The Victorious Attitude Part 18

Only recently I was talking with a business man who broke down at forty from over strain but who is now, in his eightieth year, more buoyant and elastic in mind and body than many men at fifty. This man does not believe in growing old because he knows that ten years ago he did not have a bit of the cell material in his body that he has to-day. "Why should I stamp these new body cells with four score years," he says, "when not a single one of them may be a quarter of that age?"

Many of us do not realize the biological fact that Nature herself bestows upon us the power of perpetual renewal. There is not a cell in our bodies that can possibly become very old, because all of them are frequently renewed. Physiologists tell us that the tissue cells of some muscles are renewed every few months. Some authorities estimate that eighty or ninety per cent. of all the cells in the body of a person of ordinary activity are entirely renewed within a couple of years.

One's mental att.i.tude, however, is the most important of all. There is no possible way of keeping young while convinced that one must inevitably manifest the characteristics of old age. The old age thoughts stamp themselves upon the new body cells, so that they very soon look forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years old. We should hold tenaciously the conviction that none of the cells of the body can be old because they are constantly being renewed, a large part of them every few months. It is impossible for the processes producing senility to get control of the system, or to make very serious changes in the body, unless the mind first gives its consent. Age is not so much a matter of years as of the limpidity, the suppleness of the protoplasm of the cells of the body, and there is nothing which will age the protoplasm like aging thoughts and serenity enemies, such as worry, anxiety, fear, anger, hatred, revenge, or any discordant emotion. If you keep your protoplasm young by holding youthful ideals, there is no reason why you should not live well into the teens of your second century.

Constantly affirm, "I am young because I am perpetually being renewed; my life comes new every instant from the Infinite Source of life. I am new every morning and fresh every evening, because I live, move, and have my being in Him who is the source of all life." Not only affirm this mentally, but also audibly. Make this picture of perpetual rejuvenation and re-creation so vivid that you will feel the thrill of youthful renewal through your entire system.

Some people try to cure the physical ravages made by wrong living and wrong thinking by patching their bodies from the outside. The "beauty parlors" in our great cities are besieged by women who are desperately trying to maintain their youthful appearance, not realizing that the elixir of youth is in one's own mind, not in bottles or boxes. Is there anything quite so ghastly as to see an old lady (really old because her heart is no longer young), with a painted or enameled face, dressed like a young girl? Such a woman deceives no one but herself. Other people can see the old, dry skin beneath the rouge. They can see the wrinkles which she tries to disguise. She cannot cover up her age with such frivolous pretenses. The painting of cheeks and wearing of girlish frocks do not make a person young. It is largely a question of the age of the mind. If the mind has become hardened, dry, uninteresting, if there is no charm in the personality one is old, no matter what his or her years count.

Idle, selfish women of wealth who live an animal life, who are constantly doing things which hasten the appearance of old age, overeating, over-drinking, over-sleeping, idling life away, having nothing to do but gratify every luxurious whim, are the best customers of beauty doctors, who try to erase the earmarks of old age by "treating" the skin and the hair. Doctoring the effects instead of trying to remove the cause of old age never has been, and never can be, really successful. You cannot repair the ravages of age on the outside.

You must remove the cause, which is in the mind, in the heart. When the affections are marbleized, when one ceases to be sympathetic and helpful and interested in life, the ravages of old age will appear in spite of all the beauty doctors in the world.

I know indolent wives of rich men, who cannot understand why they age so rapidly in appearance when living such easy, care-free, worry-free lives. They are puzzled to know why it is when they do not have to work, when they have no cares, when their wants are all supplied without any effort of theirs, they do not retain their youthful appearance many years longer than they do. The fact is those women stagnate, and nothing ages one faster than mental and physical stagnation. Work, useful employment of some sort, is the price of all real growth, of all real human expansion. He, or she, who indulges in continuous idleness pays the price in constant deterioration, physical, mental and moral. A s.h.i.+p lying idle in the wharf will rot and go to destruction much more rapidly than a s.h.i.+p at sea in constant use. Every force in nature seems to combine in corroding, destroying the unused thing, the idle person.

Work, love, kindness, sympathy, helpfulness, unselfish interest--these are the eternal youth essences. These never age, and if you make friends with them they will act like a leaven in your life, enriching your nature, sweetening and enn.o.bling your character, and prolonging your youth even to the century mark.

We are learning that the fabled fountain of youth lies in ourselves; is in our own mentality. Perpetual rejuvenation and renewal are possible through right thinking. We look as old as we think and feel, because thought and feeling maintain or change our appearance in exact accordance with their persistence or their variations. It is impossible to appear youthful and remain young unless we feel young. Youthful thinking should be a life habit.

CHAPTER XVI

OUR ONENESS WITH INFINITE LIFE

He lives best and most who gives G.o.d his greatest opportunity in him. If we only knew how to live and move and have our being in Him, to be conscious of this every instant, we should then know what true living means. We should be satisfied, for we should then awake in His likeness.

"Deep within every heart that has not dulled the sense of its inner vision is the belief that we are one with some great unknown, unseen power; and that we are somehow inseparably connected with the Infinite Consciousness."

It is a mental law that thoughts and convictions can only attract their kind. A hatred thought is a hatred magnet and the longer we harbor it, the more steadily we contemplate it, focus our minds upon it, the larger and more powerful the hatred magnet becomes.

In the early days of the great European war a Jewish soldier, in the first line of a Russian battalion, engaged in a man to man fight with an Austrian in the opposing battalion. In their desperate encounter the Russian Jew drove his bayonet through the breast of his opponent. As the latter, an Austrian Jew, fell mortally wounded, with his dying breath he gasped the Hebrew prayer, which begins, "Hear, O Israel." The Russian, realizing that he had killed a brother Jew, overcome with horror, fell fainting on the battlefield. When he regained consciousness he was a raving lunatic.

When will men realize that we are all brothers; that we are all members of the same great human family, children of the same great Father-Mother-G.o.d. When will we see that though oceans and continents divide us, though we may speak different tongues, may differ in race, color and creed, yet we are so closely related in thought and motive that our deepest, most vital interests are identical.

Time and again despite all outward differences has that invisible bond of union which binds mankind into one great family manifested itself even on the battlefield. There men who have sabered or shot at and wounded each other have become fast friends and learned to feel their brotherhood. Many and many a time has it happened that soldiers who had been bitter enemies in battle and had tried in every way to kill each other, have found while convalescing side by side that they were really one in sympathy and feeling, brothers at heart and did not know it. If these men had known and seen into one another's soul before the battle as they had afterwards in the hospital they never could have been induced to fire at or to try to injure one another.

In spite of our failures, our blunders, our crimes, the nations are coming closer and closer together. Scientific discoveries, marvelous inventions, the extended use of steam and electricity, the conquest of the air, all these are fast welding the interests of mankind and bringing into close and intimate relation the most distant countries of the globe. The Occident and the Orient are no longer at the ends of the earth. They are beginning to know and to respect each other, and to learn each from the other. They are beginning to realize in its largest sense the truth of Kipling's utterance:

"But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth."

Scientists are piling up proof after proof of the unity, not only of mankind, but of everything in the universe, of the oneness of all life.

They are demonstrating that there is but one substance, one eternal force or essence in the universe, and that all we see is but a varying expression of it. Everything about us is merely a modification, a change of form of this universal substance, just as electricity is a manifestation of force in various forms--in its unchained power in rending giant trees and destroying huge buildings, and as harnessed by man in moving trains, in lighting our homes, in furnis.h.i.+ng heat for cooking and in many other domestic and industrial devices.

The lesson of lessons for us to learn from this is our inseparable union with the Creator of life, that everlasting, eternal unity of spirit, that oneness with the Father which Christ came to teach.

"I and the Father are one." "I am the vine, ye are the branches." We are as closely united one to the other, and all to the Father as are the branches to the parent stem. When we are conscious of our union, of our co-partners.h.i.+p with the Infinite, we feel an added power, just as the branch feels the force of the life currents flowing into it from the vine. Severed from the parent stem the same branch would not feel so confident. It would soon find that of itself it could do nothing; and in a short time it would wither and die.

The moment we pluck a flower from its stem it begins to wilt and fade because it is separated from the source of its life. Cut off from the great chemical laboratory of Nature, from the creative, miracle-working energy of the sun, the soil, and the atmosphere, it dies within a few hours.

The moment we are cut off from our Divine Source we begin to wither, shrivel and die. As long as we remain separate nothing can stop this fatal blighting process. When we are not fed from our Source we are like the branch severed from the parent vine, like the flower plucked from its mother stem.

My experience has shown that people who, from different causes, feel cut off from connection with the Divine Source of things suffer intensely from fear. They are filled with a vague, but overmastering terror which presses upon them with greater force because it is unseen, unknown. They dimly feel that like meteors in the sky which have pa.s.sed beyond the controlling gravity governing the other heavenly bodies, they are separate, unrelated human atoms without a.s.surance that they are under a protective, guiding, sustaining power.

Victims of extreme nervous diseases are often overwhelmed with a sense of utter isolation, of being cut off from every sustaining force, and they are terror stricken, just as a child who has lost its way, and knows not where to turn. Temporarily, and in a lesser degree, people who are terrified in a thunder storm and rush to a cellar, anywhere to hide themselves from threatened danger, suffer from this feeling of separation, of aloneness.

All who are affected in this way would be greatly benefited by dwelling on such Biblical pa.s.sages as, "In Him we live and move and have our being," "The Father in me and I in the Father." These are strictly scientific truths. We could not live or move or have any being apart from the Power that made us, that sustains and supports us, and the consciousness of this gives a steadying, b.u.t.tressing sense of security and safety that nothing else can.

Our individual strength comes from our conscious oneness with Omnipotence, just as our national or corporate strength is derived from union with one another. Each human being is like a drop of water in the ocean. He is not independent. He cannot work alone. Consciously or unconsciously he is a part of the ma.s.ses all around him. He is touched by other water drops on every side, and his existence, his success is largely dependent upon his union with the others. Even if a drop of the ocean could separate itself from the ma.s.s and should try to live its own life in its own way it would soon cease to exist as a drop. A man cannot accomplish much alone. His success depends on his union with other men.

His dignity and strength are reenforced by the organization or a.s.sociation of which he is a unit, as a cable is reenforced by the sum of the strength of its separate wires.

"Nature," says Humboldt, "is Unity in diversity of manifestation, one stupendous whole, animated by the breath of life." When we come into conscious realization of the truth that we are a part, the most important part, of the stupendous whole created by G.o.d, and that we are working in cooperation with Him, we will come into possession of a power and dignity which will make our lives sublime.

The greatest minds of all ages have drawn their strength from the invisible Source, from their vital connection with the Power which creates, and works through every one of us. They have also believed in the great mission of the race; believed in a divine plan running through the universe which works for righteousness, and shapes the destiny of the race. This faith in the G.o.dward movement of the great human current has characterized even those who did not openly profess any religious faith. Their belief in the divinity of humanity has been a strong factor in their character, and the root source of their power.

This same faith, this unquestioned confidence in the divine cosmic Intelligence, has given more comfort, has brought more peace of mind, and happiness to vast mult.i.tudes of human beings than any other thing.

Indeed it is the only thing that can bring us true peace, enduring happiness.

There is something beside brain force needed to make a man a real constructive power in the world, and that is his divine connection, his being in the current which runs G.o.dward.

Without this essential, notwithstanding all that the mind and the body can do for us, we feel a void in our being, a great lack, a longing, a yearning for something, we know not what. Without this, even though we have the most complete physical and mental equipment, we are like a new electric car, ready for service, thoroughly equipped in every detail, except the trolley pole, which makes the connection with the electric current. Completion, satisfaction, divine energy can only come from attuning ourselves to something beyond the physical and the mental plane. We must put up our trolley pole and tap the infinite Source of Power or else we are, so far as true progress is concerned, in the position of the car that is not connected with the motor force that alone gives it power to move forward. We must tap the divine current running G.o.dward through contemplation, through prayer, through n.o.ble deeds, unselfish service, honest endeavor to live up to our best. We can not make connection with Divine Power through any selfish cause, any greedy deed.

It is a strange thing that human beings will take the chances of cutting themselves off from this mighty current which runs truthward, justiceward, and G.o.dward, and try to make a subst.i.tute of their own puny strength.

Yet every time we consciously do wrong, every time we depart from the truth, every time we commit a dishonest, unworthy act, do a mean, contemptible thing, we separate ourselves from this current and lessen the omnipotent grip upon us. We break our connection and become a prey to all sorts of fears and doubts.

Some one has truly said that "when a man has committed an evil act he has attached himself to sorrow." Because of the unity of all life, he has established relations.h.i.+p between himself and the whole human current of vicious influences; he has made connection with all the forces in the universe that conspire to drag him down, to draw him still further away from the Creator and Inspirer of all good.

The converse is equally true. Let a man do a good deed, commit himself to a n.o.ble work, and all the creative, uplifting forces will rush to his aid. He will be reenforced by the added power of all others working in the same spirit, on the same plane.

All good things vibrate in unison; they belong to the same family. So all bad things vibrate in unison, and belong to one family. Attract one of them and you attract all the others because they are on the same plane.

A discouraged, despondent mood, for example, makes connection with the whole discouraged and despondent family, the whole failure army, and when we make this connection our entire being is adjusted to the gloomy, discouraged vibration. If we harbor the poverty thought, the fear of coming to want we unite ourselves with all the poverty vibrations in the universe, and whatever has an affinity with poverty rushes toward us through the current we have established.

On the self same principle, let one think cheerful, optimistic thoughts, let him make connections with the current of opulence, of the generous, overflowing abundance supply of the Creator and he allies himself with all the helpful, productive, creative forces in existence.

At one time it was thought that we could get no knowledge or impressions excepting through the five senses, but we know now that there are many other avenues by which we communicate with one another.

There is a mental, a spiritual communication which is more intimate, more real than any we can make by physical contact or expression. We can sit beside those who are in sympathy with us for hours without touching them, without a word being spoken, without a look, and yet enjoy the sweetest and most delightful converse. We are conscious that our minds are intercommunicating in a deeper, more subtle, satisfying manner than is possible by means of physical contact or through the senses.

In fact, there are many occasions in life so sacred that we feel mere words would profane, distress, disturb rather than help or comfort. We are aware that they are too coa.r.s.e to convey the finest sentiments, that they are too bungling, too awkward to carry the expressions of sympathy, of love back and forth from soul to soul that are in tune with each other.

The message of love teaches that the "love of life is a single heart beating through G.o.d, and you and me." "One life runs through all creation's veins."

The mind sees beauties which the physical eye never beholds. The mental ear hears harmonies, melodies which the auditory nerve is too gross to perceive. The soul through its closer union with G.o.d receives perceptions which even the mind cannot comprehend.

By means of this divine connection through the Great Within of ourselves we can acc.u.mulate power that will revolutionize our lives. Right here in our own being we can loose streams of energy infinitely more potent than any physical power.

We know that the great cosmic ether everywhere about us is filled with divine vibrations, charged with spiritual force, and omniscient intelligence which are always waiting to flood our minds when we make the right connections and are ready to receive them.