My ’phone did not ring any more that day, neither did I again take up the solution of the abstract problem on which I had been working, for another one filled my thought world and this is the problem and its solution.
“Why did my ’phone ring so many times each day on calls which were not for me?”
Back of every effect lies the cause which produces it. Back of every material thing is the energy which creates it. Nothing happens—nothing occurs by chance, accident or luck, no matter how much it may seem to do so.
Looking at the matter concretely of the numerous ’phone calls I had which were not for me, the Telephone Company was to blame, but they had made every effort on their part to correct the trouble and it seemed to get worse instead of better.
I asked myself the question “Where did the blame rightly belong? To the Telephone Company or to myself?”
I saw that the real solution to this question was in the abstract for before anything can be reduced to the concrete or material side of life it must be created first in the abstract.
How then could I be to blame? Through the use I made of energy in the abstract by the kind of thoughts and emotions I allowed to persist in my imagination and field of consciousness.
I had been irritable, impatient, intolerant, sarcastic, critical, condemnatory, not only with the Telephone Company but more or less with other people and things. This was using energy inharmoniously in the abstract and there could be only one result which was its materialization as inharmony in the concrete, and I had been getting that materialization in the annoyance and irritation which so many mistakes in the telephone calls had given me. I also saw that was only one of the ways in which I had been materializing concretely the energy I had been using inharmoniously in the abstract.
I determined to begin work on myself at once to change the state of consciousness in me which had permitted this condition to arise and demonstrate the truth or falsity of my solution of the problem.
It is quite easy to make “good” resolutions, but it is a much more difficult thing to live them out in one’s daily life. My first attempts were abject failures, but I refused to be discouraged and kept working with myself each day. No matter how many times I failed I renewed my “good” resolutions each time and became even more determined to carry them out. My idea was not to repress my annoyance, impatience, irritation, and inharmony, but to displace them with kindness and harmony. Some of my first attempts were most ludicrous and bordered on the tragic but I kept at it.