Friday, July 27, 2012
James Allen: The Path to Prosperity
It is not sufficient to deny or ignore evil; it must be understood. It is not
enough to pray to God to remove the evil; you must find out why it is there, and
what lesson it has for you.
It is of no avail to fret and fume and chafe at the chains which bind you; you must know why and how you are bound. Therefore, reader, you must get outside yourself, and must begin to examine and understand yourself.
You must cease to be a disobedient child in the school of experience and must begin to learn, with humility and patience, the lessons that are set for your edification and ultimate perfection; for evil, when rightly understood, is found to be, not an unlimited power or principle in the universe, but a passing phase of human experience, and it therefore becomes a teacher to those who are willing to learn.
Evil is not an abstract some thing outside yourself; it is an experience in your own heart, and by patiently examining and rectifying your heart you will be gradually led into the discovery of the origin and nature of evil, which will necessarily be followed by its complete eradication.
All evil is corrective and remedial, and is therefore not permanent. It is rooted in ignorance, ignorance of the true nature and relation of things, and so long as we remain in that state of ignorance, we remain subject to evil. There is no evil in the universe which is not the result of ignorance, and which would not, if we were ready and willing to learn its lesson, lead us to higher wisdom, and then vanish away. But men remain in evil, and it does not pass away because men are not willing or prepared to learn the lesson which it came to teach them.
Know, then, that when the dark night of sorrow, pain, or misfortune settles down upon your soul, and you stumble along with weary and uncertain steps, that you are merely intercepting your own personal desires between yourself and the boundless light of joy and bliss, and the dark shadow that covers you is cast by none and nothing but yourself.
And just as the darkness without is but a negative shadow, an unreality which comes from nowhere, goes to nowhere, and has no abiding dwelling place, so the darkness within is equally a negative shadow passing over the evolving and Light-born soul.
"But," I fancy I hear someone say, "why pass through the darkness of evil at all?" Because, by ignorance, you have chosen to do so, and because, by doing so, you may understand both good and evil, and may the more appreciate the light by having passed through the darkness.
As evil is the direct outcome of ignorance, so, when the lessons of evil are fully learned, ignorance passes away, and wisdom takes its place. But as a disobedient child refuses to learn its lessons at school, so it is possible to refuse to learn the lessons of experience, and thus to remain in continual darkness, and to suffer continually recurring punishments in the form of disease, disappointment, and sorrow.
A man may shut himself up in a dark room, and deny that the light exists, but it is everywhere without, and darkness exists only in his own little room. So you may shut out the light of Truth, or you may begin to pull down the walls of prejudice, self-seeking and error which you have built around yourself, and so let in the glorious and omnipresent Light.
By earnest self-examination strive to realize, and not merely hold as a theory, that evil is a passing phase, a self-created shadow; that all your pains, sorrows and misfortunes have come to you by a process of undeviating and absolutely perfect law; have come to you because you deserve and require them, and that by first enduring, and then understanding them, you may be made stronger, wiser, nobler.
When you have fully entered into this realization, you will be in a position to mould your own circumstances, to transmute all evil into good and to weave, with a master hand, the fabric of your destiny.
The Morning cometh, lover of the Light;
Even now He gilds with gold the mountain's brow,
Dimly I see the path whereon even now
His shining feet are set toward the Night.
Darkness shall pass away, and all the things
That love the darkness, and that hate the Light
Shall disappear for ever with the Night:
Rejoice! for thus the speeding Herald sings.
-James Allen, The Path to Prosperity
It is of no avail to fret and fume and chafe at the chains which bind you; you must know why and how you are bound. Therefore, reader, you must get outside yourself, and must begin to examine and understand yourself.
You must cease to be a disobedient child in the school of experience and must begin to learn, with humility and patience, the lessons that are set for your edification and ultimate perfection; for evil, when rightly understood, is found to be, not an unlimited power or principle in the universe, but a passing phase of human experience, and it therefore becomes a teacher to those who are willing to learn.
Evil is not an abstract some thing outside yourself; it is an experience in your own heart, and by patiently examining and rectifying your heart you will be gradually led into the discovery of the origin and nature of evil, which will necessarily be followed by its complete eradication.
All evil is corrective and remedial, and is therefore not permanent. It is rooted in ignorance, ignorance of the true nature and relation of things, and so long as we remain in that state of ignorance, we remain subject to evil. There is no evil in the universe which is not the result of ignorance, and which would not, if we were ready and willing to learn its lesson, lead us to higher wisdom, and then vanish away. But men remain in evil, and it does not pass away because men are not willing or prepared to learn the lesson which it came to teach them.
Know, then, that when the dark night of sorrow, pain, or misfortune settles down upon your soul, and you stumble along with weary and uncertain steps, that you are merely intercepting your own personal desires between yourself and the boundless light of joy and bliss, and the dark shadow that covers you is cast by none and nothing but yourself.
And just as the darkness without is but a negative shadow, an unreality which comes from nowhere, goes to nowhere, and has no abiding dwelling place, so the darkness within is equally a negative shadow passing over the evolving and Light-born soul.
"But," I fancy I hear someone say, "why pass through the darkness of evil at all?" Because, by ignorance, you have chosen to do so, and because, by doing so, you may understand both good and evil, and may the more appreciate the light by having passed through the darkness.
As evil is the direct outcome of ignorance, so, when the lessons of evil are fully learned, ignorance passes away, and wisdom takes its place. But as a disobedient child refuses to learn its lessons at school, so it is possible to refuse to learn the lessons of experience, and thus to remain in continual darkness, and to suffer continually recurring punishments in the form of disease, disappointment, and sorrow.
A man may shut himself up in a dark room, and deny that the light exists, but it is everywhere without, and darkness exists only in his own little room. So you may shut out the light of Truth, or you may begin to pull down the walls of prejudice, self-seeking and error which you have built around yourself, and so let in the glorious and omnipresent Light.
By earnest self-examination strive to realize, and not merely hold as a theory, that evil is a passing phase, a self-created shadow; that all your pains, sorrows and misfortunes have come to you by a process of undeviating and absolutely perfect law; have come to you because you deserve and require them, and that by first enduring, and then understanding them, you may be made stronger, wiser, nobler.
When you have fully entered into this realization, you will be in a position to mould your own circumstances, to transmute all evil into good and to weave, with a master hand, the fabric of your destiny.
The Morning cometh, lover of the Light;
Even now He gilds with gold the mountain's brow,
Dimly I see the path whereon even now
His shining feet are set toward the Night.
Darkness shall pass away, and all the things
That love the darkness, and that hate the Light
Shall disappear for ever with the Night:
Rejoice! for thus the speeding Herald sings.
-James Allen, The Path to Prosperity
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Ernest Holmes: Creative Mind
The highest attitude of mind, from which all else springs, is one of perfect
calm and absolute trust in the Spirit. The one who can with perfect confidence
look into the future and with perfect ease of mind rest in the present, and who
never looks backward, but who has learned to be still in his own soul and wait
upon the Spirit, he is the one who will the most completely demonstrate the
supremacy of spiritual thought over all so-called material resistance. "Be still
and know that I Am God."
Do you wish to live in a perfect world peopled with friends who love you, surrounded by all that is beautiful and pleasing? Do you wish to have the good things of life? There is but one way and that way is as sure as that the sun shines. Forget all else and think only upon what you want. Control all thought that denies the real, and as the mist disappears before the sun so shall all adversity melt before the shining radiance of your own exalted thought.
Most people, through ignorance of the higher laws of their being, are suffering from the thoughts imposed upon them from a negative and doubtful world. We who are claiming the use of the greater law must emancipate ourselves from all sense of limitation. We are not to be governed by the outer confusion but by the inner realization. We are to judge life not from the way that things in the past have been done, but from the way that the Spirit does things.
-Ernest Holmes, Creative Mind
Do you wish to live in a perfect world peopled with friends who love you, surrounded by all that is beautiful and pleasing? Do you wish to have the good things of life? There is but one way and that way is as sure as that the sun shines. Forget all else and think only upon what you want. Control all thought that denies the real, and as the mist disappears before the sun so shall all adversity melt before the shining radiance of your own exalted thought.
Most people, through ignorance of the higher laws of their being, are suffering from the thoughts imposed upon them from a negative and doubtful world. We who are claiming the use of the greater law must emancipate ourselves from all sense of limitation. We are not to be governed by the outer confusion but by the inner realization. We are to judge life not from the way that things in the past have been done, but from the way that the Spirit does things.
-Ernest Holmes, Creative Mind
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Do Nothing: Siroj Sorajjakool
These stubborn feelings do not just go simply by realizing the illusory categories we use to define ourselves. Instead, the soul has to be caught up in the Way. The Way is that existential neutralization of the internalized negatives. The second negative is the power to stay in the darkness of the deep. It is the courage to remain within the discomfort one may feel, in the lack of spontaneity, in the pain of rejection. It is the sustaining power to rest under the ugly tree of jealousy, frustration, fear, and anxiety. Grace is the power that sustains, embraces, and holds a person within these negatives and through this act of embracing, redefines existential feelings, neutralizing them as neither “this” nor “that.”
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
A Course in Miracles: In the holy instant God is remembered
In the holy instant God is remembered, and the language of communication with all your brothers is remembered with Him. For communication is remembered together, as is truth. There is no exclusion in the holy instant because the past is gone, and with it goes the whole basis for exclusion. Without its source exclusion vanishes. And this permits your Source, and That of all your brothers, to replace it in your awareness. God and the power of God will take Their rightful place in you, and you will experience the full communication of ideas. Through your ability to do this you will learn what it must be, for you will begin to understand what your Creator is, and what His creation is along with him.
-A Course in Miracles
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
A Course in Miracles: Do not seek vision through your eyes
Do not seek vision through your eyes, for you made your way of seeing that you might see in darkness, and in this you are deceived. Beyond this darkness, and yet still within you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all light. Your "vision" comes from fear, as His from love. And He sees for you, as your witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirit's manifestation, looking always on the real world, and calling forth its witnesses and drawing them to you. He loves what He sees within you, and He would extend it. And he will not return unto his Father until He has extended your perception even unto him. And there perception is no more, for He has returned you to the Father with Him.
You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different sights. See through the vision that is given you. For through Christ's vision He beholds Himself. And seeing what He is, He knows His father. Beyond your darkest dreams He sees God's guiltless son within you, shining in perfect radiance that is undimmed by your dreams. And this you will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the father for you.
The Holy Spirit is the Light in which Christ stands revealed. And all who would behold him can see Him, for they have asked for light. Nor will they see Him alone, for He is no more alone than they are. Because they saw his Son, they have risen in Him of the Father. And all this will they understand, because they looked within and saw beyond the darkness the Christ in them, and recognized Him. In the sanity of His vision they looked upon themselves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And with this vision of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.
You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different sights. See through the vision that is given you. For through Christ's vision He beholds Himself. And seeing what He is, He knows His father. Beyond your darkest dreams He sees God's guiltless son within you, shining in perfect radiance that is undimmed by your dreams. And this you will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the father for you.
The Holy Spirit is the Light in which Christ stands revealed. And all who would behold him can see Him, for they have asked for light. Nor will they see Him alone, for He is no more alone than they are. Because they saw his Son, they have risen in Him of the Father. And all this will they understand, because they looked within and saw beyond the darkness the Christ in them, and recognized Him. In the sanity of His vision they looked upon themselves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And with this vision of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.
-A Course in Miracles (232-233)
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Matthew 5:1-15: Blessed are the poor in spirit
Matthew 5:1-15
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour,
wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to
be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a
candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
-King James Bible
Print version on left, kindle version on right
♥
Friday, June 1, 2012
A Course in Miracles: Your father has not denied you
Your father has not denied you. He does not retaliate, but He does call to you to return. When you think He has not answered your call, you have not answered His. He calls to you from every part of the Sonship, because of His Love for His Son. If you hear His message He has answered you, and you will learn of Him if you hear aright. The Love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to him.
-A Course in Miracles
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Thich Nhat Hanh: The River
The River
Once upon a time there was a beautiful river finding her way among the hills, forests, and meadows. She began by being a joyful stream of water, a spring always dancing and singing as she ran down from the top of the mountain. She was very young at the time, and as she came to the lowland she slowed down. She was thinking about going to the ocean. As she grew up, she learned to look beautiful, winding gracefully among the hills and meadows.
One day she noticed the clouds within herself. Clouds of all sorts of colors and forms. She did nothing during these days but chase after clouds. She wanted to possess a cloud, to have one for herself. But clouds float and travel in the sky, and they are always changing their form. Sometimes they look like an overcoat, sometimes like a horse. Because of the nature of impermanence within the clouds, the river suffered very much. Her pleasure, her joy had become just chasing after clouds, one after another, but despair, anger, and hatred became her life.
Then one day a strong wind came and blew away all the clouds in the sky. The sky became completely empty. Our river thought that life was not worth living, for there were no longer any clouds to chase after. She wanted to die. "If there are no clouds, why should I be alive?" But how can a river take her own life?
That night the river had the opportunity to go back to herself for the first time. She had been running for so long after something outside herself that she had never seen herself. That night was the first opportunity for her to hear her own crying, the sounds of water crashing against the banks of the river. Because she was able to listen to her own voice, she discovered something quite important.
She realized that what she had been looking for was already in herself. She found out that clouds are nothing but water. Clouds are born from water and will return to water. And she found out that she herself is also water.
The next morning when the sun was in the sky, she discovered something beautiful. She saw the blue sky for the first time. She had never noticed it before. She had only been interested in clouds, and she had missed seeing the sky, which is the home of all the clouds. Clouds are impermanent, but the sky is stable. She realized the immense sky had been within her heart since the very beginning. This great insight brought her peace and happiness. As she saw the vast wonderful blue sky, she knew that her peace and stability would never be lost again.
That afternoon the clouds returned, but this time she did not want to possess any of them. She could see the beauty of each cloud, and she was able to welcome all of them. When a cloud came by, she would greet him or her with loving kindness. When that cloud wanted to go away, she would wave to him or her happily and with loving kindness. She realized that all clouds are her. She didn't have to choose between clouds and herself. Peace and harmony existed between her and the clouds.
That evening something wonderful happened. When she opened her heart completely to the evening sky she received the image of the full moon-beautiful, round, like a jewel within herself. She had never imagined that she could receive such a beautiful image. There is a very beautiful poem in Chinese: "The fresh and beautiful moon is traveling in the utmost empty sky. When the mind-rivers of living beings are free, that image of the beautiful moon will reflect in each of us."
This was the mind of the river at that moment. She received the image of that beautiful moon within her heart, and water, clouds, and moon took each others hands and practiced walking meditation slowly, slowly to the ocean.
There is nothing to chase after. We can go back to ourselves, enjoy our breathing, our smiling, ourselves, and our beautiful environment."
From Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
A Course in Miracles: The Gift of Freedom
If God's will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only this you must be refusing to acknowledge His Will. His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at peace it can only be because you do not believe you are in Him. Yet he is All in all. His peace is complete, and you must be included in it. His laws govern you because they govern everything. You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you can disobey them. Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything.
I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything.It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. I said that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. That is why I am the light of the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, the loneliness is gone. You cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are not alone. My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of what it is. Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. If my light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with me. The light becomes ours,, and you cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you go. The remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself., and of Him Who sent me to you.
-A Course in Miracles
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Thich Nhat Hanh: Peace is Every Step
When we are angry, our anger is our very self. To suppress or chase it
away is to suppress or chase away our self. When we are joyful, we are
the joy. When we are angry, we are the anger. When anger is born in us,
we can be aware that the anger is an energy in us, and we can accept
that energy in order to transform it into another kind of energy. When
we have a compost bin filled with organic material which is decomposing
and smelly, we know that we can transform the waste into beautiful
flowers. At first, we may see the compost and the flowers as opposite,
but when we look deeply, we see that the flowers already exist in the
compost, and the compost already exists in the flowers. It only takes a
couple of weeks for a flower to decompose. When a good organic gardner
looks into her compost, she can see that, and she does not feel sad or
disgusted. Instead, she values the rotting material and does not
discriminate against it. It takes only a few months for the compost to
give birth to flowers. We need the insight and non-dual vision of the
organic gardner with regard to our anger. We need not be afraid of it or
reject it. We know that anger can be a kind of compost, and that it is
within its power to give birth to something beautiful. We need anger in
the way the organic gardner needs compost. If we know how to accept our
anger, we already have some peace and joy. Gradually we can transform
anger completely into peace, love, and understanding.
-Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
I highly recommend this book.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Deepak Chopra: Releasing confusion
Today I will pray to be new again. This prayer is about
releasing confusion.
God and spirit, I’m in a fog today. Give me clarity, in mind
and heart. Release me from my confusion, which is born of the past. Let me see
everything as if for the first time. Shower unknown blessings on me, and
surprise me with joy. Let me be renewed in your way. Let me renewed in your
ways. Amen.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Proverbs 22:9: The generous will themselves be blessed
The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor.
-Proverbs 22:9 (NIV)
-Proverbs 22:9 (NIV)
Monday, May 14, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Friendship
Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble–minded, as from time to time they pass my gate.
High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts.
Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who stands united with his thought conceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a universal success, even though bought by uniform particular failures. No advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon–like ray.
Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude. I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how many friends I have, and what content I can find in conversing with each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my other friends my asylum.
But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility, — requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to.
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem
of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men.
But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother’s soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first–born of the world are the competitors. He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the speed in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow–man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading–rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him.
But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility, — requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I have never known so high a fellowship as others. I please my imagination more with a circle of godlike men and women variously related to each other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence.
Unrelated men give little joy to each other; will never suspect the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some individuals. Conversation is an evanescent relation, — no more. A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.
Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eternal.
Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast naside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near.
Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall never catch a true glance of his eye.
The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us, and which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is passed in solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first–born of the world, — those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely.
I cannot afford to speak much with my friend. If he is great, he makes me so great that I cannot descend to converse.
So I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them, not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as though we parted not.
It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship
High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts.
Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who stands united with his thought conceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a universal success, even though bought by uniform particular failures. No advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon–like ray.
Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude. I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how many friends I have, and what content I can find in conversing with each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my other friends my asylum.
But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility, — requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to.
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem
of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men.
But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother’s soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first–born of the world are the competitors. He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the speed in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow–man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading–rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him.
But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility, — requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I have never known so high a fellowship as others. I please my imagination more with a circle of godlike men and women variously related to each other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence.
Unrelated men give little joy to each other; will never suspect the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some individuals. Conversation is an evanescent relation, — no more. A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.
Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eternal.
Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast naside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near.
Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall never catch a true glance of his eye.
The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us, and which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is passed in solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first–born of the world, — those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely.
I cannot afford to speak much with my friend. If he is great, he makes me so great that I cannot descend to converse.
So I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them, not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as though we parted not.
It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
Psalm 56 KJV: Be merciful unto me
Psalm 56
Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me.
Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High.
What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.
Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.
They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.
Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, O God.
Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?
When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.
In God will I praise his word: in the Lord will I praise his word.
In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.
Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.
For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?
-King James Version
Print version on left, kindle version on right
♥
Dynamic Thought by Henry Thomas Hamblin: Nothing can stay your updward climb
Nothing can stay your upward climb, there is nobody who can prevent you
succeeding except yourself; there is nothing that can stop your progress but
your own doubt and fear. All things are possible if you believe that they are
possible.
Therefore I want you first of all to cultivate Hope and Faith for without those qualities no one, no matter how gifted or clever, can ever succeed.
When this experience comes to one, then is the time to exercise Hope and Faith. First of all remember that the condition is only temporary. After a few days, in some cases it may be weeks, the health will improve, friends will become genial and harmony will again reign in your life. When the entities that cause the disturbance realize that you mean to keep on, and that you cannot be bullied into going back to the old life, they will quickly leave you. In any case there is nothing to be afraid of, because these entities are helpless if one does not fear them. In other words, if you have Hope and Faith you can win through. Hope for better times although the present may be discouraging. Faith in the sure belief that soon all the disagreeable symptoms will disappear.
I want you to trust me to the extent of doing something, the underlying principle of which cannot be explained in this first lesson. I want you to make what is known as an "affirmation," I want you to affirm the following: "THE OLD LIFE IS DEAD AND BURIED. I HAVE SEVERED MYSELF FROM IT ONCE AND FOR ALL. HENCEFORTH I LIVE THE NEW LIFE OF SUCCESS AND POWER, OF SELF-MASTERY AND ALL ACCOMPLISHMENT."
First of all memorize these words. Keep repeating them over until they sink deeply into your memory, and their meaning finds a place in your consciousness. If you can get a few moments to yourself during the day, practice making the affirmations. The right way is as follows: Go into a quiet place, whether you sit, stand, or lie down is immaterial. Now close your eyes and say the words over very earnestly.
Strive to realize all that they mean and address the words to your inner mind. It is your submerged mind that you are influencing, so address the affirmation very earnestly to it. Do this for several minutes, and finish by making the affirmation into space. Hurl it out as a message to the Universe and by so doing you will come into harmony with innumerable invisible forces, who will help and strengthen you.
When you have finished making the affirmation, again close your eyes and make a mental picture of yourself in the manner already taught. Endeavor to see yourself a radiant being, with the old life and its murkiness and imperfections left far behind you. Picture yourself pressing forward to higher and better things, meeting difficulties, it is true, but overcoming them, trampling old habits, weaknesses and imperfections under your feet. Try and realize that you have the power to raise yourself above the ordinary things of life, that you can breathe a rarer and purer atmosphere. Picture yourself as a new being, happier, healthier, brighter and more radiant than ever you have been even at your most sublime moments.
To obtain the best results from this course it is necessary to set apart a special time every day for meditation and concentration. The reason man is so weak and unhappy is because he lives the whole of his time in the objective life, the shallow material life of the senses, and neglects the deeper, grander and transcendental life of the inner mind. It is the inner life that gives power and peace and satisfaction. The outer material life of the infinite mind of the senses only bring worry and care, the inner life of the deeper mind brings strength, wisdom, understanding and ability to accomplish and achieve.
Within me are infinite powers seeking expression. In the past, because I did not know of their existence, they have been stifled and suppressed. Now I "will" that they shall be called into activity, and find perfect and full expression in my body in the form of perfect health, in my life in the form of success and achievement, in my heart in the form of a mighty upwelling of joy and happiness. Now that I have discovered this hidden and inexhaustible store of power and energy, my life is transformed; weakness gives place to strength, sorrow to happiness, morbidness to radiant joy, pessimism to divine optimism, despair to hope, failure to success, poverty to prosperity, sickness to health. Henceforth only the highest good can come into my life. Now by the power of my thought-forces I am allied with and joined to the Infinite Principle of Good, and we have become one. Henceforth for me there is, and can be, no evil, only Infinite Good. All evil is now cast out of my life, because I am one with the Infinite Good. "No evil can come nigh my dwelling"; "nothing can harm or destroy." Henceforth by scientific thinking I control my life, for my life is the result or effect of my thoughts. When evil thoughts, or weak thoughts, or impure thoughts, or failure thoughts, or fear thoughts, or poverty thoughts, or hate thoughts, or disease thoughts assail me, I will cast them out and think only of thoughts of love, and strength, of health and prosperity, of success and achievement, and of the Infinite Perfection with which I am now allied, and of which I form a part.
When meditating upon the above, take each thought separately in turn and concentrate all your thoughts upon it. Not only grasp its meaning, but try and picture what it means. For instance: "My life is transformed." When you think upon these words, try and see your life being transformed, see your weaknesses falling away from you like an old garment, and instead, strength, success and noble qualities being born in their place. Practice and concentrate and FEEL the power of this meditation.
This ends the metaphysical part of this week's lesson, the following are some brief hints of great value to the student beginning the study of Scientific Thought: (1) Everything works according to Law, we each of us have what we deserve. (2) Covet no man's goods, possessions or happiness; he deserves them, let him alone. Realize that the Universe holds all that you can possibly desire--for you. (3) Hate no man. Hatred will come back like a boomerang and hurt you far more than it can the object of your hatred. Ignore what you cannot like, and concentrate your mind on pleasant things. (4) Be true, be honest, be faithful. All these create vibrations which will bring back blessings and happiness to you.
In the meantime make use of the same affirmation that you have been using in the past week, but with something added. It will now read:
"The old life is dead and buried. I have severed myself from it once and for all. Henceforth I live the new life of Success and Power, Self-Mastery and all Accomplishment. This I do, not in the strength of my feeble will and surface mind of my ordinary consciousness, but by the Infinite Power of my deeper inner MIND which is one with, and forms a part of, the Infinite Universal Mind."
Make the affirmations earnestly. Think of what you are saying. Enter into all that the words mean. Try and feel their power. Do not, however, screw yourself up to a nervous tension, instead let yourself relax. First your body with its muscles and nerves--let them all go limp, then your mind--let that unbend also. Now affirm calmly and confidently as instructed, and then visualize a picture of yourself, radiant, calm, and possessed of a new power. See yourself master of all weaknesses and passions, directing yourself, guiding your life with unerring wisdom, shaping your course to a glorious destiny. Practice and keep on practicing the art of visualizing. Remember that you are dealing with finer matter than that which is discerned by the senses, but it is none the less real; in fact, it is far more real. The fact that you can see with your mind's eye that which you have created by your mental processes, is proof that what you have created exists. If it did not exist you could not see it, If, therefore, you create in your mental realm a picture of yourself, radiant, successful, self disciplined, master of your life and destiny, then you are creating a new YOU which in process of time will become objectified in your outward life. In other words, the new YOU, the radiant being of your mental imagery, will later manifest itself in a new outside physical YOU. Whatever is created in the Unseen, later becomes manifested in the Seen. This is an immutable Law. By mental imagery you create in the Unseen. Be careful what you create, whatever it is, good or bad, will find its way into your life and be read and known of all men.
Whenever you meet with temptation or difficulty or if you let yourself get flustered at business, just "retire into yourself" tor a moment and make the affirmation mentally, and "realize" that you are a new creature. You will then become conscious of THE INWARD POWER.
-Henry Thomas Hamblin, Dynamic Thought
Therefore I want you first of all to cultivate Hope and Faith for without those qualities no one, no matter how gifted or clever, can ever succeed.
When this experience comes to one, then is the time to exercise Hope and Faith. First of all remember that the condition is only temporary. After a few days, in some cases it may be weeks, the health will improve, friends will become genial and harmony will again reign in your life. When the entities that cause the disturbance realize that you mean to keep on, and that you cannot be bullied into going back to the old life, they will quickly leave you. In any case there is nothing to be afraid of, because these entities are helpless if one does not fear them. In other words, if you have Hope and Faith you can win through. Hope for better times although the present may be discouraging. Faith in the sure belief that soon all the disagreeable symptoms will disappear.
I want you to trust me to the extent of doing something, the underlying principle of which cannot be explained in this first lesson. I want you to make what is known as an "affirmation," I want you to affirm the following: "THE OLD LIFE IS DEAD AND BURIED. I HAVE SEVERED MYSELF FROM IT ONCE AND FOR ALL. HENCEFORTH I LIVE THE NEW LIFE OF SUCCESS AND POWER, OF SELF-MASTERY AND ALL ACCOMPLISHMENT."
First of all memorize these words. Keep repeating them over until they sink deeply into your memory, and their meaning finds a place in your consciousness. If you can get a few moments to yourself during the day, practice making the affirmations. The right way is as follows: Go into a quiet place, whether you sit, stand, or lie down is immaterial. Now close your eyes and say the words over very earnestly.
Strive to realize all that they mean and address the words to your inner mind. It is your submerged mind that you are influencing, so address the affirmation very earnestly to it. Do this for several minutes, and finish by making the affirmation into space. Hurl it out as a message to the Universe and by so doing you will come into harmony with innumerable invisible forces, who will help and strengthen you.
When you have finished making the affirmation, again close your eyes and make a mental picture of yourself in the manner already taught. Endeavor to see yourself a radiant being, with the old life and its murkiness and imperfections left far behind you. Picture yourself pressing forward to higher and better things, meeting difficulties, it is true, but overcoming them, trampling old habits, weaknesses and imperfections under your feet. Try and realize that you have the power to raise yourself above the ordinary things of life, that you can breathe a rarer and purer atmosphere. Picture yourself as a new being, happier, healthier, brighter and more radiant than ever you have been even at your most sublime moments.
To obtain the best results from this course it is necessary to set apart a special time every day for meditation and concentration. The reason man is so weak and unhappy is because he lives the whole of his time in the objective life, the shallow material life of the senses, and neglects the deeper, grander and transcendental life of the inner mind. It is the inner life that gives power and peace and satisfaction. The outer material life of the infinite mind of the senses only bring worry and care, the inner life of the deeper mind brings strength, wisdom, understanding and ability to accomplish and achieve.
Within me are infinite powers seeking expression. In the past, because I did not know of their existence, they have been stifled and suppressed. Now I "will" that they shall be called into activity, and find perfect and full expression in my body in the form of perfect health, in my life in the form of success and achievement, in my heart in the form of a mighty upwelling of joy and happiness. Now that I have discovered this hidden and inexhaustible store of power and energy, my life is transformed; weakness gives place to strength, sorrow to happiness, morbidness to radiant joy, pessimism to divine optimism, despair to hope, failure to success, poverty to prosperity, sickness to health. Henceforth only the highest good can come into my life. Now by the power of my thought-forces I am allied with and joined to the Infinite Principle of Good, and we have become one. Henceforth for me there is, and can be, no evil, only Infinite Good. All evil is now cast out of my life, because I am one with the Infinite Good. "No evil can come nigh my dwelling"; "nothing can harm or destroy." Henceforth by scientific thinking I control my life, for my life is the result or effect of my thoughts. When evil thoughts, or weak thoughts, or impure thoughts, or failure thoughts, or fear thoughts, or poverty thoughts, or hate thoughts, or disease thoughts assail me, I will cast them out and think only of thoughts of love, and strength, of health and prosperity, of success and achievement, and of the Infinite Perfection with which I am now allied, and of which I form a part.
When meditating upon the above, take each thought separately in turn and concentrate all your thoughts upon it. Not only grasp its meaning, but try and picture what it means. For instance: "My life is transformed." When you think upon these words, try and see your life being transformed, see your weaknesses falling away from you like an old garment, and instead, strength, success and noble qualities being born in their place. Practice and concentrate and FEEL the power of this meditation.
This ends the metaphysical part of this week's lesson, the following are some brief hints of great value to the student beginning the study of Scientific Thought: (1) Everything works according to Law, we each of us have what we deserve. (2) Covet no man's goods, possessions or happiness; he deserves them, let him alone. Realize that the Universe holds all that you can possibly desire--for you. (3) Hate no man. Hatred will come back like a boomerang and hurt you far more than it can the object of your hatred. Ignore what you cannot like, and concentrate your mind on pleasant things. (4) Be true, be honest, be faithful. All these create vibrations which will bring back blessings and happiness to you.
In the meantime make use of the same affirmation that you have been using in the past week, but with something added. It will now read:
"The old life is dead and buried. I have severed myself from it once and for all. Henceforth I live the new life of Success and Power, Self-Mastery and all Accomplishment. This I do, not in the strength of my feeble will and surface mind of my ordinary consciousness, but by the Infinite Power of my deeper inner MIND which is one with, and forms a part of, the Infinite Universal Mind."
Make the affirmations earnestly. Think of what you are saying. Enter into all that the words mean. Try and feel their power. Do not, however, screw yourself up to a nervous tension, instead let yourself relax. First your body with its muscles and nerves--let them all go limp, then your mind--let that unbend also. Now affirm calmly and confidently as instructed, and then visualize a picture of yourself, radiant, calm, and possessed of a new power. See yourself master of all weaknesses and passions, directing yourself, guiding your life with unerring wisdom, shaping your course to a glorious destiny. Practice and keep on practicing the art of visualizing. Remember that you are dealing with finer matter than that which is discerned by the senses, but it is none the less real; in fact, it is far more real. The fact that you can see with your mind's eye that which you have created by your mental processes, is proof that what you have created exists. If it did not exist you could not see it, If, therefore, you create in your mental realm a picture of yourself, radiant, successful, self disciplined, master of your life and destiny, then you are creating a new YOU which in process of time will become objectified in your outward life. In other words, the new YOU, the radiant being of your mental imagery, will later manifest itself in a new outside physical YOU. Whatever is created in the Unseen, later becomes manifested in the Seen. This is an immutable Law. By mental imagery you create in the Unseen. Be careful what you create, whatever it is, good or bad, will find its way into your life and be read and known of all men.
Whenever you meet with temptation or difficulty or if you let yourself get flustered at business, just "retire into yourself" tor a moment and make the affirmation mentally, and "realize" that you are a new creature. You will then become conscious of THE INWARD POWER.
-Henry Thomas Hamblin, Dynamic Thought
Poe: All are but parts of one stupendous soul.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is and God the soul.
-Poe
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Key to Yourself by Venice Bloodworth: We are all children of the Father
There is no need to fear anything for we carry the indwelling power to overcome everything. Then why should we be angry with our brother? If he has injured you, he will surely reap with interest whatever he has done to you, and if you are angry in return you harm yourself more than him; and remember that the same mighty power dwells within you, sleeps also in your brother. We are all children of the Father and co-heirs with Christ; so lift yourself above the petty manifestations of mistakes and live in accord with the good within you.
There are times when even the bravest want to give up; times when appearances indicate that everything is against us, and it is no use to try. At such times you should remember that it is always darkest before the dawn; that a little more faith, a little more patience is all that we need to win. Remember, too, that all those who have reached their goal ahead of you felt tired sometimes, and wanted to give up, but they DID NOT.
There are times when even the bravest want to give up; times when appearances indicate that everything is against us, and it is no use to try. At such times you should remember that it is always darkest before the dawn; that a little more faith, a little more patience is all that we need to win. Remember, too, that all those who have reached their goal ahead of you felt tired sometimes, and wanted to give up, but they DID NOT.
-Venice Bloodworth, Key to Yourself
James Allen: The Kingdom of Heaven
As there are silent depths in the ocean which the fiercest storm cannot reach,
so there are silent, holy depths in the heart of man which the storms of sin and
sorrow can never disturb. To reach this silence and to live consciously in it is
peace.
Hatred severs human lives, fosters persecution, and hurls nations into ruthless war, yet men, though they do not understand why, retain some measure of faith in the overshadowing of a Perfect Love; and to reach this Love and to live consciously in it is peace.
And this inward peace, this silence, this harmony, this Love, is the Kingdom of Heaven, which is so difficult to reach because few are willing to give up themselves and to become as little children.
The angels of divine peace and joy are always at hand, and if you do not see them, and hear them, and dwell with them, it is because you shut yourself out from them, and prefer the company of the spirits of evil within you. You are what you will to be, what you wish to be, what you prefer to be. You can commence to purify yourself, and by so doing can arrive at peace, or you can refuse to purify yourself, and so remain with suffering.
-James Allen
Hatred severs human lives, fosters persecution, and hurls nations into ruthless war, yet men, though they do not understand why, retain some measure of faith in the overshadowing of a Perfect Love; and to reach this Love and to live consciously in it is peace.
And this inward peace, this silence, this harmony, this Love, is the Kingdom of Heaven, which is so difficult to reach because few are willing to give up themselves and to become as little children.
The angels of divine peace and joy are always at hand, and if you do not see them, and hear them, and dwell with them, it is because you shut yourself out from them, and prefer the company of the spirits of evil within you. You are what you will to be, what you wish to be, what you prefer to be. You can commence to purify yourself, and by so doing can arrive at peace, or you can refuse to purify yourself, and so remain with suffering.
-James Allen
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