"The term deception will cover the mistakes believed and made in ignorance, and deceitfulness will include the beliefs in and expression of deceitfulness. On the second day the patient is treated for the world's next greatest beliefs, which are deception and deceitfulness, and as before, we set him free from this belief, as possibly reflected or absorbed through one or more or all of these five avenues we mentioned in the first treatment.
"Because the world has admitted the first great lie, that the material creation is the true one, or synonymous with the true, we have 'yielded ourselves servants to sin,' hence will see the consequences of such false conclusion, until we deny the lie and affirm the truth.
'Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive,'
is a couplet I remember learning long ago, when I was a child, and how applicable it is to this problem of deception. Truly, it is a tangled web, and the only way to get it untangled is to break off the thread and go back to the beginning where we can truly say, I am created free and perfect and whole in His image, and can not be influenced by anything different from Him.
"This is always spiritually true, but if we deal with the worldly beliefs, we find that according to appearances, we are under the influence of our own and every other person's wrong thought. We say of some people, 'how happy I am in their company, how it uplifts me to be in their presence.' With others we feel a nameless depression, a fearful, unhappy feeling, and shun their company. As Emerson so aptly says: 'With some I walk among the stars, whilst others pin me to the wall.'
"Now, in reality, no good ever comes from personal influence, although in the first instance it might seem so. Personal, from the word persona, a mask, is only applied to the physical self or carnal mind; therefore we can receive no benefit from the personal quality of our friend, but we are benefited and uplifted by his freedom from personality, or in other words by the divine individuality flowing through him and expressed by his benevolence, his love, his cheerfulness, his wisdom. Inasmuch as he is free from personal or selfish thoughts, he is filled and permeated with gifts from the divine Fountain of all benevolence, all love, all cheerfulness, all wisdom.
"There is a difference between personality and individuality which most people do not recognize. Personality only pertains to the physical, while individuality is the term properly applied to the spiritual self. 'There is but one Mind, the Universal Mind, which, if we can lay hold on, will give us all knowledge, wisdom and power,' said Emerson.
"When we can throw aside a belief in personality, or personal influence, we will be free. The negative thoughts sent out by the world have no power over one who has become filled with positive thoughts of righteousness. When we trust wholly to the Good, and become wholly at one with the Good, recognizing the supremacy of the Good, we are free from all belief in miseries or burdens. We breathe purer air, which is invisible but life-giving; we feed on heavenly manna, the true word that is divinely nourishing; we escape the awful bondage of fear, knowing the perfect love that casts out fear. We can not fear any false beliefs or wrong thoughts, for we are so filled with true thoughts, no such falsities can enter our mind.
"Some people talk as though we have great cause to tremble at this awful counterfeit power of mortal mind, but if they would not talk of it, nor fear it as having power, it would vanish as mist before the morning sun.
"The great sin is in admitting a lie. Admit the belief of sickness as a reality and you will see many witnesses to prove it. 'Agree with thine adversary quickly, lest he turn and rend thee,' means make haste to dispose of the lie that will throttle you, if you fellowship with it ever so little. Let us not be deceived, but let us 'awake to righteousness and sin not.'