D9. About Economizing Our Forces.

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As now we live our forces are constantly leaking from us in many ways of which we may not be aware. There is a Higher Economy than that pertaining to money. This Economy when known will cause us to stop these leaks and so save our forces. The result of this will be constant increase of mental and physical strength, which has not only a money value but a value above money, for it will for one result bring a prolongation of life which people dare not now hope for.

 

In this Divine Economy of our forces, which no one of our race has ever realized, every act, be it of mind alone or of mind acting on the body, will be a source of recreation and increase of strength. Our walking, our physical work about the house or field, our mental exercise or art will give us pleasure and leave with us its gain of strength. It will enable us to make pleasing effort of mind or body for much longer periods than we are able now to do, since we shall gain force in any effort faster than we put force out.

 

One great source of our present waste of force lies in the mood of impatience or mental intemperance. Every movement of the slightest muscle expends force and thought. It is expended in the crook of a finger, the wink of an eyelash, the least movement of any limb. All this is God’s force as well as our own, since we are a part of The Infinite. It is the Law of the Infinite that this force must be used to bring us the greatest and happiest results.

 

If not used as the Infinite intends it shall be, it begets pain and unrest of some kind. Pain of any sort is the message from the Infinite Mind, telling us that our forces have gone astray.

 

Suppose you had an automaton, moved by a certain power made or purchased at considerable cost, which could for you open and shut drawers, lift the sheet of paper on which you have been writing, dip your pen in ink, button your garments or your gloves and do for you many small physical acts, which every person must do for him or herself, no matter how many servants they have at command.

 

If the fuel or whatever the motive power for running this machine cost a dollar per pound or quart, as the case might be, would you not be careful in its use? Would you not think for a moment before turning it on whether the act to be done would justify the power to be expended?

 

Would we in the use of our automaton domestic let on the force moving it in a spasmodic, jerky manner, and in quantity altogether disproportionate to the service required, so as to rack and strain its machinery? Even as we may do in the use of our bodies when we tear a sheet of paper or open a window or snatch a garment from its hook, or rush for some small article across the room, expending in these acts a far greater amount of strength than is necessary.

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When this mood is carried into the hundreds of so‑called trivial things, we are obliged to do daily, there is a constant putting out of force and none received in return. These incessant depletions bring weakness, disease and death of the body.

 

Count, if you can, the different movements of body, limbs and muscles you may perform on the first hour after rising in the morning. Think of the varied movements of muscle required in putting on your clothes, and in moving about your room, and remember that in every one of these movements an outlay of your force is required. Apart from these movements, every thought which comes into your mind requires force for its thinking.

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The automaton represents our body. The force or thought we call to us in lifting a feather comes of the Infinite Force and Mind. Money cannot buy it. It is beyond all standard of mercantile values. Its sacredness and value is never lessened by the nature of the act we do. It is as sacred in pushing the needle through the garment we are mending, or in wielding the pen with which we write the smallest note, as in anything else.

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In the Higher and Coming Economy this force as to outlay will be so regulated as to draw more, just as when you put out a dollar in business you expect that dollar to gain more. That result comes of a reposeful mood carried into every act. It can come to us only through demand of the Infinite Mind.

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There is far more of our force expended through impatience in the doing of what are called small things than great ones. We may stoop to pick up the scissors which have fallen on the floor and in that flurried impatient act send force enough from us to lift fifty pounds. But when we have a heavy weight to lift we take more time to concentrate our force upon it. We increase gradually our lifting power against the resistance of the weight.

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When we snatch for the scissors or the paper fallen on the floor, which oppose little resistance, there is far more force sent out than is necessary for that particular act. We lose then that amount of force. When a person is constantly in the mood and habit of doing things in this way they are as constantly draining themselves of their force. The result of such drainage is exhaustion, and exhaustion means some form of disease.

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When the real value of our force is realized, we find that all acts in every‑day life are of equal importance. The power we expend in buttoning a garment costs as much as that used in delivering a sermon. When we slur over one act we are calling to us the mood or thought current for slurring over all acts, however important we may regard them. When we button our coat in feverish haste, expending thereby a great deal more force than is necessary, we are liable to carry that mood into what we may consider the most important business of the day.

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These constant leakages of force make the mood or frame of mind, rendering it the more difficult to concentrate our thought on the business of this minute. The business of this minute may be the drawing up of a contract which involves many thousands of dollars. We want no flaws in it. The mood of haste and waste of force tends to put flaws in everything we do. It brings wandering wits, absence of mind and lack of tact and address. It is the mood far from success.

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It is this mood of mind becoming habitual which makes us mislay, lose and forget. We put the thing down we have been using we know not where, and hunt in vain all about the room for it. We find, on getting in the street, we have forgotten umbrella or purse or latch key, and must expend more strength to return for it. We hurry when there is no need to hurry, for this mood opens our minds to a hurried, flustered, semi‑insane current of thought, acting on thousands, and increased in volume and power by these thousands, each individual in that thought current serving as an electric thought battery to send such mood to the rest in his particular thought circuit.

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People in this mood go out to shop and buy recklessly, buy what they do not need buy and what does not suit them on returning home.

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When we lift an arm, brush our hair, or write a single word, we draw the strength for so doing from the Infinite Source of strength. That strength is not generated within the body. When we do these acts in the mood of desiring that of the force so drawn, a little shall be left over, we are constantly laying up as in a bank a balance in our favor of strength. We cannot make this mental condition ourselves. We must demand of the Supreme to make it for us.

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Then we shall get profitable exercise in the doing of every small act. The picking of the scissors or paper from the floor will confer more and more a physical pleasure in the motion of muscle, and a pleasure also in the knowledge that the act has laid up for us its little quota of power. Then in every movement of muscle we shall be storing up strength for other effort, and for one result walk our five miles out of doors with an elastic spring, pleasure and profit. Then our gymnasium may be partly in our room, and our gymnastic exercise commence with the first physical movement we make on arising in the morning and end with the last one made before retiring.

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Such gain of force brings also clearness of mind, keenness and clearer judgment, for strength extends into every department of mind or body and has many applications other than in muscle.

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The slow measured reverential movements characterizing all religious rites of nearly every creed and race, have for their spiritual purpose, the cultivation of repose and economization of the Infinite Force coming through man, that it should work the best results for him.

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It is the half frantic dusting of corners, the spasmodic sweeping, the impatient snatching or pushing aside of unexpected obstacles in the room, the hurrying and skurrying up stairs and down cellar, that aids to exhaust the forces of so many women. It is not that the acts or work exhausts. It is the mental condition they are continually in that makes so many old and haggard at forty. It brings a mental condition which makes some take ten times as many steps as are necessary in washing their dishes. Because waste of these forces begets lack of judgment, lack of foresight and lack of economy in every day‑life. Our wits are not so clear when we are more or less exhausted. After a weary scramble to the mountain top there is little if any strength left to enjoy the landscape, be it ever so beautiful. Many people exhaust all their forces in flurry of mind and body, and so have none left to put into calculation or foresight. Such mood of mind keeps thousands poor in purse. When the force by which we use our bodies is brought under control, and repose succeeds flurry, the mind works quicker and clearer to economize in the most practical matters. One is in no condition to do business rightly while chasing a horse car.

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The semi‑frantic mood may prevail as much at the office desk or in the store as in the kitchen. Over many a prosperous merchant’s grave there could be properly written “killed not by his business but by waste of force in his business.” The skurry in which business letters are sometimes written with their half formed letters advertises for him who writes them a mood ever drawing away force.

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But one says: “Why I could not get through with half my daily business if I should set about doing things in the way you suggest.”

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Perhaps not. But in the mood you or I may be doing things the leak of our force goes on all the same, and that will certainly bring weakness and decay.

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Place the sentence, “I ask of the Supreme Power for the reposeful mood,” or “I ask that I get recreation in all doing,” where you may see it on arising in the morning.

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A whole day’s effort may be influenced for the better by the thought first brought us at the day’s commencement. Many a woman gets into the thought current of irritability for the day through a burned finger or an upset coffee pot while cooking breakfast. The burned finger or overturned coffee pot came because “Hurry up!” was continually before her mental vision.

 

When through demand of the Supreme Power we have the thought current of this Higher Economy acting on us, we shall have instead of care for the act, love for it.

 

When we have love for the doing of all acts, there is nothing irksome in the doing. The billiard expert, the skilled base ball player, the graceful dancer find nothing irksome in their efforts. They love the doing. All effort in time will be made in this mood. Care is a word, and idea born and bred of the earthly or material mind. In the Higher Realms of existence all care is transmuted into love.

 

Love naturally and without a forced training economizes these sacred forces of ours, even as in our physical world the skilled woodsman economizes his force in the use of his axe, swinging it into the tree by its own momentum, and making play of his work.

 

The artist, the writer, the worker in any calling which absorbs and interests them are sometimes impatient to get into the spirit of their work. It has for them an intense fascination and stimulation. They are eager once more to realize this stimulation. Every other of the minute and necessary details of life are irksome. The clothing may be hurriedly adjusted, the breakfast hurriedly eaten and every other act similarly performed. The result is that when pen, pencil, brush or other instrument is taken in hand, there is no inspiration or ability to work. Why? Because, the artist has wasted his force in the mood he has been in before going to his special work. Economy of our forces begins way down to the A B C’s of life. These are the corner stones which many who would build pass by unconsciously or reject and despise.

 

True, men of great mental power have been careless and slovenly in the small acts of life, yet have accomplished what the world calls great things. Had they saved their forces they would have accomplished far more. Their incessant depletions of force weakened their bodies, placed them on beds of sickness, and caused at last those bodies to become unfit instruments for their spirits to use in the material realm of life.

 

Economizing our forces means eternal life for the body. Not eternal life for the same body, but eternal life for a physical body ever changing, renewing and refining as the spirit draws new power from the Infinite Source of Power.

 

Small acts or small expenditures of our force are the small things we must be faithful over that we become masters over many.

 

This waste of force in the use of the body affects injuriously its internal mechanism. For the lungs, heart, stomach, the circulation and all other functions work in accordance with our prevailing mood of mind. If we live in a hurry, those functions are also performed in a burry, and very imperfectly. If we won’t take time for doing things properly, neither will the stomach do its work properly. And all the other organs will work in accordance with the stomach. One part of the machinery cannot be out of order without affecting all the other parts.

 

Waste of force begets impatience, and the breathing of the impatient person is short, gaspy, flurried. The habitually impatient person cannot breathe healthfully.

 

As we demand the mood for economizing our forces of the Supreme, our breathing will naturally become deeper and more reposeful.

 

There is a spiritual breathing as well as a physical breathing. When our spirits are in the thought current of the Higher Economy, they will send to the body a certain life. This life is taken in with every breath, and will of itself prompt deep reposeful respiration.

 

This life does not come from the Earth. It comes from the domain of spirit. It comes in proportion to our aspiration. Aspiration is demand of the Supreme to be raised into higher beings and above mortal infirmities and pains.

 

Hatred is the wildest extravagance in the use of our force. It injures the body sadly to hate anything.

 

But is it not right to hate evil oppression and injustice? This is not a question of right or wrong, as right or wrong is measured by the common standard. It is a question of a mood or condition of mind which is to bring us good or evil results. To see imperfection in everything and to be in a constant antagonism with manners, customs, laws and people, is to bring to and fill the body with a destructive thought element. People hate themselves into disease and death in what is deemed a “good cause.” The eloquent speaker, full of invective and sarcasm against the oppressor, sometimes——goes early to his grave. He gets into a thought current of antagonism against a certain enemy. It is not easy to get out of it. It is a sword that cuts him also who uses it. Those who live by such swords perish by them.

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In the Higher Laws—in the Divine Economy and in the new mind which the Supreme Power will give us, we shall save all this force, for we shall see nothing to hate. We shall see only the good in man and in Nature. To see only the good is to put out a great force of thought to bring more good. The Supreme Power will, as we demand, show us how much more of good there is in all things than we have imagined. We shall be amazed on finding how much of beauty, symmetry and order there is in the Universe.

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Man’s law and custom says we must fight a wrong. But when we put out fight in thought, we get fight in return. In our order of affairs, one part of the community is in a perpetual crusade against another part to put down some evil. Hard words and bitter words are spoken. Denunciation and condemnation are thundered from pulpit and platform. Bitter feeling on both sides is engendered. Laws are made to put down an evil, which fail to put it down. We have been going on in this way for ages. Has it been a success? Is the Great Overruling Spirit really invoked in all this? Or is it not that man endeavors to take the reins in his own hands and trust overmuch in himself to govern?

 

When we are in that mood of mind where things we deem indispensably necessary to be done, present themselves one after the other in endless procession (as so often they do to the over‑worked housewife), we need to demand of the Supreme Power a wisdom that shall make us know which is the thing to be done, that is for our individual self most necessary and profitable. We need also that wisdom to make us know when we have reached the limit of our strength, for many are constantly and unconsciously working far beyond that limit.

 

Our forces are used when the body does nothing. They are expended with every thought, every plan, great or small. We may see in our room the shelf which needs dusting, the toilet table which needs regulating, the drawer whose contents are in confusion. The plan we have to put these things in order, though we do not carry it out physically, uses some of our force. If we look at these undone things a dozen times a day, resolving to do them, we expend each time some of our force. At last the sight of these undone things becomes irksome to us. That is because the mind is wearied with carrying these little burdens. We expend our force just as much as if we were doing them. Indeed we expend more. Every time we see the thing not done the irritation at the sight increases.

 

Sympathy or love wrongly bestowed drains away force. If our love or sympathy is placed much on persons whose quality of thought is inferior to our own, we send them the more valuable element and get nothing equivalent in return. The Law of Life demands that there be an equality in interchange of thought where parties are in close alliance. We become literally parts of the minds we are most drawn to. Being linked to a person in spirit is not a metaphor. It is a real connection—far more real and close than walking arm in arm with another. If you are in close sympathy with an inferior mind disposed to hatred or hurry you will from such mind absorb hatred or hurry, or other defect, and with these mental conditions the physical ills they cause.

 

Worry and grief greatly exhaust force. But we are born with the elements of grief and worry in us, and will continue to grieve or vex ourselves more or less over the trouble of to‑morrow, which may never happen, until through demand all this lower thought is driven out and gradually replaced by the higher thought current, which recognizes that religion or the Law of Everlasting Life is for no one special day or service, or act, but is a spirit or mind which permeates every fiber of our beings and sees in the crook of a finger an act coming of the Infinite Mind and Force, and by that Mind and Force be made to give its action of pleasure and permanent profit to us. Such thought current makes at last the new man and new woman, seeing in all things sources of good. In this way the Infinite wipes grief, worry and tears from all eyes.

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Our forces are not confined to physical acts, nor to the influence we may have on others through talking or writing to them. Our minds meet and mingle with other minds, and the physical body has nothing to do with such meeting and communion. Our forces or thoughts are working while the body is at rest. There is a realm of spirit, an almost “undiscovered country,” where the greatest enterprises known to the material world are planned, discussed and furthered, while the bodies used by those minds are unconscious in their beds. These bodies are the instruments to be taken up in the morning by those minds and used in the world of material things. A man’s mind absorbed in some great enterprise never by night or day ceases working. It is only his body that stops effort for seasons in the domain of life seen and felt by the physical senses.

 

If our forces are wasted in the physical world, they will be also wasted in the spiritual world. The depletion goes on both sides. If we go to sleep in anger, our spirit roams at night in the current of anger, and returns to the body, when we wake freighted with more of the destructive element of anger. The habitually impatient and hurried mind acts also, while its body sleeps in the world of impatience and hurry, consorting with those in the same mood and thought current, and feeding and filling the body with the destructive thought element of impatience.

 

It is the force saved in these and other ways that give the East Indian “adept” powers, which many of our race will not believe in, and others deem “supernatural.”

 

There is nothing in the universe or nature beyond the natural, but there is a great deal in nature and in ourselves of which we are not aware.

 

All of us have probably been in the lifelong habit of wasting in some or all of these ways our forces.

 

We do not point out these evils in the spirit of saying, “You must reform these habits immediately.”

 

Because we cannot reform them immediately. We of our individual selves cannot reform them at all. Demand of the Supreme Power only can give us new minds free from these habits.

 

We cannot stop these leakages at once; the habitual, jerky, spasmodic hurried effort of years will require time to alter for the more reposeful strength‑filling and giving mood. Improper associations cannot be cut off at once even when we are awakened to the force they cause us to waste. Our minds prone to hatred or violent prejudice or envy of others cannot be changed in a day.

 

It would be wrong to say to ourselves: “I must correct these hurried habits at once.” The effort so to do would be forced and unnatural. It would result in injury to the person who should attempt it of their individual will and strength. It would bring a trained and artificial condition, as we sometimes see in persons who ape the manner and address of others. These conditions are unnatural and unhealthy. They bring a great strain and tension on the body. The self trained condition cannot last. The God‑given condition lasts forever.

 

The body accustomed to spasmodic, jerky movement for 30 or 40 years has in every bone, muscle and sinew that jerky, spasmodic mind and thought materialized in physical substance. It can only be removed by degrees as replaced by the newer mood.

 

We err in ignorance. In so doing we are not blamable or “miserable sinners.” We are to grow out of these errors. As our eyes are opened, we may see every day some fault we have been in. We shall be thankful that the Supreme has shown us that fault. So to see these defects is a proof that we are growing from the cruder to the finer being.

 

Man cannot make for himself this Higher Economy. But when aware of the waste of his forces, he will demand of the Supreme the new and more reposeful mood. It will flow toward him, filling him with a new life, giving him new ideas relative to the saving of his forces and literally incorporating such ideas into his body as flesh and blood, bone and muscle. That makes him a new being. As such the practice of this Economy becomes as easy and natural for him as it is now to breathe.

 

The Infinite Mind and wisdom as thus called upon will remove these obstacles quietly, without disturbance. We shall change into newer beings, having new surroundings, conditions, habits and associations so quietly as barely to be aware of the change ourselves, even as the sunset sky changes from hue to hue, that we forget the last splendor in admiration of the present.

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Thus it is that the Kingdom of Infinite Good comes to the world of every mind like a “thief in the night.”

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Q's note:

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Unstuck your Soul.