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 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.
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 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.
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.
Suppose none of the things mentioned in the letter had been true of the
teacher. The latter would have realized that her class material had upset
the prejudices, superstitions, or narrow sectarian beliefs of the writer of
the note, and that a psychologically ill person was simply pouring forth
her resentment because a psychological boil had been hurt. To understand this fact is to be compassionate. The next logical step
would be to pray for the other person’s peace, harmony and understanding. You cannot be hurt when you know that you are master of your
thoughts, reactions and emotions. Emotions follow thoughts, and you
have the power to reject all thoughts which may disturb or upset you.
Some years ago I visited a church to perform a marriage ceremony. The
young man did not appear and at the end of two hours, the bride-to-be
shed a few tears and then said to me, “I prayed for divine guidance. This
might be the answer for He never faileth.”
That was her reaction – faith in God and all things good. She had no bitterness in her heart because as she said. “It must not have been right action because my prayer was for right action for both of us.” Someone else
having a similar experience would have gone into a tantrum, have had an
emotional fit, required sedation, and perhaps needed hospitalization. Tune
in with the Infinite Intelligence within your subconscious depths, trusting
the answer in the same way that you trusted your mother when she held
you in her arms. This is how you can acquire poise and mental and emotional health.
Some time ago I talked to a young lady aged twenty-two. She was taught
that it was a sin to dance, to play cards, to swim and to go out with men.
She was threatened by her mother who told her she would burn eternally
in hell fire if she disobeyed her will and her religious teachings. This girl
wore a black dress and black stockings. She wore no rouge, lipstick or any
form of make up because her mother said that these things were sinful.
Her mother told her that all men were evil, and that sex was of the devil
and simply diabolic debauchery.
This girl had to learn how to forgive herself as she was full of guilt. To forgive means to give for. She had to give up all these false beliefs for the
truths of life and new estimate of herself. When she went out with young
men in the office where she worked, she had a deep sense of guilt and
thought that God would punish her. Several eligible young men proposed
to her, but she said to me, “It is wrong to marry. Sex is evil and I am
evil.” This was her conscience of early conditioning speaking.
She came to me once weekly for about ten weeks and I taught her the
workings of the conscious and subconscious mind set forth in this book.
This young girl gradually came to see that she had been completely brainwashed, mesmerized and conditioned by an ignorant, superstitious, bigoted and frustrated mother. She broke away completely from her family and
started to live a wonderful life. At my suggestion she dressed up and had her hair attended to. She took
lessons in dancing from a man, and she also took driving lessons. She
learned to swim, play cards and had a number of dates. She began to
love life. She prayed for a divine companion by claiming that Infinite Spirit
would attract to her a man who harmonized with her thoroughly. Eventually this came to pass. As he left my office one evening, there was a man
waiting to see me and I casually introduced them. They are now married
and harmonize with each other perfectly.