Don’t escape your problems, go right through them

The world is great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.

~ Swami Vivekananda

By being in the world you reach the source of all strength. What happens in the gymnasium by being in the gymnasium? Where do you reach? To your strength.

The implication is, the world is a gymnasium that will facilitate your access to the source of all strength.

The source of all strength is the Self, the Truth, the Atman, you are anyway in the world, you have to go to the root of the world, and there you find the Truth, the source of all power.

Which means you cannot really avoid the world, which means you cannot avoid your situations, you have to acknowledge them, and you have to understand them, you cannot escape away, you must know what is going on, and to know what is going on, first of all, you must honestly admit to what is going on.

If you keep giving it false names, if you keep calling attachment as love, then what will you come to know? You have already said it is love. You have to, first of all, see what your real life condition is, in seeing that you will only see how powerless you are, how weak you are; that seeing is the key to strength.