Your body is just like clay in the hands of a potter. Your mind can make of it what it will. The clay has nothing to say about what form it shall take. Neither have your head, your heart, your lungs, your digestive organs anything to say about how conditions shall affect them. They do not decide whether they shall be dizzy or diseased or lame. It is mind that makes this decision. They merely conform to it AFTER mind has decided it. Matter has undergone any and every condition without harm, when properly sustained by mind. And what it has done once, it can do again.
When you understand that your muscles, your nerves, your bones have no feeling or intelligence of their own, when you learn that they react to conditions only as mind directs that they shall react, you will never again think or speak of any organ as imperfect, as weak or ailing. You will never again complain of tired bodies, aching muscles, or frayed nerves. On the contrary, you will hold steadfast to thoughts of exhaustless strength, of super-abundant vitality, knowing that, as Shakespeare said — “There is nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Never fear disaster, for the fear of it is an invitation to disaster to come upon you. Fear being vivid, easily impresses itself upon the sub-conscious mind. And by so impressing itself, it brings into being the thing that is feared. It is the Frankenstein monster that we all create at times, and which, created, and turns to rend its creator. Fear that something you greatly prize will be lost and the fear you feel with creates the very means whereby you will lose it.
Fear is the Devil. It is the ravening lion roaming the earth seeking whom it may devour. The only safety from it is to deny it. The only refuge is in the knowledge that it has no power other than the power you give to it.
He Whom a Dream Hath Possessed
You fear debt. So your mind concentrates upon it and brings about greater debts. You fear loss. And by visualizing that loss you bring it about.
The only remedy for fear is to know that evil has no power — that it is a non-entity — merely a lack of something. You fear ill health, when if you would concentrate that same amount of thought upon good health you would insure the very condition you fear to lose. Functional disturbances are caused solely by the mind through wrong thinking. The remedy for them is a not drug, but right thinking, for the trouble is not in the organs but in the mind. Farnsworth in his “Practical Psychology” tells of a man who had conceived the idea when a boy that the eating of cherries and milk together had made him sick. He was very fond of both, but always had to be careful not to eat them together, for whenever he did he had been ill. Mr. Farnsworth explained to him that there was no reason for such illness, because all milk sours anyway just as soon as it reaches the stomach. As a matter of fact it cannot be digested until it does sour. He then treated the man mentally for this wrong association of ideas, and after the one treatment the man was never troubled in this way again, though he had been suffering from it for forty-five years.
If you had delirium tremens, and thought you saw pink elephants and green alligators and yellow snakes all about you, it would be a foolish physician that would try to cure you of snakes. Or that would prescribe glasses to improve your eyesight, when he knew that the animals round about you were merely distorted visions of your mind.
The indigestion that you suffer from, the colds that bother you — in short, each and every One of your ailments-is just as much a distorted idea of your mind as would be the snakes of delirium tremens. Banish the idea and you banish the manifestation.
The Bible contains one continuous entreaty to cast out fear. From beginning to end, the admonition “Fear not” is insistent. Fear is the primary cause of all bodily impairment. Jesus understood this and He knew that it could be abolished. Hence His frequent entreaty, “Fear not, be not afraid.”
Struggle there is. And struggle there will always be. But struggle is merely wrestling with trial. We need difficulties to overcome. But there is nothing to be afraid of. Everything is an effect of mind. Your thought forces, concentrated upon anything, will bring that thing into manifestation. Therefore concentrate them only upon good things, only upon those conditions you wish to see manifested. Think health, power, abundance, and happiness. Drive all thoughts of poverty and disease, of fear and worry, as far from your mind as you drive filth from your homes. For fear and worry is the filth of the mind that causes all trouble, that brings about all disease. Banish it! Banish from among your associates any man with a negative outlook on life. Shun him as you would the plague. Can you imagine a knocker winning anything? He is doomed before he starts. Don’t let him pull you down with him. “Fret not thyself,” says the Psalmist, “else shalt thou be moved to do evil.”
That wise old Psalmist might have been writing for us today. For there is no surer way of doing the wrong thing in business or in social life than to fret yourself, to worry, to fume, to want action of some kind, regardless of what it may be. Remember the Lord’s admonition to the Israelites, “Be still — and know that I am God.”
Have you ever stood on the shore of a calm, peaceful lake and watched the reflections in it? The trees, the mountains, the clouds, the sky, all were mirrored there — just as perfectly, as beautifully, as the objects themselves. But try to get such a reflection from the ocean! It cannot be done, because the ocean is always restless, always stirred up by winds or waves or tides.
So it is with your mind. You cannot reflect the richness and plenty of Universal Mind, you cannot mirror peace and health and happiness, if you are constantly worried, continually stirred by waves of fear, winds of anger, tides of toil and striving. You must relax at times. You must give mind a chance. You must realize that, when you have done your best, you can confidently lean back and leave the outcome to Universal Mind.
Just as wrong thinking produces discord in the body, so it also brings on a diseased condition in the realm of commerce. Experience teaches that we need to be protected more from our fears and wrong thoughts, than from so-called evil influences external to ourselves. We need not suffer for another man’s wrong, for another’s greed, dishonesty, avarice or selfish ambition. But if we hug to ourselves the fear that we do have to so suffer, take it into our thought, allow it to disturb us, then we sentence ourselves. ‘We are free to reject every suggestion of discord, and to be governed harmoniously, in spite of what anything or anybody may try to do to us.
Do you know why old army men would rather have soldiers of 18 or 20 than mature men of 30 or 40? Not because they can march farther. They can’t! Not because they can carry more. They can’t! But because when they go to sleep at night, they really sleep. They wipe the slate clean! When they awaken in the morning, they are ready for a new day and a new world.
But an older man carries the nervous strain of one day over to the next. He worries! With the result that at the end of a couple of month’s’ hard campaigning, the older man is a nervous wreck.
And that is the trouble with most men in business. They never wipe the slate clean! They worry! And they carry each day’s worries over to the next, with the result that some day the burden becomes more than they can carry.
The Bars of Fate
Fear results from a belief that there are really two powers in this world -Good and Evil. Like light and darkness. When the fact is that Evil is no more real than darkness. True, we lose contact with Good at times. We let the clouds of fear and worry come between us and the sunlight of Good and then all seems dark. But the sun is still shining on the other side of those clouds, and when we drive them away, we again see its light.
Realizing this, realizing that Good is ever available if we will but turn to it confidently in our need, what is there to fear? “Fear not, little flock,” said Jesus, “for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And again — “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”
If this means anything, it means that the Father is