A Peaceful Mind generates Power - 4
Perhaps our lack of inner peace is due to some extent to the effect of noise upon the nervous system of modem people. Scientific experiments show that noise in the place where we work, live, or sleep reduces efficiency to a noticeable degree. Contrary to popular belief, it is doubtful if we ever completely adjust our physical, mental, or nervous mechanisms to noise. No matter how familiar a repeated sound becomes, it never passes unheard by the subconscious. Automobile horns, the roar of airplanes, and other strident noises actually result in physical activity during sleep. Impulses transmitted to and through the nerves by these sounds cause muscular movements which detract from real rest. If the reaction is sufficiently severe, it partakes of the nature of shock.
On the contrary, silence is a healing, soothing, healthy practice. Starr Daily says, "No man or woman of my acquaintance who knows how to practice silence and does it has ever been sick to my knowledge. I have noticed that my own afflictions come upon me when I do not balance expression with relaxation." Starr Daily closely associates silence with spiritual healing. The sense of rest that results from a practice of complete silence is a therapy of utmost value.
In the circumstances of modem life, with its acceleration of pace, the practice of silence is admittedly not so simple as it was in the days of our forefathers. A vast number of noise-producing gadgets exist that they did not know, and our daily program is more hectic. Space has been annihilated in the modem world, and apparently we are also attempting to annihilate the factor of time.
It is only rarely possible for an individual to walk in deep woods or sit by the sea or meditate on a mountaintop or on the deck of a vessel in the midst of the ocean. But when we do have such experiences, we can print on the mind the picture of the silent place and the feel of the moment and return to it in memory to live it over again just as truly as when we were actually in that scene. In fact, when you return to it in memory the mind tends to remove any unpleasant factors present in the actual situation. The memory visit is often an improvement over the actual for the mind tends to reproduce only the beauty in the remembered scene.
For example, as I write these words, I am on a balcony of one of the most beautiful hotels in the world, the Royal Hawaiian on the famed and romantic Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am looking into a garden filled with graceful palm trees, swaying in the balmy breeze. The air is laden with the aroma of exotic flowers. Hibiscus, of which on these islands there are two thousand varieties, fill the garden. Outside my windows are papaya trees laden with ripening fruit. The brilliant color of the royal poinciana, the flame of the forest trees, add to the glamor of the scene; and the acacia trees are hung heavily with their exquisite white flowers. The incredible blue ocean surrounding these islands stretches away to the horizon. The white waves are surging in, and the Hawaiians and my fellow visitors are riding gracefully on surfboards and outrigger canoes.
Altogether it is a scene of entrancing beauty. It has an indescribably healing effect upon me as I sit here writing about the power generated in a peaceful mind. The insistent responsibilities under which I ordinarily live seem so far away. Though I am in Hawaii to give a series of lectures and to write this book, nevertheless the peace with which this place is filled envelops me. Yet I realize that when I have returned to my home in New York, five thousand miles away, I shall only then truly savor the exquisite joy of the beauty which I now behold. It will become enshrined in memory as a prized retreat to which my mind can go in the busy days that lie ahead. Often, when far from this idyllic place, I shall return in memory to find peace along the palm-lined, foam-washed beach at Waikiki.
Fill your mind with all peaceful experiences possible, then make planned and deliberate excursions to them in memory. You must learn that the easiest way to an easy mind is to create an easy mind. This is done by practice, by the application of some such simple principles as outlined here. The mind quickly responds to teaching and discipline. You can make the mind give you back any thing you want, but remember the mind can give back only what it was first given. Saturate your thoughts with peaceful experiences, peaceful words and ideas, and ultimately you will have a storehouse of peace-producing experiences to which you may turn for refreshment and renewal of your spirit. It will be a vast source of power.
I spent a night with a friend who has a very lovely home. We had breakfast in a unique and interesting dining room. The four walls are painted in a beautiful mural picturing the countryside in which my host was reared as a boy. It is a panorama of rolling hills, gentle valleys, and singing streams, the latter clean and sun speckled, and babbling over rocks. Winding roads meander through pleasant meadows. Little houses dot the landscape. In a central position is a white church surmounted by a tall steeple.
As we breakfasted my host talked of this region of his youth, pointing out various points of interest in the painting around the wall. Then he said, "Often as I sit in this dining room I go from point to point in my memory and relive other days. I recall, for example, walking up that lane as a boy with bare feet, and I can remember yet how the clean dust felt between my toes. I remember fishing in that trout stream on many a summer afternoon and coasting down those hills in the wintertime".
"There is the church I attended as a boy." He grinned and said, "I sat through many a long sermon in that church but gratefully recall to mind the kindliness of the people and the sincerity of their lives. I can sit here and look at that church and think of the hymns I heard there with my mother and father as we sat together in the pew. They are long buried in that cemetery alongside the church, but in memory I go and stand by their graves and hear them speak to me as in days gone by. I get very tired and sometimes am nervous and tense. It helps to sit here and go back to the days when I had an untroubled mind, when life was new and fresh. It does something for me. It gives me peace."
Perhaps we all cannot have such murals on the dining room walls, but you can put them around the wall of your mind: pictures of the most beautiful experiences of your life. Spend time among the thoughts which these pictures suggest. No matter how busy you may be or what responsibilities you carry, this simple, rather unique practice, having proved successful in many instances, may have a beneficial effect upon you. It is an easily practiced, easy way to a peaceful mind.
There is a factor in the matter of inner peace which must be stated because of its importance. Frequently I find that people who are lacking in inner peace are victims of a self-punishment mechanism. At some time in their experience they have committed a sin and the sense of guilt haunts them. They have sincerely sought Divine forgiveness, and the good Lord will always forgive anyone who asks Him and who means it. However, there is a curious quirk within the human mind whereby some times an individual will not forgive himself.
He feels that he deserves punishment and therefore is constantly anticipating that punishment. As a result he lives in a constant apprehension that something is going to happen. In order to find peace under these circumstances he must increase the intensity of his activity. He feels that hard work will give him some release from his sense of guilt. A physician told me that in his practice a number of cases of nervous breakdown were traceable to a sense of guilt for which the patient had unconsciously attempted to compensate by hectic overwork. The patient attributed his breakdown not to the sense of guilt, but to his overworked condition. "But," said the physician, "these men need not have broken down from overwork if first the sense of guilt had been fully released." Peace of mind under such circumstances is available by yielding the guilt as well as the tension it produces to the healing therapy of Christ.
At a resort hotel where I had gone for a few days of quiet writing I encountered a man from New York whom I knew slightly. He was a high-pressured, hard-driving, and exceedingly nervous business executive. He was sitting in the sun in a deck chair. At his invitation I sat down and chatted with him.
"I’m glad to see you relaxing in this beautiful spot,"?’ I commented.
He replied nervously, "I haven’t any business being here. I’ve so much work to do at home. I’m under terrible pressure. Things have got me down, I’m nervous and can’t sleep. I’m jumpy. My wife insisted that I come down here for a week. The doctors say there’s nothing wrong with me if I just get to thinking right and relax. But how in the world do you do that?" he challenged. Then he gave me a piteous look. "Doctor," he said, "I would give anything if I could be peaceful and quiet. It’s what I want more than anything in this world."
We talked a bit, and it came out in the conversation that he was always worrying that something sinister was going to happen. For years he had anticipated some dire event, living in constant apprehension about "something happening" to his wife or his children or his home.
It was not difficult to analyze his case. His insecurity arose from a double source from childhood insecurities and from later guilty experiences. His mother had always felt that "something was going to happen," and he had absorbed her anxiety feelings. Later he committed some sins, and his subconscious mind insisted upon self punishment. He became victim to the mechanism of self-punishment. As a result of this unhappy combination, I found him this day in a highly inflamed state of nervous reaction.
Finishing our conversation, I stood beside his chair a moment. There was no one near, so I rather hesitantly suggested, "Would you by any chance like me to pray with you?" He nodded, and I put my hand on his shoulder and prayed, "Dear Jesus, as You healed people in the long ago and gave them peace, heal this man now. Give him fully of Thy forgiveness. Help him to forgive himself. Separate him from all his sins and let him know that You do not hold them against him. Set him free from them. Then let Thy peace flow into his mind, into his soul, and into his body."
He looked up at me with a strange look on his face and then turned away, for there were tears in his eyes and he didn’t want me to see them. We were both a bit embarrassed, and I left him. Months later I met him, and he said, "Something happened to me down there that day when you prayed for me. I felt a strange sense of quietness and peace, and," he added, "healing."
He goes to church regularly now and he reads the Bible every day of his life. He follows the laws of God and he has lots of driving force. He is a healthy, happy man, for he has peace in his heart and mind.
(From Power Of Positive Thinking by Norman V Peale)
Perhaps our lack of inner peace is due to some extent to the effect of noise upon the nervous system of modem people. Scientific experiments show that noise in the place where we work, live, or sleep reduces efficiency to a noticeable degree. Contrary to popular belief, it is doubtful if we ever completely adjust our physical, mental, or nervous mechanisms to noise. No matter how familiar a repeated sound becomes, it never passes unheard by the subconscious. Automobile horns, the roar of airplanes, and other strident noises actually result in physical activity during sleep. Impulses transmitted to and through the nerves by these sounds cause muscular movements which detract from real rest. If the reaction is sufficiently severe, it partakes of the nature of shock.
On the contrary, silence is a healing, soothing, healthy practice. Starr Daily says, "No man or woman of my acquaintance who knows how to practice silence and does it has ever been sick to my knowledge. I have noticed that my own afflictions come upon me when I do not balance expression with relaxation." Starr Daily closely associates silence with spiritual healing. The sense of rest that results from a practice of complete silence is a therapy of utmost value.
In the circumstances of modem life, with its acceleration of pace, the practice of silence is admittedly not so simple as it was in the days of our forefathers. A vast number of noise-producing gadgets exist that they did not know, and our daily program is more hectic. Space has been annihilated in the modem world, and apparently we are also attempting to annihilate the factor of time.
It is only rarely possible for an individual to walk in deep woods or sit by the sea or meditate on a mountaintop or on the deck of a vessel in the midst of the ocean. But when we do have such experiences, we can print on the mind the picture of the silent place and the feel of the moment and return to it in memory to live it over again just as truly as when we were actually in that scene. In fact, when you return to it in memory the mind tends to remove any unpleasant factors present in the actual situation. The memory visit is often an improvement over the actual for the mind tends to reproduce only the beauty in the remembered scene.
For example, as I write these words, I am on a balcony of one of the most beautiful hotels in the world, the Royal Hawaiian on the famed and romantic Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am looking into a garden filled with graceful palm trees, swaying in the balmy breeze. The air is laden with the aroma of exotic flowers. Hibiscus, of which on these islands there are two thousand varieties, fill the garden. Outside my windows are papaya trees laden with ripening fruit. The brilliant color of the royal poinciana, the flame of the forest trees, add to the glamor of the scene; and the acacia trees are hung heavily with their exquisite white flowers. The incredible blue ocean surrounding these islands stretches away to the horizon. The white waves are surging in, and the Hawaiians and my fellow visitors are riding gracefully on surfboards and outrigger canoes.
Altogether it is a scene of entrancing beauty. It has an indescribably healing effect upon me as I sit here writing about the power generated in a peaceful mind. The insistent responsibilities under which I ordinarily live seem so far away. Though I am in Hawaii to give a series of lectures and to write this book, nevertheless the peace with which this place is filled envelops me. Yet I realize that when I have returned to my home in New York, five thousand miles away, I shall only then truly savor the exquisite joy of the beauty which I now behold. It will become enshrined in memory as a prized retreat to which my mind can go in the busy days that lie ahead. Often, when far from this idyllic place, I shall return in memory to find peace along the palm-lined, foam-washed beach at Waikiki.
Fill your mind with all peaceful experiences possible, then make planned and deliberate excursions to them in memory. You must learn that the easiest way to an easy mind is to create an easy mind. This is done by practice, by the application of some such simple principles as outlined here. The mind quickly responds to teaching and discipline. You can make the mind give you back any thing you want, but remember the mind can give back only what it was first given. Saturate your thoughts with peaceful experiences, peaceful words and ideas, and ultimately you will have a storehouse of peace-producing experiences to which you may turn for refreshment and renewal of your spirit. It will be a vast source of power.
I spent a night with a friend who has a very lovely home. We had breakfast in a unique and interesting dining room. The four walls are painted in a beautiful mural picturing the countryside in which my host was reared as a boy. It is a panorama of rolling hills, gentle valleys, and singing streams, the latter clean and sun speckled, and babbling over rocks. Winding roads meander through pleasant meadows. Little houses dot the landscape. In a central position is a white church surmounted by a tall steeple.
As we breakfasted my host talked of this region of his youth, pointing out various points of interest in the painting around the wall. Then he said, "Often as I sit in this dining room I go from point to point in my memory and relive other days. I recall, for example, walking up that lane as a boy with bare feet, and I can remember yet how the clean dust felt between my toes. I remember fishing in that trout stream on many a summer afternoon and coasting down those hills in the wintertime".
"There is the church I attended as a boy." He grinned and said, "I sat through many a long sermon in that church but gratefully recall to mind the kindliness of the people and the sincerity of their lives. I can sit here and look at that church and think of the hymns I heard there with my mother and father as we sat together in the pew. They are long buried in that cemetery alongside the church, but in memory I go and stand by their graves and hear them speak to me as in days gone by. I get very tired and sometimes am nervous and tense. It helps to sit here and go back to the days when I had an untroubled mind, when life was new and fresh. It does something for me. It gives me peace."
Perhaps we all cannot have such murals on the dining room walls, but you can put them around the wall of your mind: pictures of the most beautiful experiences of your life. Spend time among the thoughts which these pictures suggest. No matter how busy you may be or what responsibilities you carry, this simple, rather unique practice, having proved successful in many instances, may have a beneficial effect upon you. It is an easily practiced, easy way to a peaceful mind.
There is a factor in the matter of inner peace which must be stated because of its importance. Frequently I find that people who are lacking in inner peace are victims of a self-punishment mechanism. At some time in their experience they have committed a sin and the sense of guilt haunts them. They have sincerely sought Divine forgiveness, and the good Lord will always forgive anyone who asks Him and who means it. However, there is a curious quirk within the human mind whereby some times an individual will not forgive himself.
He feels that he deserves punishment and therefore is constantly anticipating that punishment. As a result he lives in a constant apprehension that something is going to happen. In order to find peace under these circumstances he must increase the intensity of his activity. He feels that hard work will give him some release from his sense of guilt. A physician told me that in his practice a number of cases of nervous breakdown were traceable to a sense of guilt for which the patient had unconsciously attempted to compensate by hectic overwork. The patient attributed his breakdown not to the sense of guilt, but to his overworked condition. "But," said the physician, "these men need not have broken down from overwork if first the sense of guilt had been fully released." Peace of mind under such circumstances is available by yielding the guilt as well as the tension it produces to the healing therapy of Christ.
At a resort hotel where I had gone for a few days of quiet writing I encountered a man from New York whom I knew slightly. He was a high-pressured, hard-driving, and exceedingly nervous business executive. He was sitting in the sun in a deck chair. At his invitation I sat down and chatted with him.
"I’m glad to see you relaxing in this beautiful spot,"?’ I commented.
He replied nervously, "I haven’t any business being here. I’ve so much work to do at home. I’m under terrible pressure. Things have got me down, I’m nervous and can’t sleep. I’m jumpy. My wife insisted that I come down here for a week. The doctors say there’s nothing wrong with me if I just get to thinking right and relax. But how in the world do you do that?" he challenged. Then he gave me a piteous look. "Doctor," he said, "I would give anything if I could be peaceful and quiet. It’s what I want more than anything in this world."
We talked a bit, and it came out in the conversation that he was always worrying that something sinister was going to happen. For years he had anticipated some dire event, living in constant apprehension about "something happening" to his wife or his children or his home.
It was not difficult to analyze his case. His insecurity arose from a double source from childhood insecurities and from later guilty experiences. His mother had always felt that "something was going to happen," and he had absorbed her anxiety feelings. Later he committed some sins, and his subconscious mind insisted upon self punishment. He became victim to the mechanism of self-punishment. As a result of this unhappy combination, I found him this day in a highly inflamed state of nervous reaction.
Finishing our conversation, I stood beside his chair a moment. There was no one near, so I rather hesitantly suggested, "Would you by any chance like me to pray with you?" He nodded, and I put my hand on his shoulder and prayed, "Dear Jesus, as You healed people in the long ago and gave them peace, heal this man now. Give him fully of Thy forgiveness. Help him to forgive himself. Separate him from all his sins and let him know that You do not hold them against him. Set him free from them. Then let Thy peace flow into his mind, into his soul, and into his body."
He looked up at me with a strange look on his face and then turned away, for there were tears in his eyes and he didn’t want me to see them. We were both a bit embarrassed, and I left him. Months later I met him, and he said, "Something happened to me down there that day when you prayed for me. I felt a strange sense of quietness and peace, and," he added, "healing."
He goes to church regularly now and he reads the Bible every day of his life. He follows the laws of God and he has lots of driving force. He is a healthy, happy man, for he has peace in his heart and mind.
(From Power Of Positive Thinking by Norman V Peale)
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