The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

The arousing of the belief that the healer is a sort of motorman who puts up the patient's dropped trolley pole, thus making connection with the wire carrying infinite power; or that he is a wireless operator who is connecting him with his Divine Source, the source of health and happiness, and that he is actually receiving the flow of divine force, of peace, of immortal life, is of itself a tremendous healing agency.

When he has succeeded in establishing in the mind of his patient the vigorous conviction that health is the everlasting principle, the great fundamental inviolable fact, the healer has gone far toward establishing a scientific consciousness of health, and has laid a most important health foundation.

After a little practice a sick person can do wonderful things for himself through the vitalizing force of auto-suggestion. He can be his own physician. He can recover health and keep it by applying to himself the same principles that the healer applies to his patient. In this way he can keep himself in conscious union with the Divine Source of all supply, of all good, all health.

There are sufficient latent potencies in every human being, if he would only arouse and make them operative, to keep him in health and harmony. We can all be our own healers if we will.

The stream must be as pure as its fountain head unless contaminated later, and there is where we humans come in. We contaminate the health stream with our thought poisons. Our doubts, our fears, our unbeliefs, our brutal passions, our selfishness, our greed, our hatreds, our jealousies, our revenge, our ingratitude for life, for the blessings we enjoy,—all of these things tend to pollute the stream which we receive pure as it flows from the crystal fountain, the divine source of the All Good.

But the practice of divine chemistry will enable us to clear up our muddy life streams. We have in ourselves the remedies which will neutralize the vicious poisons we have allowed to flow into and befoul our life stream. We can by the right use of our powers purify it as the chemist purified the jar of muddy water. By right thinking we can neutralize the poison sewage of our bodies, just as chemists can take the foul sewage water which flows out from a city and by the help of chemicals neutralize all the filth, making it absolutely pure again. By applying their antidotes we can neutralize the poisons of disease, the results of wrong thinking and living, which sap and embitter our lives, which make us suffer from all sorts of ills and leave us unable to accomplish one-tenth of what we might if we had that splendid physical and mental vigor which is normal to humanity.

We must offer the same uncompromising opposition to the reality of all kinds of disease, mental and physical, that the mental healer does. We must see ourselves as he sees his patient, in the wholeness, the completeness, the Creator intended. It is the ideal man or woman we must visualize, never the one weakened, deformed by horrible diseases or their symptoms. By recognizing only the real man or woman, unaffected by wrong thinking, we cut off the vicious effects of the mental enemies which are fighting to perpetuate disease or other unfortunate conditions.

The constant holding of the health ideal, of the truth thought, the health and prosperity thought, the optimistic thought, the kindly, cheerful, helpful thought and the shutting out of all their opposites, not only help to restore health, but also increase tremendously the disease-resisting power. Right thought is a health, efficiency, and happiness tonic.

The vital thing in establishing health is to adopt the victorious attitude toward it as toward every other good thing we desire. If we wish to have abounding health (and who does not?) we must cultivate implicit faith in health as our birthright, in the truth that, being the children of Perfection, we must partake of the qualities of perfection, and hence be free from the imperfection of disease or sickness.

Without faith in our wholeness we are not, and cannot be, whole. Without faith in the healing power of Divine chemistry no healing is possible either by patient or healer. The patient may not always have a conscious faith, but the healer has, and a similar faith is aroused in the patient later, as he begins to feel the divine healing power operating and working like a leaven in his nature.