Third step: mankind (Christianity)

Freeing oneself from the race, one fights to live through the whole struggle of humankind. Detaching itself from the animal, mankind struggled to stand upright, to coordinate inarticulate cries, to free the spirit, and to feed the mind. One looks back across the centuries to see hairy, blood-spattered beasts rising out of the mud to fall back in to the soil feeding the earth. One battles to give meaning to the confused struggles of man by enlarging one's heart to encompass one, then two, then ten centuries of toil, as many as one can bear. One gathers together in one's heart every unhappiness and lives it. One erects in one's mind, in an ocean of nothingness, a small island of meaning, by ploughing a field, kissing a spouse, studying a stone. In the third step one unites with humankind.

The third step in the march for the spiritual exercises of Nikos Kazantzakis.