14. You would not hate a hunchback or cripple. You would have compassion. Have compassion and understanding for mental hunchbacks who have been conditioned negatively. To understand all is to forgive all.
15. Rejoice in the success, promotion and good fortune of the other. In doing so, you attract good fortune to yourself.
16. Never yield to emotional scenes and tantrums of others. Appeasement never wins. Do not be a doormat. Adhere to that which is right. Stick to your ideal, knowing that the mental outlook which gives you peace, happiness and joy is right, good and true. What blesses you, blesses all. All you owe any person in the world is love, and love is wishing for everyone what you wish for yourself – health, happiness and all the blessings of life.
Chapter Seventeen
How To Use Your Subconscious For Forgiveness
Life plays no favorites. God is life, and this life-principle is flowing through you this moment. God loves to express Himself as harmony, peace, beauty, joy and abundance through you. This is called the will of God or the tendency of life.
If you set up resistance in your mind to the flow of life through you, this emotional congestion will get snarled up in your subconscious mind and cause all kinds of negative conditions. God has nothing to do with unhappy or chaotic conditions in the world. All these conditions are brought about by man's negative and destructive thinking. Therefore, it is silly to blame God for your trouble or sickness.
Many persons habitually set up mental resistance to the flow of life by accusing and reproaching God for the sin, sickness and suffering of mankind. Others cast blame on God for their pains, aches, loss of loved ones, personal tragedies and accidents. They are angry at God and they believe He is responsible for their misery.
As long as people entertain such negative concepts about God, they will experience the automatic negative reactions from their subconscious minds. Actually, such people do not know that they are punishing themselves. They must see the truth, find release, and give up all condemnation, resentment and anger against anyone or any power outside themselves. Otherwise, they cannot go forward into a healthy, happy ore creative activity. The minute these people entertain a God of love in their minds and hearts, and when they believe that God is the Loving Father who watches over them, cares for them, guides them, sustains and strengthens them, this concept and belief about God or the life-principle will be accepted by their subconscious mind, and they will find themselves blessed in countless ways.
Life Always Forgives You
Life forgives you when you cut your finger. The subconscious intelligence within you sets about immediately to repair it. New cells build bridges over the cut. Should you take some tainted food by error, life forgives you and causes you to regurgitate it in order to preserve you. If you burn your hand, the life-principle reduces the edema and congestion, and gives you new skin, tissue and cells. Life holds no grudges against you, and it is always forgiving you. Life brings you back to health, vitality, harmony and peace, if you cooperate by thinking in harmony with nature. Negative, hurtful, memories, bitterness and ill will clutter up and impede the free flow of the life-principle in you.
How He Banished That Feeling Of Guilt
I knew a man who worked every night until about one o'clock in the morning. He paid no attention to his two boys or his wife. He was always too busy working hard. He thought people should pat him on the back because he was working so arduously and persistently past midnight every night. He had a blood pressure over two hundred and was full of guilt. Unconsciously, he proceeded to punish himself by hard work and he completely ignored his children. A normal man does not do that. He is interested in his boys and in their development. He does not shut his wife out of his world.
I explained to him why he was working so arduously, “There is something eating you inside, otherwise, you would not act this way. You are punishing yourself, and you have to learn to forgive yourself.” He did have a deep sense of guilt. It was toward a brother.
I explained to him that God was not punishing him, but that he was punishing himself. For example, if you misuse the laws of life, you will suffer accordingly. If you put your hand on a naked charged wire, you will get burned. The forces and nature are not evil; it is your use of them that determines whether they have a good or evil effect. Electricity is not evil, it depends on how you use it, whether to burn down a structure or light up a home. The only sin is ignorance of the law, and the only punishment is the automatic reaction of man's misuse of the law.
If you misuse the principle of chemistry, you may blow up the office or the factory. If you strike your hand on a board, you may cause your hand to bleed. The board is not for that purpose. Its purpose may be to lean upon or to support your feet.
This man realized that God does not condemn or punish anyone, and that all his suffering was due to the reaction of his sub mind to his own negative and destructive thinking. He had cheated his brother at one time and the brother had now passed on. Still, he was full of remorse and guilt.
I asked him, “Would you cheat your brother now?” He said, “No.” “Did you feel you were justified at the time?” His reply was, “Yes.” “But, you would not do it now?” He added, “No, I am helping others to know how to live.”
I added the following comment, “You have a greater reason and understanding now. Forgiveness is to forgive yourself. Forgiveness is getting your thoughts in line with the divine law of harmony. Self condemnation is called hell (bondage and restriction); forgiveness is called heaven (harmony and peace).”
The burden of guilt and self condemnation was lifted from his mind, and he had a complete healing. The doctor tested his blood pressure and it had become normal. The explanation was the cure.
A Murderer Learned To Forgive Himself
A man who murdered his brother in Europe visited me many years ago. He was suffering from great mental anguish and torture believing that God must punish him. He explained that his brother had been having an affair with his wife and that he had shot him on the spur of the moment. This had happened about fifteen years previous to his interview with me. In the meantime, this man had married an American girl and had been blessed with three lovely children. He was in a position where he helped many people and he was a transformed man.
My explanation to him was that physically and psychologically he was not the same man who shot his brother, since scientists inform us that every cell of our bodies changes every eleven months. Moreover, mentally and spiritually he was a new man. He was now full of love and good will for humanity. The “old” man who committed the crime fifteen years before was mentally and spiritually dead. Actually, he was condemning an innocent man!
This explanation had a profound effect upon him and he said it was as if a great weight had been lifted from his mind. He realized the significance of the following truth in the Bible: Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Isaiah 1:18.
Criticism Cannot Hurt You Without Your Consent
A school teacher told me that one of her associates criticized a speech she had given, saying to her that she spoke too fast, she swallowed some of her words, she couldn't be heard, her diction was poor and her speech ineffective. This teacher was furious and full of resentment toward her critic.
She admitted to me that the criticisms were just. Her first reaction was really childish and she agreed that the letter was really a blessing and a marvelous corrective. She proceeded immediately to supplement her deficiencies in her speech by enrolling in a course in public speaking at City College. She wrote and thanked the writer of the note for her interest, expressing appreciation for her conclusions and findings which enabled the teacher to correct the matter at once.