Mastery of Self for Wealth Power Success - Frank Channing Haddock (reading eggs books txt) 📗

Threat by the future: substitute reason, thus—right cause; no cause; cause magnified.

You are invited to work out the particulars of this analysis, and to examine them with reference to your self and life. You will make some important discoveries. One of the many questions suggested is this: Is the cause of anticipated possible consequences justly estimated in your thought—is it a right cause—is it really as you suppose? The idea is that you think of any one of your fears and then ask the question in the form just indicated. Thus we may have the following statement of

KINDS OF FEARS.

Fear of Self: timidity, lack of confidence, possible unaccountable states.

Fear for Self: weakness, anticipated failure, imagined disgrace.

Fear of Things: animals, inanimate objects, physical forces.

Fear of Others: human beings, apparitions, devils, Deity.

Fear for Others: children, parents, husband, wife, relatives, friends, strangers.

Fear of Events: present, future, imaginary, possible, probable, contingent.

Fear of the Future: in life; beyond the present life.

Instinct and reason strive to place us in right relations with all these causes. The existence in us of fear shows that we already are, either in mind or in fact, in wrong relations therewith.

The mastery of fear involves the discovery of right relations, mental or concrete, and the placing of self in those right conditions which are determined and provided for by the ground-plan of our nature.

And the first thing thus provided for is health. All treatment for the conquest of our universal enemy must begin with development of individual tone: tone of body, tone of mind, tone of the deeper self.

I am not writing for those who are constitutionally fearless, but I have in mind all who do yield to the feeling of fear. Our ideal, however, is not a mere animal courage, not the courage of insensibility. It is rather the courage of the whole man or woman making for the WHITE LIFE. If you are only partially yourself, you cannot possess the highest courage. Such courage may be yours, infallibly, if you will but resolve for the goal and go on into the great ideals of the harmonic personality. This you can do— anyone can do. And to come thereto is the greatest thing in the world.

You are invited, then, to begin by substituting in your thought the idea of self-preserving reason for any kind of fear (even the so-called normal) as your perpetual guard and guide. Make it a profound conviction of your deepest self that no real harm can come to that self because you have entered the highway of the WHITE LIFE—THE LIFE OF PURITY, REASON, HONOR, GOOD-WILL, AND CONFIDENT ASSURANCE. Swing your life into the unfolding and infolding of the Infinite White Life of Worlds. Courage will become to you the very breath of your lungs.

I send you this sure message: Fear is dead In all the pure, by reason’s wisdom led, Who wear white honor and evince good-will, And trust the self to Love’s unfailing skill. I send you this sure message: Courage lives When man to Courage all assurance gives.

THE SOUL OF THE CELL.

This crystal of Quartz,—the queen of its tribe, Amethyst, Onyx, Chalcedony, Heliotrope, Agate,— Some toiler of old Japan, the Artist fantastic, Has polished to likeness of ice, Ruining form to reveal it Fleche d’Amour That the marvelous, delicate, hairlike inclosures Of crystallizations foreign might please the beholder. Herein worked the Infinite well, And, let us say, too, the artisan patient, To one limit—significant boundary! HEALTH!

I request you to define it—configure the wonder Of this dust-common, beneficent Gift. Who lacks it, he knows quite precisely his want; Who has it divulges precisely the thing. Yet never man—scientist, poet, physician— In words can portray it—the Soul of the Cell,

THAT lurks only in spheres of the Substance of Life; Fares past the quartz and hides in the throat of the wearer. Shuns diamond glory for greater of flesh; Builds higher and higher to balance unstable In beauty of male and in exquisite female, And sends through the intricate meshwork of cells— Sheer matter, kin of this quartz— Its evidence: light-hue, radiance crimson, Eye-gleam, pulse-throb, vigor and nerve-thrill Of just that common, miraculous Gift, HEALTH of a body wherein dwells soul.

THERE, say I, the Infinite worked well! Come now to YOU the artisan’s skill for this marvel, Physical man: to refine and ennoble; To reveal the inclosure of spirit unmarred, And grow in the mobile, responsive flesh Mind perfect, held fast in OUR Crystal superb, The Universe complete. —THE AUTHOR.

CHAPTER III.

PHYSICAL TONE.

“In the healthy body every cell is polarized in subjection to the Central Will. Perfect health, therefore, is orderly obedience, government and harmony. Every cell is a living entity, whether of vegetable or animal potency, and wherever disease is, there are disunion, error, rebellion and insubordination; and the deeper the seat of the confusion, the more dangerous the malady and the harder to quell it.”—J. C. Street.

The thought of the above quotation does not mean that the insubordination is necessarily conscious to the diseased individual, but that it surely obtains within the physical arena of his life. Because it is not the outcome of his deliberate choice, the case is not hopeless in the nature of things, but is open to better conditions. The deeper self which has intended no rebellion against the laws of bodily well-being may now distinctly intend harmony, and so lift the body to a higher plane.

And the last sentence in the quotation does not mean that you are to undertake a vast amount of hard work, assuming that you are not in perfect physical condition. You are, rather, just to begin and go on thinking yourself in a real way as in harmony with the Central Will, which is our White Life, and to hold steadfastly in the deeper self the ideas, Affirmation and Realization of Splendid Personal Tone.

Some of the meanings of these powerful words will be unfolded later, In the meantime, as all things are subject to law, let us observe a number of the general conditions to three-fold health, that of body, mind and the inner self, regarding their totality as the atmosphere, so to speak, in which courage most easily and perfectly thrives.

Fear in man is a result of repeated suggestion, to which low health-tone is a natural invitation. Health is the primary tonic against fear. Perfect physical health is mere strength. Perfect mental health is mere brain sanity. Perfect soul-health is the whole of the man at his best. When the body is buoyant, the mind clear and inspired, the soul harmonic with all existence rightly in the universe, then is the impulse of fear easily mastered and the habit of fear finds no encouragement. There are, indeed, courageous invalids who have not come into the secret of right thought so far as health is concerned, and fearing atheltes and scholars who have neglected the secret of courage, and timorous saints who have failed to possess themselves of the confidence of goodness. Nevertheless, the eternal law is evident that the one great enemy of fear is

The White Life in Harmonic Mind in Buoyant Body.

A person who affirms and realizes these conditions must, in the nature of things, be possessed of perfect health. In the tone of such health courage is inevitable.

That you may come to this ideal, you are invited to observe the following instructions. Health is a trinity, and we may begin our studies with its natural basis:

THE GENERAL TONE OP HEALTH.

The word “tone” means, “sound in relation to volume, quality, duration and pitch,” then, “peculiar characteristic sound as of a voice or instrument,” then, “characteristic style or tendency, predominating aim or character, tenor, strain, spirit.”

Hence, in the sense of health, tone signifies “the state of tension or firmness proper to the tissues of the body; the state in which all the parts and organs have due tension or are well strung; the strength and activity of the organs on which healthy functions depend; that state of the body in which all the normal functions are performed with healthy vigor.”

We thus see that health-tone involves the whole personality, physical, mental and moral.

But the truth of the matter hides in a deeper region than that of mere material flesh or organ. Matter is a form of the Universal Ether, so far as science seems to declare, or, at least, matter presupposes the ether in a state of vibration. Your body is a “field” in which etheric vibrations are constantly taking place. All its reality and all its activities involve such vibrations. The brain, regarded as the organ of conscious life, of thought and feeling, and the entire nervous system, involve such vibrations. And as your thought and feeling constitute the foundation of your moral character, the latter also becomes a matter of movements in the ether.

In the case of heat, light, electricity, etc., differing kinds of such vibrations determine the kinds of phenomena. We may say, then, that there is one general kind of ether-movement for matter, and another for thought and feeling, and another for the moral life. Each individual, however, presents variations of these general kinds of vibrations,—a particular variation for his body, and for his mental person, and for his right or wrong self-spirit. We individualize the ether, Or, we are individualized as we use the ether.

The tone of a person’s health is determined by the state of the etheric movements characteristic to himself.

If the vibrations underlying the body life are full and harmonious according to their individual character for a person, his organs are all sound and active. He possesses physical tone. If there is a similar fullness and harmony within his mental life, he must exhibit health of mind. If a corresponding condition obtains in the moral personality, the highest health of the deeper self prevails.

These three individualized varieties of ether-movement in man mutually interact and determine one another’s character. I know that this law does not always seem to operate. Poor minds and wrong morals are sometimes found in apparently healthy bodies, and great minds and noble spirits in feeble bodies. But the bodies of the one class do NOT represent the finest physical health, involving coarseness, flabbiness, susceptibility to disorder, etc., etc., and are not contradictions of the law. Moreover, the inner life is not always fully expressed by apparent departures from right living: as you may frequently see in some sudden burst of nobility, generosity, tenderness, heroism, in those who possess sound bodies but are outwardly not particularly refined. The rough exterior may hide a splendid germ of true spiritual manhood or womanhood. Could we look deeply into the physical nature, we should always find the law holding good that our three-fold ether-movements do influence and in the long run determine one another for weal or ill. Where the inner self is right yet the physical tone weak or disturbed, we should perceive, if we had the “spirit of discernment,” that the better life within has surely influenced and ennobled the essential nature of the body. It should be remembered that two confusing factors prevail where a fine spirit dwells in a diseased body: first, the thought-life of centuries has, so to speak, warped the character of the inherited body and its vibrations to such an extent that they may not, perhaps (I do not know), be altogether reformed within a human lifetime; secondly, the thought-life of the individual, however nearly right in many respects, is wrong in one particular, the belief, feeling, conviction—an inheritance of ages—that disease of the body must necessarily obtain in some cases at least, no matter what the inner life may be. This conviction is a tremendous force for harm. Invalids accept it as true, and