Supreme Personality Part 1

Supreme Personality.

by Delmer Eugene Croft.

Out of the tomb of night a day has risen. Be not anxious, this day is all your own. Do not hurry, for in time it is like all other days.

Neither delay, for NOW is opportunity.

Early turn your face to the dawn and let its beams bathe away all stains of the night. Then, should the noon be dark with storms, your smile shall wear the serene promise of confidence and realization.

This Supreme day can only be saved by spending it. Therefore, to its burden give your strength; to its confusion give your patience; to its sorrow give your comfort; to its trial give your n.o.bleness; to its peril give your heroism; to its sacrifice give your love.

During this Supreme day step softly among human hearts and leave so much of kindness along its path, that in golden days, gladness shall spring up bearing its tribute to other weary hearts in the cool eventide of the world's glad Easter.

Set eternity in your heart, let Truth be your fadeless Day Star, then over your life of service, sacrifice, courage, cheerfulness, patience, kindness and love, time shall have no power.

THE AUTHOR.

Lesson First

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. G.o.d, 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 compa.s.s 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, G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 gra.s.s, 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 trans.m.u.tes 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 G.o.d." 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 pa.s.s 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, circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.bler success. Julius Caesar trained his supreme will until it became the dominion of the Roman Empire. The G.o.ddess Diana said of Hercules: "When I saw him, whether he sat or stood, I knew he was a G.o.d, 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 sh.o.r.es. 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 h.e.l.l, 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 G.o.d 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 t.i.tanic, under the pale light of the morning stars played "Nearer My G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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."

=Lesson Second

SUPREME CONTROL OF AGE=

=YOUTH IS ETERNAL:= Nature never grows old. The flowers that bloomed in Eden are blooming to-day. Just as lovely, just as sweet, just as fresh and unchanged. The roses your life-mate brings home to you, have the same fragrance as the roses Adam brought to Eve, if he thought of it. The lovely stars that glitter in the azure fields above you tonight, have the same loveliness that gleamed in tremulous glory down upon the shepherds beyond Bethlehem. The radiant, life giving rays of the sun that ten thousand, thousand years ago warmed mother earth into vernal spring life, are the same life giving rays that shall bring again the spring-tide. Life never grows old, it only changes form. Your life is perpetual, then your youth may be perpetual. The human race is ever young, its units fall off. You should be younger at sixty, than at sixteen, because you have more of life. Growing old is a habit. People travel along the years up the hill of life, till they reach a certain point where they begin to THINK they must be growing old. Think its time to sag. Think its time to droop. Think its time to begin the process of decay. Then begin to talk about it. To write letters about it. To feel around for it. To look for it in others. Finally the habit they inherited from the race is on, and they are old. Life is endless, but you can think it short, "The power of an endless life," is within you, but by thinking you can turn it to the white ashes of old age. THINK YOUTH AND YOU STAY YOUNG.

=YOUTH IS GROWTH:= Keep growing and you keep young. A new idea will make you feel younger. Develop it and it will develop you.

Quicken your mental throb with new ideas. Begin now. Stop talking about being too old to grow. You pa.s.s by trees daily, a hundred, two hundred years old, still they are growing. The rose bush on a wall in China is supposed to be over a thousand years old, it bears more roses now, than when it was a mere slip of a vine of only one hundred.

Gladstone at eighty-two was a growing statesman, and elected prime minister of England for the fourth time. Cato at eighty began to study Greek, and renewed the youth of his mind. Donald Davis is a growing hunter at one hundred and three. G.o.ddard Diamond was a growing teacher of health, when he was one hundred and eleven. I know a bright, cheery lady who is just beginning a new study for decorating china, along with her household cares, and she is eighty-eight. Also another woman who has taken up a new process of enlarging drawings into water-colors and she is eighty-one years young. The fig tree withered when the Master of Life found it not growing, producing, creating. When you stop growing you will wither by the same law. Grow something, create something, produce something and the law of youth will pervade your Being.

=YOUTH IS OBSERVING THE LAW:= Observing the law of health, the law of mind, the law of growth, the law of harmony, the law of production, the law of expression, the law of beauty, the law of selflessness. Keep your bodily forces up. Rebuild destroyed tissue.

Keep the system free of waste. Stop poisoning your body with anger, hate, jealousy, fear. Keep your mind sweet. Think cheerfully. Avoid mental turmoil and excitement. Two great enemies of youth are worry and fear. The next is selfishness. Think every morning when you rise--"This new day is new life. It is fresh from the hand of G.o.d. It is mine to use. I will increase it unto the Perfect Day." Grow in each day, and make each day grow. Check discord. Quit useless discussion for it weakens and withers. Stop quarreling. Check complainings. Root criticism out of your life. You are bigger than these things. Get into harmony. You are of the world, upon worlds, universe unto universe.

Study your words to make them have beauty, your walk to have grace, your personality to make it magnetic, your smile to give courage and comfort, your presence to have it healing, helping, inspiring. "If there be any virtue in whatsoever things are lovely, think on those things."