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A Summing Up

Categories: Uncategorized
Sources: Nerves And Common Sense

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.



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