou properly call _thine_ but the evil Self, neither canst thou
do anything of thyself that is to be accounted of. This _Self_ therefore
thou must labour wholly to destroy in thee, that so thou mayest become a
ground wholly divine. There can be no _selfishness_ in love; they are
opposite to each other. Love, that is, Divine Love (of which only we are
now discoursing), hates all Egoity, hates all that which we call I, or
IHOOD, hates all such restrictions and confinements, even all that
springs from a contracted spirit, or this evil _Self-hood_, b