" Wisdom comes from within and if you want to dig for wis- dom you have got to dig in the Silence. There is no other way. There is only one source of wisdom and that is God within you." --Elizabeth Towne
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Audio/Video not available] [Read Text Version] [Find at Local Library] [Purchase at BetterWorldBooks] >> More by Elizabeth Towne-------CONTENTS------- I. How to Reduce Friction and Preserve Love II. The Getting Mad Habit III. Help for the Drudging Wife IV. How Concentration Eliminates Drudgery V. Success For Two VI. On Pulling Together VII. On Dealing with Refractory Husbands VIII. When Your Husband Doesn't Agree IX. How To Live With A groucher X. To A Wife Whose Husband Gets on Her Nerves XI. Making Love a Habit of Thought XII. A Wife and Her Conscience XIII. When You Think You Are "Misunderstood" XIV. Getting Rid of Jealousy XV. Finance in the Home XVI. Husbands, Wives, and Business XVII. Marriage As A Business Paternership XVIII. When You Are Dissatisfied With Your Environment XIX. When You Can't Get on With Your Relatives--and In-Laws XX. How To Transmute The Family's Ridicule XXI. How To Make Yourself Liked and How To Express Yourself XXII. Making Money and Spending Money XXIII. To A Man Who Has Pressing Debts XXIV. The Individual As A Magnet XXV. How To Use Your Storehouse of Personal Power XXVI. Pre-Natal Impressions XXVII. Making The Right Environment For Your Child XXVIII. How Father and Mother Can Best Train The Baby XXIX. Answering Your Child's Questions XXX. How To Teach Your Children New Thought XXXIL. How To Treat the Arguing Habit XXXIL. When Your Daughter Declares Her Independence XXXIV. Taking Sides Against Father XXXV. How Neighboring Mothers Can Co-operate for the Development and Happiness of Themselves and Childre XXX. How to Teach Your Children the Valie of Money XXXIL. How To Teach Your Children the Value of Money (Continued) XXXIL. What I Think About Marriage and Divorce XXXIV. Hypocrites and Divorce
-------EXCERPT-------EVERY once in a while I get letters from persons complaining over the way the world in general treats them. They are bitter and resentful, and they vent this bitterness on those around them, excusing themselves by saying that the treatment they have received is the cause of their unhappy dispositions. My dear "misunderstood" friends, the bitterness is at the bottom of all your troubles and it began when you began. It comes from brooding over the selfish point of view. I am certain that you misunderstand yourself when you say that you were not bitter until people were mean to you. If you look back far enough and honestly enough you will find that all your life long you have expected kindness from people and that every time they failed to be kind you brooded over it and made yourself generally disagreeable and repellent. Inside, if not outside. And all your life long people have vented things on you, just as you vented your ill temper on others. If you had thrown off the unkind action of others and let your own light shine, your own Solar Plexus Sun shine, you would have got plenty of kindness in reparation for every unkindness that was vented upon you. Years ago I used to think that I was "weak" some way because I couldn't hold a grudge against persons who had been unkind or mean. Later when I found New Thought I saw the reason why. I kept right on being radiant — the unkindness only made a little cloud pass over the face of my sun — and because I kept on being radiant I kept attracting good things from others. I soon found that the next time I came around into conjunction with the one who had been unkind to me he had got all over his unkind feeling and was ready to put himself out to do nice things for me. You can always transmute evil with good will. You can always turn away harshness with the soft answer. You can always overcome evil with good. You can always thaw out other people's iciness and acidness by letting your own sun shine. You can always cleanse your mind of bitterness by denying the power of unkindness to affect you, and by turning your mind immediately to beautiful things.
You can always cut off your sins (shortcomings, falling-short-of-the-mark-nesses) by rightness — by right thinking, by right interest, by loving kindness. Whenever an unkind thing comes your way you can always remember that at heart every human being earnestly desires to express all good and all love; that the only reason he fails to express kindness is because of some kink in his thinking at the present moment; due to the bitterness exuding within him on account of recent actions of somebody else. In other words he is passing his bitterness on to you, and his bitterness was caused by the actions of some one outside, just as your bitterness is. And underneath it all, in him, is the great urge which makes him love righteousness. That same God-urge, working through an unenlightened intellect, makes him criticize and resent the world because it doesn't always express loving kindness and righteousness toward him. In other words, your bitterness biases you so that you misconstrue the intentions and actions of other people and blind yourself to the good which is always trying to reach you through others. You are a human ink fish, fooling yourself with clouds of your own bitterness. Your bitterness repels the things you desire because it is God's law that it shall do so. Loving kindness and spiritual radiance attract the things you desire because it is God's will that it shall be so. Your bitterness is entirely misplaced — the world treats you better than you deserve. This is so with us all.
You are the only one to blame for all the unhappiness that has come into your life so far. You have received exactly what you attracted. Or rather, you repelled exactly what you wanted. And you are doing it right along every day. And yet while you are to blame for it all, you are not to blame. For the trouble in you was so deep seated that you could not recognize it. Hereafter, attribute only good to every human being. Let your soft answer to yourself dissolve bitterness and turn away the wrath within. So shall you grow in wisdom and in knowledge and in soul-radiance...
The sun gives forth to us heat and light rays, without which this old world could never be. Glory to warmth and light, which are power and wisdom shed upon us. But there is likewise a third kind of ray shed by old Sol, whose mission we may not so readily bless. The sun's actinic rays are death-dealing. They cause disintegration, decomposition. There are people who declare that time was when a great canopy of vapor hung over the earth and revolved with it, as Jupiter's vapory canopies now do; and that this vapory canopy kept off almost completely the ac- tinic rays, while it admitted light and heat rays. Thus they account for Adam's and Methuselah's great ages. And they say that, unless this vapory canopy is again formed around our earth, to ward off these death- dealing rays, we shall never attain immortality in the flesh. They claim that as heat and light rays are power and wisdom, so the actinic rays are the Devil of the Bible, the Destroyer. And they believe that before man can be saved the Destroyer must be cast into outer darkness — shut out by that sheltering canopy of vapor. An interesting and apparently plausible theory, is it not? But there are facts yet to be reckoned with. It is true that if a great watery veil spread itself over the earth to-day there might be no more death. But neither could there be growth. Every form of life would continue as it is, wrinkles, gray hair and all. Why? Because there must be dissolution of old forms before there can be new ones made with that material. Take a photo plate as an instance: Here is a glass surface covered with a delicate gelatine; expose it in a dark-room under a red light and you can see just what it looks like; hold it there as long as you please and it still looks the same. Now shut it into the black camera and sally forth on pleasure bent. The delicate film is undisturbed. But you come to a beautiful bit of woodland you want to "snap." You turn your focus upon it, and one little snap of a second's duration transforms that gelatine surface. Just for one instant of time you let in those actinic rays, and then all was darkness again inside the camera. Now back you go into the dark-room and turn up the red light, by which you see again your beautiful bit of woodland, reproduced on that delicate gelatine surface. If you let in a bit of daylight your picture would be gone in a wink — the delicate gelatine would be "pied" in an attempt to reproduce whatever it faced. But you don't let in the light of day; you "fix" your bit of beautiful woodland by dipping the plate in a solution which hardens the particles of gelatine to the glass. Henceforth the light cannot affect that gelatine; the picture you have, but life, progress, change, possibilities, are gone from the delicate gelatine forever...