Part 3 (1/2)
The whole of human life is cause and effect; there is no such thing in it as chance, nor is there even in all the wide universe. Are we not satisfied with whatever comes into our lives? The thing to do, then, is not to spend time in railing against the imaginary something we create and call fate, but to look to the within, and change the causes at work there, in order that things of a different nature may come, for there will come exactly what we cause to come. This is true not only of the physical body, but of all phases and conditions of life. We invite whatever comes, and did we not invite it, either consciously or unconsciously, it could not and it would not come. This may undoubtedly be hard for some to believe, or even to see, at first. But in the degree that one candidly and open-mindedly looks at it, and then studies into the silent, but subtle and, so to speak, omnipotent workings of the thought forces, and as he traces their effects within him and about him, it becomes clearly evident, and easy to understand.
And then whatever does come to one depends for its effects entirely upon his mental att.i.tude toward it. Does this or that occurrence or condition cause you annoyance? Very well; it causes you annoyance, and so disturbs your peace merely because you allow it to. You are born to have absolute control over your own dominion, but if you voluntarily hand over this power, even if for a little while, to some one or to some thing else, then you of course, become the creature, the one controlled.
To live undisturbed by pa.s.sing occurrences you must first find your own centre. You must then be firm in your own centre, and so rule the world from within. He who does not himself condition circ.u.mstances allows the process to be reversed, and becomes a conditioned circ.u.mstance. Find your centre and live in it. Surrender it to no person, to no thing. In the degree that you do this will you find yourself growing stronger and stronger in it. And how can one find his centre? By realizing his oneness with the Infinite Power, and by living continually in this realization.
But if you do not rule from your own centre, if you invest this or that with the power of bringing you annoyance, or evil, or harm, then take what it brings, but cease your railings against the eternal goodness and beneficence of all things.
”I swear the earth shall surely be complete To him or her who shall be complete; The earth remains jagged and broken Only to him who remains jagged and broken.”
If the windows of your soul are dirty and streaked, covered with matter foreign to them, then the world as you look out of them will be to you dirty and streaked and out of order. Cease your complainings, however; keep your pessimism, your ”poor, unfortunate me” to yourself, lest you betray the fact that your windows are badly in need of something. But know that your friend, who keeps his windows clean, that the Eternal Sun may illumine all within and make visible all without,--know that he lives in a different world from yours.
Then, go wash your windows, and instead of longing for some other world, you will discover the wonderful beauties of this world; and if you don't find transcendent beauties on every hand here, the chances are that you will never find them anywhere.
”The poem hangs on the berry-bush When comes the poet's eye, And the whole street is a masquerade When Shakspeare pa.s.ses by.”
This same Shakspeare, whose mere pa.s.sing causes all this commotion, is the one who put into the mouth of one of his creations the words: ”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” And the great work of his own life is right good evidence that he realized full well the truth of the facts we are considering.
And again he gave us a great truth in keeping with what we are considering when he said:
”Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By _fearing_ to attempt.”
There is probably no agent that brings us more undesirable conditions than fear. We should live in fear of nothing, nor will we when we come fully to know ourselves. An old French proverb runs
”Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived; But what _torments of pain_ you endured From evils that never arrived.”
Fear and lack of faith go hand in hand. The one is born of the other.
Tell me how much one is given to fear, and I will tell you how much he lacks in faith. Fear is a most expensive guest to entertain, the same as worry is: so expensive are they that no one can afford to entertain them. _We invite what we fear, the same as, by a different att.i.tude of mind, we invite and attract the influences and conditions we desire_.
The mind dominated by fear opens the door for the entrance of the very things, for the actualization of the very conditions it fears.
”Where are you going?” asked an Eastern pilgrim on meeting the plague one day. ”I am going to Bagdad to kill five thousand people,” was the reply. A few days later the same pilgrim met the plague returning.
”You told me you were going to Bagdad to kill five thousand people,”
said he, ”but instead, you killed fifty thousand.” ”No,” said the plague. ”_I killed only five thousand_, as I told you I would; _the others died of fright_.”
Fear can paralyze every muscle in the body. Fear affects the flow of the blood, likewise the normal and healthy action of all the life forces. Fear can make the body rigid, motionless, and powerless to move.
Not only do we attract to ourselves the things we fear, but we also aid in attracting to others the conditions we in our own minds hold them in fear of. This we do in proportion to the strength of our own thought, and in the degree that they are sensitively organized and so influenced by our thought, and this, although it be unconscious both on their part and on ours.
Children, and especially when very young, are, generally speaking, more sensitive to their surrounding influences than grown people are. Some are veritable little sensitive plates, registering the influences about them, and embodying them as they grow. How careful in their prevailing mental states then should be those who have them in charge, and especially how careful should a mother be during the time she is carrying the child, and when every thought, every mental as well as emotional state has its direct influence upon the life of the unborn child. Let parents be careful how they hold a child, either younger or older, in the thought of fear. This is many times done, unwittingly on their part, through anxiety, and at times through what might well be termed over-care, which is fully as bad as under-care.
I know of a number of cases where a child has been so continually held in the thought of fear lest this or that condition come upon him, that the very things that were feared have been drawn to him, which probably otherwise never would have come at all. Many times there has been no adequate basis for the fear. In case there is a basis, then far wiser is it to take exactly the opposite att.i.tude, so as to neutralize the force at work, and then to hold the child in the thought of wisdom and strength that it may be able to meet the condition and master it, instead of being mastered by it.
But a day or two ago a friend was telling me of an experience of his own life in this connection. At a period when he was having a terrific struggle with a certain habit, he was so continually held in the thought of fear by his mother and the young lady to whom he was engaged,--the engagement to be consummated at the end of a certain period, the time depending on his proving his mastery,--that he, very sensitively organized, _continually_ felt the depressing and weakening effects of their negative thoughts. He could always tell exactly how they felt toward him; he was continually influenced and weakened by their fear, by their questionings, by their suspicions, all of which had the effect of lessening the sense of his own power, all of which had an endeavor-paralyzing influence upon him. And so instead of their begetting courage and strength in him, they brought him to a still greater realization of his own weakness and the almost worthless use of struggle.
Here were two who loved him dearly, and who would have done anything and everything to help him gain the mastery, but who, ignorant of the silent, subtle, ever-working and all-telling power of the thought forces, instead of imparting to him courage, instead of adding to his strength, disarmed him of this, and then added an additional weakness from without. In this way the battle for him was made harder in a three-fold degree.
Fear and worry and all kindred mental states are too expensive for any person, man, woman, or child, to entertain or indulge in. Fear paralyzes healthy action, worry corrodes and pulls down the organism, and will finally tear it to pieces. Nothing is to be gained by it, but everything to be lost. Long-continued grief at any loss will do the same. Each brings its own peculiar type of ailment. An inordinate love of gain, a close-fisted, h.o.a.rding disposition will have kindred effects. Anger, jealousy, malice, continual fault-finding, l.u.s.t, has each its own peculiar corroding, weakening, tearing-down effects.
We shall find that not only are happiness and prosperity concomitants of righteousness,--living in harmony with the higher laws, but bodily health as well. The great Hebrew seer enunciated a wonderful chemistry of life when he said,--”As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursueth it to his own death.” On the other hand, ”In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” The time will come when it will be seen that this means far more than most people dare _even to think as yet_. ”It rests with man to say whether his soul shall be housed in a stately mansion of ever-growing splendor and beauty, or in a hovel of his own building,--a hovel at last ruined and abandoned to decay.”