implicitly, and to the letter, with all possible intelligence, you cannot keep it healthy if the mind that owns the body is pulling it and twisting it, and _twanging_ on its delicate machinery with a flood of resentment and resistance; and the spirit behind the mind is eager, wretched, and unhappy, because it does not get its own way, or elated with an inflamed egoism because it is getting its own way.
All plain common sense in the way of health for the body falls dead unless followed up closely with plain common sense for the health of the mind; and then again, although when there is “a healthy mind in a healthy body,” the health appears far more permanent than when a mind full of personal resistance tries to keep its body healthy, even that happy combination cannot be really permanent unless there is found back of it a healthy spirit.
But of the plain common sense of the spirit there is more to be said at another time.
With regard to the mind, let us look and see not only that it is not sensible to allow it to remain full of resistance, but is it not positively stupid?
What an important factor it should be in the education of children to teach them the plain common sense needed to keep the mind healthy–to teach them the uselessness of a mental resistance, and the wholesomeness of a clean mind.
If a child worries about his lessons, he is resisting the possibility of failing in his class; let him learn that the worry _interferes_ with his getting his lesson. Teach him how to drop the worry, and he will find not only that he gets the lesson in less time, but his mind is clearer to remember it.
By following the same laws, children could be taught that a feeling of rush and hurry only impedes their progress. The rushed feeling sometimes comes from a nervous unquiet which is inherited, and should be trained out of the child.
But alas! alas! how can a mother or a father train a child to live common sensibly without useless resistance when neither the mother nor the father can do that same themselves. It is not too late for any mother or father to learn, and if each will have the humility to confess to the child that they are learning and help the child to learn with them, no child would or could take advantage of that and as the children are trained rightly, what a start they can give their own children when they grow up–and what a gain there might be from one generation to another! Will it ever come? Surely we hope so.
CHAPTER XXX
_A Summing Up_
GIVE up resentment, give up unhealthy resistance.
If circumstances, or persons, arouse either resentment or resistance in us, let us ignore the circumstances or persons until we have quieted ourselves. Freedom does not come from merely yielding out of resentment or unhealthy resistance, it comes also from the strong and steady focus on such yielding. _Concentration and relaxation are just as necessary one to another to give stability to the nerves of a man–as the centrifugal and centripetal forces are necessary to give stability to the Earth._
As the habit of healthy concentration and relaxation grows within us, our perception clears so that we see what is right to do, and are given the power to do it. As our freedom from bondage to our fellowmen becomes established, our relation to our fellowmen grows happier, more penetrating and more full of life, and later we come to understand that at root it is ourselves–our own resentment and resistance–to which we have been in bondage,–circumstances or other people have had _really_ nothing to do with it. When we have made that discovery, and are steadily acting upon it, we are free indeed, and with this new liberty there grows a clear sense and conviction of a wise, loving Power which, while leaving us our own free will, is always tenderly guiding us.
No one ever really believed anything without experiencing it. We may think we believe all sorts of beautiful truths, but how can any truth be really ours unless we have proved it by living? We do not fully believe it until it runs in our blood–that is–we must see a truth with our minds, love it with our hearts and live it over and over again in our lives before it is ours.
If the reader will think over this little book–he will see that every chapter has healthy yielding at the root of it. It is a constant repetition of the same principle applied to the commonplace circumstances of life, and if the reader will take this principle into his mind, and work practically to live it in his life, he will find the love for it growing in his heart, and with it a living conviction that when truly applied, it always works.
Some one once described the difference between good breeding and bad breeding as that between a man who works as a matter of course to conquer his limitations–and a, man to whom his limitations are inevitable.
There is spiritual good breeding and natural good breeding. The first comes from the achievement of personal character–the second is born with us–to use or misuse as we prefer.
It is a happy thing to realize that our freedom from bondage to circumstances, and our loving, intelligent freedom from other people, is the true spiritual good breeding which gives vitality to every action of our lives, and brings us into more real and closer touch with our fellow-men. Courtesy is alive when it has genuine love of all human nature at the root of it–it is dead when it is merely a matter of good form.
In so far as I know, the habit of such freedom and good breeding cannot be steadily sustained without an absolute, conscious dependence upon the Lord God Almighty.