CHAPTER 18WHEN YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH YOUR ENVIRONMENT
DON'T fool yourself with the idea that you are compelled to do or be anything. You are not doing things because you are compelled to, but because YOU CHOOSE to. Because there is some line of reasoning within yourself that keeps you choosing to do them.
You never lift your hand unless you choose to.
You never get out of bed in the morning except as you choose to.
You could lie down on the bed this moment and never move hand or foot again if you chose to, and your friends, or your town, or somebody or something would take care of you.
Quit fooling yourself by laying the blame for your conditions, or your feelings, or your thoughts or actions off onto somebody else. Trace everything back to its root in your own CHOICE. Ask yourself why you choose to do what you do, and keep on asking until you know the truth.
Lay the blame for everything on your own choice; review the conditions, and make the right choice for every step; and you will very quickly find yourself walking the straight and narrow path that is infinite peace and freedom. You will find your prayers rising to the infinite and their answers lilting cheerfully in your own heart.
Laying the blame for conditions upon the actions or thoughts of other people makes crooked thinking, and crooked thinking makes crooked actions, a crooked path to nowhere.
Recognizing your choice as the original impulse of all your conditions enables you after a time to think straight through the mazes of material limitations.
The point of choice within you is the place where will is freed. It is the one point in all the universe out of which issues FREE WILL — the free will of good and all good.
Take stock of yourself and choose you this moment the right. That is the great success. Let your life be a succession of such successes, and you will realize infinite wisdom and power and freedom of action.
Your power of choice is your infinite power.
Your power of choice is your God-power.
Choose ye the right course regardless of the shadow things that seem to limit, and you exercise your infinite power.
Keep on choosing the right and it becomes a habit which almost does itself. And the habit of right choice brings the consciousness of freedom.
Right choice is always the choice of the highest we know — the highest we know how to do under the circumstances.
Very often the best thing we know how to do under the circumstances is to keep still and let the spirit work.
Perhaps in a majority of cases the right choice of what to do is to do nothing, but let go and allow the spirit of love to work in and through us to will and to do its good pleasure.
Be still and know that I AM God within you, who is responsible for all your thoughts and choices and deeds.
Know that I AM the executive of the infinite One Spirit — that executive whose function is to choose the right, whose function is to choose in all things the highest.
Out of the fullness of the heart the I AM speaks. If the heart recognizes only God as its wisdom and its power, the I AM always chooses right.
If you take to heart the words and actions of other people, viewing them in the light of a cause for your own thoughts, feelings and actions, you distract and divide the tension of the I AM, so that he chooses the wrong thought and the wrong action instead of the right.
Let thine I AM be single to the One Spirit and thy whole body shall be full of the light of truth, and all thy choices shall be choices of right, and thy paths shall be ways of pleasantness and peace.
The "voices" that you hear bidding you to go out and do something are merely the voices of discontent.
When the still small voice speaks it tells you exactly what to do. That is, it doesn't whisper to get out and do something, it whispers to you to get out and do a definite thing. Or it merely says "Get out."
"Discontent is the mother of progress." Accept it as such.
But discontent is not progress — far from it. Progress is push in a definite chosen direction. Take a special time every day for going into the Silence and praying to the Spirit to tell you just what you are to do. When you go to sleep at night pray the Spirit to make clear to you just how you are to get into something that will engage all your interest and energy and usefulness. Believe that the Spirit leads you, and let patience have her perfect work, knock and keep on knocking for the Spirit to open, keep on believing until you receive. Ask, and listen to the voice within you. After a time it will all come clear. The Spirit will synchronize those voices of discontent and some day you will wake up and find them harmoniously urging toward a certain definite line of action. Then if you act in faith believing you will find the way made plain step by step.
In the meantime, remember that you are in exactly the right place. Remember that and keep on remembering it. Do your work better and more beautifully than it was ever done before. Put more ingenuity into it.
Set aside certain portions of every day of your life for study of some sort which will help you to get ready for the new work toward which your discontent is moving you. Take up the study you feel best fitted for, and see that it is a study. Organize it just as you would organize any school work, and be absolutely thorough in it. This is the only way to get ready for new things coming, the only way to enlarge your mind store and gain the power to direct your energies in desired channels.
One woman I know of couldn't find anything better to do for this purpose than to read a very abstruse history of the Greeks and their laws. She didn't understand more than half of what she was reading, but she persisted. It took her a year to read those great volumes through, and she spent one hour a day at it and never missed a single day. By the end of the year she felt as if she were a new being. She had gained command of her faculties and her activities. She was quickened body and mind through the use of her will and her patience in concentration upon that Greek history.
Of course everybody wants to know the end of the story so I will tell you that two or three years afterwards this woman read those histories through again just to see if she could be interested. She became so absorbed in them that she ended by reading them through a third time, and eventually she became an authority on Greek history.
This means that she had added a perfectly new interest to her life, which enabled her to become like a little child again and grow up in a new line. It enlarged and enriched her life forever after.
Here is a significant statement of Balyogi's: "Attention is the vital thing in this science. One should try to do every exercise attentively. No matter whether you succeed in attaching your attention or nit, try your best and the word itself will catch your attention successfully day by day in the increasing growth. The statement itself is the remedy which also brings the attention. It is advisable to attend it carefully. Attention is also sooner possessed by attention, you know."
In other words, you grow by trying.
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