Chapter
1
ESCAPE
TO LIFE
It
appears that every individual is afraid of something. Maybe it
is only a fear of having people believe we have a fear. Maybe it is
only a
subjective holdover tendency from our religious forebears who devoutly
believed
that God must be feared. Maybe it is only the fear of what people will
think
about us: what we have, what we do, or how we look.
There
are various sources from which people derive fear, and there
are certain fundamental fears which practically all people have. Let us
consider these fears, try to analyze them and see what is behind them,
where
they come from, and whether or not we shall be able to do anything
about
getting rid of them.
The
fear of death is the Goliath which slays the multitudes. The
reason this is such a great fear is not only because we cannot bear the
thought
of leaving behind the people we love, but because it involves an
uncertainty of
the future. And this fear of death involves all uncertainty and fear of
lack—lack of time, lack of friends, lack of health, and lack of
economic
security that is one of the greatest fears in the world today.
Where
shall we go when we die? This is certainly one of the big
questions in our mind. If today is the logical continuance of
yesterday, then
all the tomorrows that stretch down the vistas of
eternity will be a continuity of experience and remembrance. We shall
keep on
keeping on. We shall continue in our own individual stream of
consciousness,
but forever and ever expan- ding. Not less but ever more, more,
and-still more.
Regardless
of all we believe can be accomplished by man because of
his oneness with God, I do not believe that any man can be happy unless
he
believes in the continuity of his own existence. I have come to believe
that it
is impossible for a man to be contented in this life unless he feels
sure of
the next one. I believe that the greatest single curative power known
to the
mind of man is a spiritual thought in the subjective mind. By
spiritual
thought I mean, here, an absolute inner conviction that one may trust
in the
integrity of the Universe and that sooner or later all things will be
made right.
Without that we have materialism, and a philosophy of materialism
never yet
created a great art, a great religion, a great philosopher, or a great
any- thing.
Man spends the first third
of his life in preparing himself
for
life—physically, mentally, and financially. He is always expecting,
hoping,
progressing, expanding—something big, something satisfying is going to
happen.
Consequently, his mind is open. He is happy. He is expressing. During
the next
third of his life, speaking of the average man, he marries, he has a
family.
His whole thought and emotion is spent here. But quite frequently, in
the last
third of his life he begins to meet with frustrations. When the time
was that
everyone believed in some kind of religion, he trusted to some kind of
a
future. Now this is more likely than not to be shaken. Dr. Jung, one of
the
world's greatest psychologists, said: "As a physician I am convinced
that
it is hygienic—if I may use the word—to discover in death a goal
towards which
one can strive; and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy
and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
I therefore consider the religious reaching of a life hereafter
consonant with
the standpoint of psychic hygiene." And people who do not have it will
miss something, because during that last third of life there will be
little to
which they can look forward. That is why we often see the last third of
a man's
life appear to decline when it should be another great experience
and a
subjective preparation for some- thing even more sublime.
The soul longs, with its deepest intensity, for
self-preservation.
It is the spiritual conviction in that deep cryptic being of ours that
we are
born of eternal day and made in the image of God to traverse a heavenly
way. It
is the strongest emotion we have. Why is this true unless way back
there, in
the beginnings of creation, there was incarnated in us that
deathless
Principle of Life which of Itself knows no defeat? We may analyze
ourselves all
we want to, and get a certain satisfaction out of so doing, but there
can never
come lasting peace and happiness without spiritual conviction, the
reason being
that Spirit is Reality.
If
a man knows that Life never began and will never end, he will
be immediately fortified and inspired to begin the work of bringing out
perfection in his daily life. When a man understands that God is
incarnated in
him; that he is a new creation —an individual impartation of that which
is Divine—he
feels a new birth. When he grasps the fact that the Divine thing in him
which
longs to be, will always be, then will his intellect see it and his
emotion
respond to it and life can no longer frighten him.
There
is another fear which is as great as the fear of death, and
that is the fear of life—the fear of people, the fear which comes from
sensitiveness. In some respects this is the worst fear that can take
hold of
one. There is probably no way of weighing and measuring it as against
other
fears, but there is none greater than the fear of life.
Generally
speaking, the man who is misunderstood, who is
frequently criticized, is likely to be doing something worthwhile.
It is the
person with whom everyone agrees that is lost in the mass of
mediocrity. The
head that lifts itself above the others has the rock thrown at it, so
we need
not be concerned when people criticize us. Of course it is normal to
want
people to like us, and a good thing to say to ourselves when people
criticize
us is: "If people knew me better they would like me." This is
literally true, for if we could know every man in the right way we
would
certainly find something in him to admire.
Often
the reason we are disturbed when people say unkind things is
because we have a sense of our own inadequacy. This can be cured. A bit
of
conceit would cure it, but that is using one ill to erase another—a
counter
irritation, like applying a mustard plaster on your neck which burns so
that
you forget your first pain. Truly speaking, the man with a sense of
inferiority
and the man who is conceited are alike just mentally sick people. No
one is
great and no one is small. This is obviously true for every human being
has
immediate access to Good, by his own acceptance, and every man can have
all of
It that he can embody.
However,
there is nothing objective one can do when suffering
from a hurt without becoming arrogant, which the whole world now
recognizes as
a defense mechanism. Besides, it does no good for in the silence of his
own
soul the person is still suffering, no matter how arrogant he may
appear. That
is why we can feel nothing but pity for the sarcastic man. We know that
we are
looking at a man who is attempting to hide his own hurt.
Naturally
we want to get over this feeling hurt, this fear of what
other people think about us. How comforting it is to know that we do
not have
to heal ourselves of what the other man thinks about us or about
anyone. We
need only to heal ourselves of what we think. It can be done. As we
come
to understand that a man's shortcomings are merely his diseases, like
the
measles and mumps, just some place that his thinking became warped, we
can no
more censure him than we would condemn ourselves for holding a
distorted
viewpoint. And if ever we become so perfect that we do not have any
diseases,
then we shall never see them in anyone else, and in this conscious
unity with
our good, people will be healed by the very atmosphere of our presence.
As
individuals, working out our freedom, we want to get away from
argument, from hurts, from trying to force our opinions on others, from
pretending, and from the feeling that we have to suffer other people's
criticism. This can be come in one, and only one, way: by seeing right
through
all this camouflage to the eternal Spirit back of each one of us, the
One Mind
in which we all "live and move and have our being." All are made
out
of the same Stuff. When we unify, in love, with Life, we talk in a
universal
language with which we can speak to prince or pauper.
Of
course we can understand the fear of physical suffering, not
only because of the discomfort and pain, but because it disturbs all
the normal
relationships of life. We shall be able to overcome it when we are
positive in
our own minds that it is neither intended, Divinely ordained, nor
endowed with
permanence. Then, and not until then, will we believe we can
escape from the
bondage of suffering.
I
do not know any man who has entirely overcome all the ills of
the flesh, but I do know the greatest aid that can come to him is to
rid his mind of all fear. Once fear is aroused
it dominates the conscious operations of mind and body. We have no
fight with
doctors, medicine, surgery, or hospitals. We believe in every- thing
that makes
for the well-being of man, mentally and physically. Many of the
greatest
doctors in the world agree with us today that there is not a sick
person on
earth who would not be far better off if he consciously cooperated
with
spiritual healing, recognizing the fact that all things are Divine;
that each
thing in its place is best; and that God uses every avenue for
expression.
A
hundred years ago it was considered quite the thing for a woman
to be "delicate." The greater her opportunities for leisure, the more
one heard of her ailments. But the world is changing. Many people now
are
ashamed to let anyone know when they are ill. They have at least sensed
the
fact that it is not natural to be sick. And thousands are recognizing,
in varying
degrees, the necessity of making their minds impregnable to the fear of
disease. To many is coming the knowledge and faith that there is a
great Power
everywhere which works toward good rather than bad. And this is our
release:
seeing that there is no power in the Universe against us. As God cannot
behold
evil, it follows He does not know disease. Therefore disease is
not a Divine
Reality, never was, and never can be.
We
must conclude, then, that the Great
Physician within us that already has created us in His own image and
likeness
senses us as perfect. And when our sense of that perfection shall be
complete,
then perfection will be manifest in and through us. This conscious-
ness of the
ever-present availability of Good will go a long way toward eradicating
the
fear of disease.
Another
great fear is the fear of want, in all of its ramifications.
It is one of the most amazing sights that civilization has ever
witnessed that in a land of plenty, filled with
abundance, thousands are unable to sleep because of their fear of not
having
enough to eat, enough to wear, enough with which to pay their rent, and
so on.
We are neither blaming the rich man because he has more than we, nor
are we
blaming ourselves that we have less, but we know that when we shall
have
learned how to live, such a state will not exist again.
Society,
thus far, has been subject to want, according to economic
cycles, and we may never discover in this life how to live correctly.
But when
the collective intelligence of the race shall arrive at a concept of
freedom, the
human race will be free, and not subject to the fear of limitation.
But
is there any way that we, as individuals, may learn how to do
away with want? I think so. We cannot wait for the world to become
happy. Jesus
made it plain that the place to begin is in individual consciousness:
". .
. cast out first the beam out of thine own eye . . . ." If we do this
we
do not need to worry about whether or not the world is progressing. All
the
great stirrings in the world today are the result of a change of
thought in one
individual first, then his community, then his state, and so on.
If
we are thinking clearly we shall know that it is not going to
rob anyone else if we have enough. Jesus said that he came that we
might
"have life. . . more abundantly," and since nature has already
provided enough, it must be that when we know how to take it we shall
have it.
By merging mentally and spiritually into the consciousness that there
is enough
to go around, we shall overcome the fear of want, and we shall overcome
want at
the same time because they are one and the same thing—the thought and
the
image.
We
are subject to and the servant of anything that we obey
emotionally, and unfortunately our possessions often possess us. If we
could
only come to know that there is such a thing as spiritual Substance,
and that that
Substance is limitless and omnipresent and that It takes form in our
experience
according to the mold we give It, then we would only need to open our
consciousness to It and we should be able to demonstrate what we
needed. It
would be folly to think of saving it, for the supply is ever available.
We
would then be no more apt to hoard wealth than we are to save the water
we
failed to drink from a particular glass. We always know we can get more.
The
law of nature is use or lose. The people who are truly
prosperous are generous souls. Even our intellects become sluggish if
unused.
Our muscles become flabby from a lack of use. Talents unused seem to
disappear.
We must bear in mind that there is an inflow and only by permitting an
outflow,
to pass the blessings on, do we widen the channel for the inflow.
This thought
alone should cure us of any thought of hoarding.
Jesus
lived and taught but his having lived will be no salvation
for us unless we go and do likewise. It is only our conscious unity
with Good
that saves. Abundance will come to every individual when he is wed to
it and is
conscious of that union. We shall all get over our fear of want when we
come to
such a consciousness of spiritual Substance that we can know that
everything we
do brings to us that which we need.
Many
people harbor a fear of punishment. Shall we be rewarded for
our virtues and punished for our mistakes? I believe that we shall be.
But by
reward and punishment I do not mean anything other than that sin is a
mistake
and punishment a consequence. There could not be a God who either
rewards or
punishes. To believe so would be a concept of dualism, a house
divided against
itself, a king angry one day and loving the next. Unthinkable! I
believe in
Law, a Law that
governs all things and all people. If we make
mistakes, we suffer. We do this right here, now, and shall no doubt do
so
hereafter. Reward and punishment are the logical outcomes of the uses
we make
of life. But this problem never enters the mind of one who is at peace
with himself
and with life.
The
first step in overcoming any fear is to concede that God is
for us. This done, we have at once overcome the fear by seeing that
there is
nothing to be afraid of. The world is all right and we can meet it on
its own
terms, but let us meet it constructively, as a gloriously becoming
thing,
knowing that the kingdom of God inhabits every soul. No one has ever
tried and
failed in a conscious cooperation with the Universe Itself.
You
are king in the domain of your mind, and the genius of God is
under the command of your choice. If you harbor fears, you do it with
your eyes
open. It's up to you!
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