Mastery of Self for Wealth, Power, Success

by Frank C. Haddock

(d). By manifesting at all times the mood of blended COURAGE, HOPE, CONFIDENCE, HAPPINESS;

4. THE VALUE OF WORK AND PLAY IS THE OUTCOME OF BALANCING REACTIONS OR RESTORATIONS AMONG OUR PERSONAL ACTIVITIES. If we conceive of any individual as a "field" of vibrations in matter and the ether, induced by muscular and nervous action and by feeling and thought, we see at once that there ought to be an ideal "field" in which all such vibrations are in a state of harmony. The state indicated would be a condition of balance. When activities in one direction are over intense and unduly prolonged, all vibrations tend to a strain in that direction. Such strain— all in one direction—is not normal, because it signifies disturbance of balance. If harmony in the "field" is to be restored, the one direction-strain must be released so that all right activities may recur and all vibrations proper to the "field" may again take place. Always the ideal is general harmony throughout the personal field. Now, some of the activities of our life are normally those of work, inducing corresponding vibrations in the individual "field," and some of them are normally those of recreation, which is a true word because it means recreation, that is, action or rest inducing corresponding vibration differing from those of work, running, so to speak, in different directions, and so restoring harmony. Work and recreation are, therefore, equally essential to the normal life. We have, however, built up wrong ideas of each of these important functions, so that most of us distinguish work as essentially different in its basic nature from recreation, and more or less an evil, and distinguish recreation as altogether and in itself a good. Both ideas are surely erroneous. I know that too much work, and work under certain conditions, cannot be regarded as a good in itself. Precisely the same is true of recreation. Neither, then, is to be valued or condemned because of the kind of activities involved or vibrations induced, but always and solely with reference to the state of balance or harmony represented in the field of the personal self. The limit of permitted work should be determined by that question alone; work should always be offset, so to speak, by recreation. The limit of recreation permitted should be determined by the same question. It should always be offset by work. In other words, the value of either work or play consists in change of activities restoring balance in the personal field.

But work and recreation are not essentially different in their true nature. In both cases we have activities and vibrations. In all cases some portion of the body is involved. In all cases some features of the mind are active. Action in either case is called work or recreation according to the idea entertained regarding it. If the idea is that of TASK, the thing is work. If the idea is RELAXATION, the thing is recreation. I have taken the task-idea into recreation, and soon wearied. I have taken the recreation- idea into work, and have been obliged to call self to account under that law of balance or harmony. A boy, for example, is sawing wood alone: this is work. Neighboring boys join him, and soon invest the whole place with imagination, all busy sawing, splitting,—playing. It is the idea—that is, the real thought, which determines the names we give the two general sets of activities. Nature will check work-vibrations and restore recreation-vibrations, FOR A TIME, until harmony of the field is comparatively restored, if only suggestion use the magic word.

You are now invited to maintain, IN ALL YOUR WORK, THE IDEA OF HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSAL FORCES OF NATURE, and the inspiration of the idea that your WORK IS GOOD and is building your self to better.

You are invited also to maintain, IN ALL YOUR RECREATION, THE IDEA OF HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSAL FORCES and the inspiration of the thought that YOUR RECREATION IS GOOD and is building your self to better.

5. PURITY IN THE SEX-LIFE CHARGES THE PERSONAL FIELD WITH THE MAGNETIC POWER OF THE UNIVERSAL FORCES. In this respect the individual should be as a god. The human body is designed for Temple-Presence of the Infinite White Life. Epicurus regarded it as a husk, but Aristotle defined the soul as the "perfect expression of the body," meaning, not that the soul is a product of physiological conditions, but that it is the TRUTH of body, the idea, purpose, in which only do the bodily conditions gain their real meaning. To this great Greek the chief of human virtues was HIGH-MINDEDNESS, a crowning Self-Respect. This attitude of the self toward the house in which it lives recognizes the perfect interaction of self and body, the one being influenced by the other, and so it insists that no injury shall come to the body from the inner sex-life, or from the sex-life to the inner self, but that both shall be maintained in harmony with the absolute whiteness of Eternal Being.

You are invited, then, to maintain purity under the law of liberty, and to adopt this thought as a permanent law: MY PERSONAL DIGNITY STOOPS NOT TO PHYSICAL DEGRADATION.

6. THE LIBERTY OF CONSCIOUS HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSAL FORCES EMBRACES THE INTELLIGENT USE OF THE SCIENCE OF MEDICINE. The science of medicine is fairly indicated for our present purpose in the following quotation—from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes:

"What is the honest truth about the medical art? That by far the largest number of diseases which physicians are called upon to treat will get well at any rate, even in spite of reasonably bad treatment. That of the other fraction, a certain number will certainly die, whatever is done. That there remains a small number of cases where the life of the patient depends on the skill of the physician. That drugs now and then save life; that they often shorten disease and remove symptoms; but that they are second in importance to food, air, temperature, and the other hygienic influences. Throw out opium; throw out wine, and the vapors which produce the miracle of anesthesia, and I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind."

"It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line, Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be—I think I may venture to say there is—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The 'dynamo' which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its temporary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life,—a series of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on the very nature of the force at work in the living organism."