CHAPTER 1. SUPREME CONTROL OF CONDITIONS
Conditions are thought made. Change your thought and you will change your condition. To agonize and struggle in a bad condition is like struggling in quicksand, you get in deeper. Tell your bad conditions to another and you multiply them. If the heavens are falling and the earth is slipping under your feet, grab a big Turkish towel, walk briskly into the supreme sanctuary of the body,—the bath-room, take a thorough salt-water bath, with a few drops of perfume in it to awaken your self-respect. Then in a quiet, darkened room take a good sleep of ten to fifteen hours. Then rise and eat slowly, quietly and happily some nourishing food. God, Himself, could do nothing with Elijah, until He had given him a long sleep and a good meal. Then Elijah went forth and crowned a King, appointed a Prophet, established a Kingdom, and rode Home in chariots of fire. Once you make a start, the world is at your command. Let go of the past. Stop the foolish thinking that conditions hold you, it is you holding onto conditions. Quit your self-pity, blaming others, and saying you are the victim of circumstances. Stop whining, and begin singing, then will your feet be loosed from the stocks and the iron gates open outward before you. Look away from yourself.
IS YOUR WILL ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL? Awake it. See if you are sailing, or drifting. Set the compass of your Mind to new thoughts, fresh purposes, selfless desires, fill your sails with boundless hope, and let your daily voyage spell SERVICE in a big way. You are not a chip on the River of Life, you are a Supreme Master in a Universe of Facts. You think you are stuck in the harbor mud, but it is only that the tide is out. Command your Will to put up the sails, God will send you wind and tide to bear you out of the stale, sordid mental and bodily conditions you are living in, give you wider horizon, and a limitless ocean of experience. If anybody does not wish to sail with you, leave them on the shore. Let go of your past, break away from conditions that hold you in slavery. Seek new scenery, form new surroundings, begin a new Supreme Life.
KEEP YOUR BODY SUPREME: Go back to Nature; be a fine animal. Get into the sunshine, the silent woods, the open fields. Magnetize your body by walking thru the dew barefooted, by sleeping on the grass, or half buried in the sand. Tuberculosis, rheumatism, insomnia are unknown to wild animals. Our bodies are sick and weak because we have denatured ourselves. Make friends of the wild animals, they will teach you how to keep well. They have not a single case of nervous prostration in all their vast forest home. Learn to relax. Drop your tension and you check confusion. Stop a few minutes sometime in the day and quiet your nerves, rest your muscles, calm your senses, sooth your thoughts, somewhere in the sunshine, or under the shade of an old apple-tree. Eat simply, slowly, nuts, dates, cereals, fruits. Drink abundantly of water between meals. Dress less somber, study your personal appearance, give it harmony. Keep your body well groomed. A bath and hair cut will change the out-look of life. Quit habits that weaken the body. Never talk about your bodily weakness, illness, or condition, nor listen to those of others. Criticise your body and it will fail you. Praise your body and it will serve you. Take air-baths, cold water plunges, or cold water sponges, every morning. Fix your mind upon having a sound and energized body and you will attract it. Exercise, walk, run, play, work, and learn to rest. Change your habits of living. Cut out the grouch. Stop nagging. You're sour because your pores are stopped up; get a buck-saw and take a sweat. You're morbidly blue because your solar plexus has gone to sleep; give it half an hour of internal vibration. Don't knock the weather, like it, get into it, let it put iron into your blood. Plunge into a storm, it will act as tonic on your spirit. A dip in the ocean will add magnetism to your body. Your body is a mighty fine engine of marvelous energy. Over-fed, under-fed, over-burdened, neglected, abused, weakened, shamefully talked about, yet year after year it goes on generating the divinest thing in the universe—Life. It transmutes profane elements into divine energy, washes a river of blood free of tons of poison, supports a brain that builds and rules limitless empires, sustains a vision that dissolves darkness into light, the unknown into the known, upholds the image of, and is "the Temple of the Living God." Your body is Supreme. Keep it divine. Strip your body bare and lie in the sunshine. Let it soak deeply into the tissue, it will magnetize your body, and renew it with youth. Take these sun-baths every sunny day possible by lying on a couch before a large window, or even better, out in the open air. If you want a magnetic body that is supple, elastic and youthful give it sun-baths and air-baths daily.
KEEP YOUR MIND SUPREME: Your mind is limitless. You were born to lead, not to be always led. Think for yourself. Do your own planning. Make new plans. Train your mind to think alone. Misery is rust on a mind that has stopped working. Train your mind to delight people. Don't follow the crowd, but step softly among human hearts. Train your mind to think big. Expand your mind until it encircles the universe. Stop fussing over little things, over useless people, and fill your mind with new ideals and fresh purpose. Stop wailing over flowers that will never blossom on the north side of your house; go around to the south side and make a new garden. You have a temperament that is likely to be misunderstood; that's fine. So did Sarvonarola, Columbus, Galileo, Luther, Whitfield, Emerson, Lincoln and Christ. "Seven cities fought for Homer, dead, thru whose streets the living Homer begged his bread." The reputation of Christ was just the opposite of His character. These, stood thinking their brave thoughts on the horizon where Truth asks you to stand. You are better than you think; or as good. You are the sum total of your thinking. Build thought palaces, not mud huts. Create, originate, produce new ideas. Beware of dead monotony, it kills the brain. Unfetter your thoughts from notions, prejudices and limitations. Think well of yourself, think well of what you have, think well of what you do, think invincibly, think persistently, think with unflinching resolve. Concentration is getting at a thing, thinking it, planning it, preparing for it, working on it, DOING IT. Your conditions, mental, physical, financial, are thought made; fill your mind with different thoughts and you will have different conditions. Thought gathers around you the things you want, when you stop thinking of them they pass away. Thoughts are seeds, they produce after their kind. A little thought will shake off useless conditions and confused environment. Think some fun into your daily events. Don't be over-serious; it breeds disease germs, just as anger and hate thoughts induce cancer, tumor and liver troubles. Start a hurricane of jollity. Break loose in a thunderstorm of mirth, it will clear the atmosphere under a roof, just as a thunderstorm clears the air over the roof. On the other hand "there is a season to weep." Never smother your emotion, to choke it back stifles the heart. Lift the flood-gates and let your tears water the garden of your heart. "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind." That is the life. Be renewed every morning, for each day is a new life, a fresh world, the beginning of eternity. Think your thought created enemies into thought created friends. Think your thought created suspicions, into thought created confidences. Thought has drawn you into your conditions, it will pull you out. Your Soul, your Mind, your Body cannot become ugly, useless, imprisoned so long as you think supreme harmony, dominion, and love. Thought makes your body a hovel, your mind a madhouse, or thought makes your body a temple and your mind a shrine where angels commune with you. Environment, conditions, circumstances are not your masters, they are materials out of which thought makes the beautiful mosaics of character. Light the candle of a new thought and diligently sweep every corner of your mind, and you shall find the rare treasure—happiness. Put fun into your thinking. Do not take yourself so serious, put the red blood of mirth into your daily thinking.
KEEP YOUR WILL SUPREME: Your will is divine energy, therefore it is a Supreme Power. Christ said: "Be it unto thee even as thou WILLED." It is inertia that suffers. Fate, Fear and Doubt are children of the imagination. The power of the will dissolves them into mist. Will power into your Being. Will power into your work. Will power into your ambitions. Will power into your expressions. Will power into your words. And you shall be "a fellow workman with God, a master builder that needeth not to be ashamed." Your Will gives infinite clearness, infinite strength, infinite ideals, infinite aspirations, for infinite realities. Your Will tells you that if there is anything to-day that seems to you too good to be true, believe it, endeavor toward it, reach forth to receive it, and tomorrow it will be true. Will is the engine in the depths of the ship that drives it thru the buffeting waves and storm to the distant harbor. Will puts your back-bone where your wish-bone is now. Will puts iron into your blood, tightens up your vertebrate and makes you "a self-starter." You may have lost your battle, your Will stands ready for another better campaign. You miss an opportunity, your Will stands ready to open the door to a hundred new ones. Delay is the mother of most failures. One thing worse than "a quitter," is the person afraid to begin. Your Will gives purpose and makes you stick to it. Get grit for a new siege. Will makes desire. Will makes brains. Will gives decision. To decide means "to cut"; cut deep into the world of possibilities, cut out of your prison of difficulties, cut thru your jungle of opposition to liberty, to health, to success, to supreme power. THINK, PLAN, DO IT. Will heals disease. Will drives poisons out of the system. Will makes the body immune. Will illumines the brain with brilliant perception. Will sweeps misfortunes aside and rebuilds a nobler success. Julius Caesar trained his supreme will until it became the dominion of the Roman Empire. The goddess Diana said of Hercules: "When I saw him, whether he sat or stood, I knew he was a god, so majestic is his will." Like the magnetic mountain in the "Arabian Nights," your Will can draw the nails from your enemies' ships, so they shall fall to pieces before they reach your shores. Will is a dynamic, cosmic energy from whence eternal things proceed, and immortal organisms are constructed. Will is the glory of the Divine universe, and you are a part of that Will. In your Will sleep the oracles of prophecy. You were made master over this world. In your Will is enthroned Sovereignty, Dominion, Kingship. With force of Will, Pygmalion carved his soul dream into the marble until its loveliness of form and grace became so real as to take on life and motion. With force of Will Dante created his Hell, and with force of Will Milton created his Paradise Regained. Put your Will into command. Start new. Realize that you are Supreme. Get a mind picture of what you want, what you want to be, what you want to do, THEN ACTUALIZE IT. Get above doubts. Do not wait to be well, to be happy, to be rich, all of these will be added unto you. Climb out of your prison of doubts, worries, fears. Begin where you are. Let your Will create, even as God creates. "He that believeth shall not perish, shall not abide in darkness, shall have the light of life, shall have everlasting life; all things are possible to him that believeth." Come down out of the gallery of supine hero worshippers, get into the arena and be the hero. Quit the drivel of matinee idol longing, and get onto the stage of life and get the bouquets for yourself. The world is waiting to ring up the curtain for your star part in life.
YOU CAN WORK MIRACLES : A miracle is a wonder, a marvel, a supernatural occurrence, a result obtained by suspension of natural processes. You can do that any day. The miracle is that so few do it.
You know Ibsen's play, "The Doll House." How the wife forged a note, raised the money to send her husband to regain his health. How he did regain it, returned to great prominence and wealth as a banker. Then the blackmailer threatened to reveal the crime. How the husband rushed to his wife in anger that she should have done such a thing, that it meant ruin to him in his high position. How the wife replied: "Why, I expected the miracle. That you would save me as I saved you. That you would say that you did it." If he only had, what a marvelous, what a wonderful, what a supernatural thing it would have been. Christ made whole and useful a withered hand. People say, "O, that I could do so wonderful a thing." Well, why don't you. See the withered hands around you. A young woman with a beautiful voice, but no means to cultivate it. You have a thousand or so in the bank? You can save that voice to a world that needs song. A young man with a fine mind, helpless to go thru college, you have means to give that mind to a world in power and usefulness. The natural thing is for you not to do it, the supernatural, the miracle, is that you are divine enough to do it. A man, a woman, is forsaken, friendless, cruelly judged by the world, their goodness blasted, their spirit crushed, their hearts bleeding, their lives made useless, withered. The natural thing is to avoid such, stand aloof, be quite scornfully indifferent. The miracle would happen if you went to them, lifted them up, restored them to society. I have said avoid useless people, I mean selfish, lazy, purposeless, aimless people. Sir Humphrey Davy worked a miracle when he took the boy Farrady out of a stable loft and gave him a chance to cultivate his genius. The Sistine Chapel is Angelo's miracle. When the band on the deck of the Titanic, under the pale light of the morning stars played "Nearer My God To Thee," to give hope and strength to men and women struggling to be saved, each player, as the voice of his melody was forever hushed behind the shining emerald gates, in the crystal tomb of the sea, went down crowned with the glory of a selfless miracle. The natural thing would have been for them to have frantically fought to save themselves. What superb opportunities to work miracles have passed you! What magnificent possibilities are still right before you! The cripple is always at your Gate Beautiful. Are you divine enough, wonderful enough, marvelous enough, supernatural enough to say: "Such as I HAVE, GIVE I unto thee"? Do it quickly. Do it, and you shall know daily the joy of hearing the Father say: "This is My Son in whom I am well pleased." If there is any one person on this earth to whom I take off my hat and wait until they safely pass, it is a school teacher. The most obscure teacher, back in the country hills, unknown, unthought of, unpraised, but with loving patience unfolding the secrets of knowledge to little frowzy headed boys and girls, can look into her mirror at evening and behold the face of an angel.
Flowers cast their wealth upon the vacant air, and rich fathers oft cast their wealth upon the vacant heir.
Some people are so sensitive that if you call them "Honey," they will break out with the "hives" the next morning. Do not divorce your husband because he has cold feet, perhaps he got them since you were married.
Christ stopped every funeral that came his way and sent the mourners home singing. Funeral sermons were too sad for Him to preach. Every sick room He entered became a health resort. He made grave-yards unpopular.
Many a lonely bachelor looking back over the stretch of years, recalls the charming moonlight nights, when the cool summer air was perfumed with old fashioned flowers, and he looked into the loving eyes of his sweetheart; recalls how the crimson glow of youth flushed her velvet cheeks as he took her warm hand in his; recalls sadly that if he had only given that hand "a square deal," played it in the game of life, he would have had "a full house" now. Would you like to become young? Then tap new reservoirs of youthful thoughts, irrigate your alkali desert from the fountains of youth, become youthfully active in some new field of work. Vanderbilt added $100,000,000 to his fortune after he was eighty. Wordsworth earned the Laureateship at seventy-three. Theirs established the French Republic and became its first president at seventy-two. Verdi wrote "Falstaff" at eighty. Sir Walter Scott was $600,000 in debt when he was fifty-five, but thru his own efforts he paid all and made himself a lasting name.
Book knowledge is not all. A wealthy, fond father, fearing his son would be contaminated by college life, had him educated at home. When he was twenty-one, he took him to ride thru the streets of the city. They passed a female seminary just as the doors opened and a crowd of young women came out. The dear boy grabbed his father's arm and cried, "What are those?" His father replied, "They are only goslins." Later in the day, the fond father said: "My son, you have obeyed me, have faithfully completed your education, now I am ready to spend $50,000 to give you the highest ambition of your life." The boy looked up in glad wonder and said: "O, dad, give me a goslin."
