If we could only learn the art of always keeping ourselves in harmony we could multiply our effectiveness immeasurably.
Nothing could induce Ole Bull to play in public until his violin was in perfect tune. It did not make any difference how long it took him or how uneasy his audience became, if a string stretched the least bit during a performance, even though the discord was not noticed by anyone but himself, the instrument had to be put into harmony before he went on, A poorer musician would not be so particular. He would say to himself, “I will run through this piece no matter if one string is down a bit. No one may detect it but myself.”
Great music teachers say that nothing will ruin the sensitiveness of the ear and lower the musical perception and standard so quickly as using an instrument out of tune or singing with others who cannot appreciate fine tone distinctions. The mind after a while ceases to distinguish delicate shadings of tone. The voice quickly imitates and follows the musical instrument accompanying it. The ear is deceived, and, very soon, the singer forms the habit of singing off key.
It does not matter what particular instrument you may be using in the great life orchestra, whether it be the violin, the piano, the voice, or your mind expressing itself in literature, law, medicine, or any other vocation, you cannot afford to start your concert, with the great human race for your audience, without getting it in tune.
Whatever else you may do, do not play out of tune, sing out of tune, or work out of tune. Do not let your discordant instrument spoil your ear or your mental appreciation. Familiarity with discord will wreck your success perceptions. Not even a Paderewski could win exquisite harmonies from a piano out of tune.
Mental discord is fatal to quality in work. The destructive emotions—worry, anxiety, hatred, jealousy, anger, greed, selfishness, are all deadly enemies of efficiency. A man can no more do his best work when possessed by any of these emotions than a watch can keep good time when there is friction in the bearings of its delicate mechanism. In order to keep perfect time the watch must be exquisitely adjusted. Every wheel, every cog, every bearing, every jewel must be mechanically perfect, for any defect, any trouble, any friction anywhere will make absolutely correct time impossible. The human machinery is infinitely more delicate than the mechanism of the finest chronometer and it needs regulating, needs to be put in perfect tune, adjusted to a nicety every morning before it starts on the day’s run, just as a violin needs tuning before the concert begins.
Have you ever watched a centrifugal wringer in a laundry? It wabbles so badly when it first begins to revolve that it seems as though it would tear itself to pieces, but gradually, as the velocity increases, the motion becomes steadier and steadier, and the machine speeds with lightning rapidity on its center. When it once gains its perfect balance nothing seems to disturb it, although when it first began to revolve the least thing made it wabble.
A thousand and one trifles which disturb one who has not found his mental center do not affect the poised, self-centered soul at all. Even great things, panics, crises, failures, fires, the loss of property or friends, disasters of any kind, do not throw him off his balance. He has found his center, his equilibrium, and no longer vacillates between hope and despair. He has found that he is a part of the great unity law that runs all through the universe, a part of the Infinite Idea.
A poised, balanced mind unifies all the mental energies of the system, while the mind that flies all to pieces at the least provocation is constantly demoralized; the mental forces are scattered, there is a lack of coordination, mental cohesion, and consequent power. Harmony is the secret of all effectiveness, beauty, happiness; and harmony is simply keeping ourselves in tune with the Infinite.
This means absolute health of all the mental and moral faculties. Poise, serenity, amiability, sweetness of temper tend to keep the whole mental and physical economy in harmony with the perpetual renewal processes constantly going on within us, which are destroyed by friction.
Man is like a wireless telegraph. He is constantly sending out messages of peace and power, of harmony or of discord, according to the character of the thought, the ideal. These messages are flying from us with lightning speed in every direction, and they arouse in others qualities like themselves. The poised soul is so in trenched in the calm of eternal harmony that he is beyond the reach of disaster or the fear of it, conscious that he so rests in the great arms of Infinite love and perfection that nothing can harm him, because he lives, moves, and has his being in eternal truth. Such a great serene soul is like a huge iceberg, balanced by the calm in the depths of the sea. It laughs at the giant waves which beat against its sides and the storms which lash it They do not even cause it a tremor; because its huge bulk which enables it to ride calmly and serenely without perturbation when lashed by the ocean fury is poised in the perpetual calm in the depths below.
It is strange that men who are very shrewd in other matters should be so shortsighted, so ignorant, so utterly foolish in regard to the importance of keeping their marvelous, intricate, and delicate mental machinery every day in tune. Many a business man drags himself wearily through a discordant day, and finds himself completely exhausted at night, who would have accomplished a great deal more with infinitely less effort, and have gone home in a much fresher condition, if he had taken a little time to put himself in tune before going to his office in the morning.
The man who goes to work in the morning feeling out of sorts with everybody, in an antagonistic attitude of mind toward life and especially toward those with whom he has to deal, is in no condition to bring the maximum of his power to his task. A large percentage of his mental force will not be available.
People who have never tried it cannot begin to realize the tremendous advantage of putting oneself in tune in the morning before starting on the day’s work.
A New York businessman recently told me that he never allows himself to go to his office in the morning until he has put his mind into perfect harmony with the world. If he has the slightest feeling of envy or jealousy, if he feels that he is selfish or unfair, if he has not the right attitude toward his partner or any of his employees, he simply will not go to work until his instrument is in tune, until his mind is clear of any form of discord. He says he has discovered that if he starts out in the morning with a right attitude of mind toward everybody, he gets infinitely more out of the day than he otherwise would; that whenever he has allowed himself to go to work in the past in a discordant condition he has not obtained nearly as good results and he has made those about him unhappy, to say nothing of the increased wear and tear upon himself.
One reason why the lives of so many men are thin, lean, and ineffective is because they do not rise above the things that untune their minds, irritate, annoy and worry them, and produce discord.
Many of these people who do only mediocre things really have a great deal of ability, but are so sensitive to friction that they cannot do effective work. If they only had someone to steer them, to plan for them, to keep discord away from them and to help them keep in harmony, they could do remarkable things. Yet those who do great things are obliged to acquire this “art of arts” for themselves. No one can exercise it for them, and no one can accomplish anything very great in this world unless he is able to rise superior to the thousand and one things which would irritate and distract his attention.
A great many people who are disagreeable and irritable when they are tired are very amiable and harmonious when they are rested. This ought to show them that the cause of their irritability and in harmony is due to the sin of tired nerves and brain exhaustion.
How often we see men who have become absolutely unbearable, after a year of hard work, completely revolutionized when they return from a trip abroad or a few weeks’ vacation in the country! They do not seem like the same men that they were before they went away. The trifles which would throw them into a fit of passion before their vacation do not affect them at all now.
The mechanism of the mind is extremely delicate, and any of the animal passions let loose in the mental realm create fearful havoc in a very short time.
As a squeaking axle indicates the want of a lubricant, so friction or discord anywhere in the physical economy is a warning that something is wrong. It is not normal that the beautiful and delicate machinery which God finished and pronounced “good” should be out of repair. A dispute at the breakfast table, or any little wrangling in the morning may destroy the peace of the household for the entire day. A moment’s hot temper may cost you a very clear friendship for life.
How little we appreciate the marvelousness of this exquisite mechanism of the mind which forms the connecting link between the created and the Creator! It is through this that a human being is linked to the Divine. Instead of giving thanks and supreme gratitude to our Maker every day for this wonder of wonders of the human brain—the mind—we abuse it in such a way that we do not get out of it a tenth of what we might
We run through this exquisite mechanism the coarsest, most vicious, destructive thought. We force it to do work when it is jaded and out of tune; when its spontaneity is gone, and its vital standards are low; force it by all sorts of stimulants and willpower. We strain its exquisite gossamer mechanism until it is often prematurely injured, overstrained, ruined for its finest work.
It was intended as an instrument of a happiness so superb, an existence so grand and sublime, as we, in our coarse, clumsy, brutal way of treating it, have no conception of. The right use of the mind would soon bring the millennium.
We ought to so school ourselves that no matter what happens we should not lose our presence of mind, our balance. We should always keep our equilibrium so as to be able, no matter what happens, to do the levelheaded thing, the wise thing, the right, square thing.
How many men have failed to achieve the great success which their ability prophesied because of the “touchy” habit, the scolding, fretting, nagging habit!
Somewhere in my travels I have seen what appeared to be a great stone face carved out of the side of a huge cliff, a face scarred and scratched by the sharp edge of gravel and sand hurled against it during the tremendous sand storms of the desert. Everywhere we see human faces scratched and scarred by tempests of passion, of anger, by chafing, fretting and worrying until the divine image is almost erased, and all power of accomplishing effective work has been destroyed.
How little we realize the power there is in harmony! It makes all the difference in the world in our life work whether we are balanced and serene, or are continually wrought up, full of discords and errors, and harassed with all sorts of perplexing, vicious things.
If we could only learn the art of keeping ourselves in harmony, we could multiply our effectiveness many times and add years to our lives. A man feels like a giant when his mind is perfectly poised, when his mental processes are running smoothly and nothing is troubling him. On the other hand, gravel in the shoe would make a Webster a fourth-rate orator. I have seen a great statesman shorn of his power and made perfectly miserable by gnats and mosquitoes. He could not think. He could not use half of his great mental powers. It took all of his time to fight these little pests.
The efficiency of a great majority of business and professional men is seriously marred by little irritating annoyances.
No human being can express the best thing in him until he is in tune with the Infinite, until his purpose lies parallel with that of his God. While there is divergence, while there is fighting between one’s own plan and the purpose which God has marked in one’s very constitution, the work must be inferior. As long as we are working at cross-purposes with our Creator’s plan, there can be no worthy achievement.
Those who would attain exquisite mental poise must dive into the depths of their beings, where there is eternal calm which no mental tempest can disturb,—a calm in which the mind is in communication with the Divine. Dwelling upon human qualities will never bring perfect mental balance, that divine serenity which makes mere physical beauty unattractive in comparison.
Some of our best observatories are built upon mountain tops so that the great lens which sweeps the heavens may not be obscured by the dust, the dirt, the mists floating in the lower atmosphere. In order to shut out the din, the noises which distract the mind, in order to shut out the thousand and one disturbing influences in our strenuous life, the things which warp and twist and distort us, it is necessary to rise into the higher realm of thought and feeling, where we can breathe a purer air, get in closer touch with the Divine.
We shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness, and when we wake in His likeness we wake in our own, because we were created in His likeness.
Why should we not have divine power if we are of divine origin? Why think it so strange for us to partake of the attributes of our Maker? Do you expect your child to be an inferior being to yourself, not to partake of any of your power or your higher attributes?
Why should God’s offspring think it strange that what is in God is in him?
The trouble with us is that we do not understand the principle of availing ourselves of the Divine Power, and until we do we shall always work at a disadvantage, doing little things with great effort when we might do grand things easily.
What makes human beings so restless, discontented and unhappy is that they have lost their bearings, their divine connection. Like a child which has lost its mother, the soul is ever seeking its God and never will be free from fear, never have the consciousness of security and assurance of protection, until it has found Him.
When you get into peaceful at-one-ment with the One Life, feel that you are drawing to yourself every good thing from the inexhaustible supply, you know that all of the yearnings and longings of your heart can thus be realized. Here is where the creative process goes on. From this invisible supply we can draw realities to match our desires.
We know that when we put ourselves into harmony with this great creative, beneficent power which health all our hurts and diseases, we not only unfold all our faculties harmoniously, but also are conscious of a marvelous happiness, a peace of mind which ought to convince us of the kindliness of this divine force.
Conscious cooperation with the creative force of the universe will bring man into complete realization of peace, power, and plenty, the blessedness that is his birthright.
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