Happiness and Marriage Part 2

and we "don't like that," until really we _shut up_ our love and live in a continual state of "don't like"--a state which in due time develops into _hate_--hate for self as well as others. "Don't like" does it all.

Now _cultivate_ love by auto-suggestion. Keep saying, "I _like_ this,"

and "I like that." _Hunt_ for things to like, and even tell yourself you like things when you don't _feel_ that you like them at all.

Feeling is a _result_ of suggestion. Nothing easier to prove than that.

A hypnotist can, by suggestion, make you feel almost anything, whether it is true or not. He will say, "You feel sad," and straightway you will feel so. Then he will say, "You feel happy," and you do. Your feelings are like a harp, and your _statements_, or auto-suggestions, are the fingers which pick the strings. Take good care to play the tunes you _want_--to say you _like_ things, or love them. Then you will quickly respond and _feel_ that you like or love them. Keep _practicing_ until you love _all_ the time. Then you will _be_ loved to your heart's content.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PHARISEE UP-TO-DATE.

As long as you continue to hug the delusion that you are "not to blame"

for the unpleasant things in your conditions you might just as well profess the old thought as the new. The very fundamental principle of mental science is the statement that _man is a magnet and able to attract what he will_. To repudiate this statement is to knock the props out from under the whole philosophy. Better stay an old-thoughter and let Jesus suffer for your sins and those of your relatives and friends.

At least Jesus _took_ the sins of the world to bear, all of his own free will. There is some comfort in letting Jesus do what he chose to do.

But you have turned away from Jesus as a scapegoat. You refuse to lay your burdens on him who offered to bear them; and you refuse to bear them yourself. Instead you distribute them around among your relations and friends and then fret your soul because they won't accept your distributions. Of course you excuse yourself by acknowledging "your share of responsibility" for the unpleasantness of conditions, but if you will examine carefully you will find that your portion of the responsibility includes most of the _good_ things in your conditions, whilst you have portioned off almost _all_ the responsibility for the _bad_ things among your protesting--or indifferent--relatives. You always say, "_I_ try so hard," but you never balance that with, "_He_ tries so hard,"--"_They_ try so hard." You get all the I-try-items in your own pile and the don't-try-items in other folk's piles. "_If_ it were not for Tom and d.i.c.k and Harry and Fan you would do wonders--_if_ they'd only treat you with _half_ the consideration other people give you, or half _they_ give other people!--_if!--if!_"

I wonder why they don't indeed! It is just because you are you, _and you attract your own particular kind of treatment_. To all intents and purposes Tom, d.i.c.k, Harry and Fan are a punch and Judy show and _you pull the strings_. When other people pull the strings there's a different sort of show. YOU are the motive power in _all their treatment of you_. Not a tone or look or act of theirs in your direction but _you_ are responsible for; it was _you_ and no other who drew them to you; and it is you and no other who hold them there.

Now don't say, "I don't see _how_!" Of course not--_you haven't wanted to see how_--you've been too intent justifying yourself. And anyway, it takes an open mind, and some time, and much _faith_ to enable us to see the _principles_ of things. We have to _act_ as if they were so, a long time before we see that they are. If you had _acted_ upon the principle that you are a magnet and that _all_ that comes to you comes by your attraction, you'd have long ago had your eyes opened to "see how." And you'd have made progress and _changed your conditions_.

_If you are ever going to be a magnet you are one now._ If you are ever going to be able to attract to the hair's breadth whatsoever you will _then you are doing it now_. There will be no miraculous change in the running gear of this universe to enable you to attract what you want.

_What you now are in essence and working principle you have always been, and you will always be--the same yesterday, today and forever--a self-made_ MAGNET, _working to the hair's breadth_.

ONLY BY CHANGING THE QUALITY OF YOUR MAGNETISM CAN YOU CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT AND ATTRACT DIFFERENT TREATMENT FROM TOM, d.i.c.k, HARRY AND FAN.

Sweetness within brings sweetness without. You have been more or less bitter and self-justifying within, and Tom, d.i.c.k, Harry and Fan have danced to the strings you pulled.

As long as you think _you_ try and they don't; as long as you think _your_ judgment superior to theirs; _your_ ideals loftier and worthier; _your_ ways better; you will get from them responses of carelessness, bitterness, lack of consideration, selfishness.

_You_ are inconsiderate of _their_ ideas, ideals, judgments and ways; _in self-preservation_ they are inconsiderate of yours. If you had your way they'd be pretty little putty images of _your_ ideals, judgments, wishes, ways and feelings. The Law of Individuality prevents your imposing yourself on them. You think you are finding fault with _their_ "lack of consideration"; _you are really condemning the law of being_.

If you are ever to be a magnet you are one NOW. _All_ that comes _is_ "your fault." If anything different comes it will come through _your_ change of mental att.i.tude and action.

It will not do to throw it on "Karma" either, and say you are receiving now the unpleasant things deserved in a previous state of existence. The mills of the G.o.ds grind slowly but they are not so dead slow as all that. What you thought and did in a previous state has determined your parentage and childhood environment in this. But the pangs you suffer today have their roots in yesterday or day before, or the year before that. Cause and effect trip close upon each other's heels--so close that the careless or ignorant observer misses the trip. He exaggerates the _effect_ if it be an unhappy one, and goes nosing for a bigger cause than the real one. How could _his_ little slip of this morning, or yesterday, be the cause of this _terrible_ evil which has befallen him?--and he slides completely over the real cause. _And keeps on repeating it_.

Self-righteousness, by blinding your eyes to the truth, is the direct cause of the most gigantic and the most subtle miseries of the world.

These awfully good people who fully realize how hard they have always tried to do right, are the unhappiest people in the world--unless I except Tom, d.i.c.k, Harry and Fan, the victims of these self-righteous reformers. No, I can't even except these; for they at least generally succeed in having their own way in spite of the would-be reformer. But what so utterly disheartening as continued _lack of success_? And the self-righteous one never succeeds. It is hard, _hard_, to be so wise and willing, with such _high_ ideals (the self-righteous one in strong on ideals), and _never_ to succeed in making Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry conform to them. Do you see why Jesus said so often, "Woe comes to the Pharisee"

--the self-righteous? And why he called them hypocrites? Of course they are unconscious of their hypocrisy--self-righteousness blinds them to the truth; they think _others_ are to blame for most of the self-righteous one's own hard conditions.

The self-righteous one is doomed to a tread-mill of petty failures. He goes round and round his own little personal point of view and learns nothing.

It is by getting at the _other fellow's_ point of view that we learn things--about him and ourselves, too. When the self-righteous one wakes up to the _fact_ that the world is _full_ of people whose points of view are _just exactly_ as right and wise and ideal as his own; and begins to _feel with_, and PULL WITH these other people, instead of against them; when he does this he will find himself out of the treadmill to _stay_.

As he shows a disposition to consider _other_ people's ideals and help others in the line _they_ want to go, he will find the whole world eager to help _him_ in the way _he_ wants to go. The self-righteous one works alone and meets defeat. The one who, recognizing his own righteousness _in intent_, yet forgets not that _others are even as he,_ is the true friend and _be_-friended, of all the world.

Now don't let this homily slip off _your_ shoulders. We are _all_ self-righteous in spots, and none of us is so _very_ wise that he cannot by self-examination and readjustment learn a lot more.

Each soul _in its place_ is wisest and best. Don't _you_ try to get into the pilot house and steer things for Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry. Stay in your own and steer clear of the rocks of anger, malice, revenge, _resentment, re-sistance,_ INTERFERENCE and _immoderation_.

CHAPTER V.

SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR.

"Help me to make things go forward instead of backward. I want to be neat and attractive, with a good head of hair, a good complexion and good health. I want to help my husband so he will fall in love with me to make home beautiful, attractive and comfortable. I want bright eyes and freedom from that careworn look. Oh, I want to draw my husband nearer to me." (From a Taurus woman, aged twenty-seven.)

Isn't that pitiful? And heaven knows--or ought to--how many poor women, _and men, too_, live with that same dumb longing to get nearer and be chums with somebody. That cry touches my heart, for I lived years in the same state.

And, oh, how I struggled to draw others nearer to me. How I agonized and cried and prayed over it. How I worked to make home attractive. How I cooked and washed and scrubbed, sewed and patched and darned to please! How I quickly brushed my hair and hustled into a clean dress so as to be neat and ready when my husband came in! And how I ached and despaired inwardly because he frowned and found fault! How I studied books of advice to young wives! How their advice failed! How I _tried_ and TRIED to get him to confide in me and make a chum of me! And how the more I tried the more he had business downtown! Oh, the growing despair of it all! And the growing illnesses, too! Oh, the gulf that widened and widened between us! Oh, the _loneliness_! Oh, the _uselessness_ of life!

I _had_ to give it up. I wasn't enough of a hanger-on to sink into a state of perpetual whining protest, or to commit suicide. When I was finally _convinced_ that I _couldn't_ draw him nearer I gave it up and began to take notice again, _of other things_. I _let_ him live his life and I took up the _"burden"_ of my own "lonely" existence.

And the first thing I knew my "burden" had grown _interesting_, and I was _no longer lonesome_. I began to live my life to _please myself_, instead of living it for the purpose of _making over_ the life of another.

The _next_ thing I knew my husband didn't have so much business downtown, and he had more things he wanted to tell me. I found we were nearer than I ever dreamed we'd be.

You see, I had become _more comfortable to live with._ I had quit _trying_ to draw him nearer, and behold, _he was already near_.

In the old days I lived strenuously. I hustled so to get the house and the children and myself _just so_, that I got _my aura_ into a regular snarl. My husband being a healthy animal, felt the snarl before he saw the immaculateness; and like any healthy animal he snarled back--and had business downtown. He responded to my _real_ mental and emotional state, responded against his will many times; and I did not know it. I supposed him perverse and impossible of pleasing. I _knew I_ had tried my best (according to my lights, which it had not occurred to me to doubt), but it never entered my cranium that _he_ had tried, too. I looked upon the outward appearance--my immaculate appearance, met by fault-finding or indifference I Poor me! Perverse he!

Poor Martha, troubled about many things, when only one thing is needful--a quiet mind and faithful soul. History does not state if Martha had a husband. If she did, he was perpetually downtown. And Jesus preferred Mary, the Comfortable One, to Martha. Poor lonesome Martha!

And she tried _so hard_ to please.

I used to know a woman who never did a thing but look sweet. She was pretty and sympathetic and _cheery_. Her husband and six children idolized her, and fairly fell over themselves to please her and keep the home beautiful for her. There was physical energy galore lavished _gladly_ by the family, in doing what is commonly considered the mother's work.

And there was apparently nothing whatever the matter with that woman, who was always sweet and pretty as a new blown rose, and looked not a day over twenty. She was simply born tired and wouldn't work. Of course the neighbors said things about her; but n.o.body _could_ say things _to_ such a sweet tempered, cordial and pretty woman. And there'd have been razors flying through the air if anybody had dared hint to that husband or one of those children that mother was anything less than perfection.

The family explanation was that "mother is not strong."

But that mother did more for that family than all the others put together. _She made the atmosphere_, and she was the life-giving sun around which husband and children revolved, and from which they received the real Light of Life--the power which develops the good in us.

The mother's main business in life was that of _appreciating_. She was the confidante, the counsellor, the optimistic teacher, and the appreciative audience for six children and a husband, besides a lot of neighbors who carried their troubles to her. She performed more mental work than it takes to manage a billion dollar trust. She kept six children, not only out of mischief, but _happily busy_ at all sorts of household and outdoor work which it was well for them to know. They learned to keep house and farm by keeping them, whilst she sat by and enthused and directed their efforts. She made them _love_ it all. She helped them over the hard places in their school work and enthused them to do better work. They carried off the school prizes under her admiring eyes, and ran straight to lay them in her lap and receive that proud and happy smile of hers.

Her husband worked like a slave _with the heart of a king_. She thought him the best, bravest, brightest of men, and told him so a dozen times a day, besides _looking_ it every time he came in range of her big, loving brown eyes and smooth, rosy cheeks.

I never heard of an unkind word in that family, and those six children grew up into splendid young manhood and womanhood. Their mother is still the blessed sun of their existence. She is prettier, healthier and happier now, and so proud of her fine children.

And she is _up-to-date._ She has studied and read with her whole family and is interested with them in the world's present events, art, literature and religion.

Do you think that woman ever complains of loneliness, or "tries so hard"

to draw husband or children "nearer"? No. She long ago chose the "one thing needful"--_a faith-full heart_. Her physical strength would not bear much strain without depressing her faith-full-ness; therefore she left the physical labor out, _as less important_. To her the _Life_ was more than meat or raiment, so she ministered to the Life--to the joy of living. A stronger woman, physically, could have ministered more efficiently to the physical side without neglecting the "one thing needful." This woman chose the better part and stuck to it; and _results_ prove her righteousness.

The foolish woman looketh upon the outward appearance and is troubled over _many_ things. She wears herself out trying to keep the _outside_ immaculate and grieves her heart out because she misses the one thing of great price, the _joy of loving and being loved, of trusting and being trusted_.

Do you know that we are _never_ far away from _anybody_? We are close, _so close_ to our husbands; our children; our friends; _even to our enemies if we have them;_ and to those we never saw or heard of. _We are all One. Your_ soul is MY SOUL TOO. Only our bodies are at all separated, and they are separated _only as the harbor is separated from the sea_. Our bodies are but inlets of One Great Soul; and they are but the smallest part of ourselves. Is it then not foolish to _try_ to draw another nearer? Why, we are _now_ so near we _can't_ be nearer; we are _One_. Why strive to do what is _already_ done?