How To Put The Subconscious Mind To Work
	Mental Indolence <  Previous Contents

I had taught that oft times the one little push that the mind needs to get it over the hill top for health, is a suggestion augmented by the pressure of the finger tips, palms of the hands, tips of the toes and feet.--"Hemisphere Therapy."

After this lesson had been given, a young lady, who had been brought into my healing class in a wheel chair, having no use of her legs or feet, was personally told by me, and her mother as well, to be sure to practice this treatment in order to help the girl's mind heal herself. Some three days after, I took the girl for a treatment. Her feet were encased in big, specially made leather shoes and were as cold as ice itself. I took off the shoes and began to give the healing demonstration. After I had worked like a Trojan for fifteen minutes the circulation began to manifest itself, and before the class, the girl raised her feet and used her legs which she had not been able to do before. I turned to the mother and said, "How many times a day have you given this girl "Hemisphere Therapy" treatment! to which the mother replied, "Not any."

Indeed, people want to be healed, but they want somebody else to do it, and that cannot always be done. The patient himself must manifest some interest, physical as well as mental, in many cases, to bring about the healing.

Therefore I should like to emphasize as the last reason why some people are not well the fact, that after they know what has brought about their sickness, mental indolence prevents their healing, or prevents them from keeping health gained.

In one of my classes was a woman who had suffered with rheumatism, for three years. She could hardly navigate. "When she did, each step was punctuated with shots of pain. She was instantly healed in my class demonstration. She walked up and down the platform, lifted her legs and walked away, as well as ever. The next night I could tell by the expression in her face that something was wrong. Trying to build up her mind to a psychological plane where there would be a permanent healing, I gave her no attention for the next three nights, hoping that when I did come back to her, she would be so desirous of a permanent healing, that she would do what I had suggested. I knew she had not followed instructions.

So in our healing class a few days later, I again treated her and she was healed for the second time. She walked easily, sprightly, free from pain, as well as before. The next day she had reverted again. I have so many to look after that seldom do I give personal attention to a patient more than once. That is enough. Oft times I only speak to them or just touch them gently, but I had twice administered to this woman my energetic, magnetic treatment. So the next day I turned her over to a man in the class whose talent for healing I had discovered. (I might add here that anyone can heal, provided he has the faith within himself, so that he can instill into the consciousness of others, the faith within THEMSELVES to be healed). He had as good result as I. For the third time the woman was healed.

After I had healed her the second time, I had given her direct instructions what to do; to continue to hold a mental attitude of peace, harmony, health, love, God; also to follow daily readings which I exact from all people who take my healing class. There are certain fundamental principles by which we are healed, and we should be in tune with these laws not only momentarily, when we are healed, but forever after, if we expect to retain our health. It is therefore very necessary that people set aside at least a few minutes each day to read, meditate, and concentrate for their continued health.

I asked this woman after I had healed her for the second time, if she would promise to go home and to follow the outline of our reading, "Meditation and Concentration" before the class meeting the next day. With tears in her eyes she said, "Indeed I will." But when she returned the next day, reverted again, I asked her if she had done as I had requested, and she said, "No." Then some excuses followed.

But really it was mental indolence. Psychology cannot give a permanent cure to people who are obsessed by mental indolence. The patient must help God to help the law of healing to help one's self.

Away with mental indolence if you would have health.

After we have our healing let us be sure to give out our health to others.

The more one gives of his energy, the more he has for himself. The more one shares the joys of life with others, the more capacity for enjoyment he has. The more one shows the spirit of friendship, the more friends he has. The more one loves, the more love is lavished upon him, so the more health we give out to others, the more we shall have ourselves.

To keep your health, tell others about the ways of living, the laws of nature and the healing power of mind. Not only tell but do--"faith without works is dead." Put a lot of work back of your faith and mental healing. Spread the health mes- sage wherever you can in every way possible. In short, go out of your way to bring healing to others and that which you give others you will surely get back again.

I would suggest to and even urge the reader who is taking this course for health to re-read both this book and our other books on Applied Psychology, and as you do so take not only mental notes, but jot down the things which interest you the most. Turn them over in your mind and see what you can add to these thoughts and how you may apply them not only in your life, but also in the lives of others. Get such a fundamental knowledge of the power of thought that you will be well loaded, ready for double-barrel, rapid-fire answers to all doubts or questions that others may present from time to time.

Nearly every one is so constituted that once in a while he needs to prove these things to himself all over again. It is necessary not only to build up a good foundation of faith in the virtue of mind healing, but to keep feeding that faith from time to time--growing in the grace of mental science.

Why is not every life cured of its disease? Simply because some lives are not sufficiently persistent in their development of a health consciousness. They want health, and they say they are ready and willing to do anything which will bring health to them, but when we put their statement to the test we find that they are only "ready and willing"' to do it their way, and that when they find "their way" will not do, they quit

We should not only read, study, attend lectures, clubs, and associate with those of like mind, to keep our healing but also to the advantage of our whole growth; namely, mental, spiritual and physical development.

Very frequently a patient who has been healed, been made perfectly well, and is enjoying complete health, desires treatment to continue for the sake of the spiritual benefits derived.

Therefore, many people who are of intuitional nature, of religious and moral types, and spiritually inclined, will be able to keep their healing and maintain their progress much better if they continue from time to time to receive treatments from those who have given them a spiritual up lift.

Of course, we now are speaking about spirituality in its deepest and most significant sense. As stated elsewhere we could emphasize this "spiritual" idea to an unreasonable degree. For to stress the "spiritual" in our healing unduly and to overlook the natural, material, physical laws, is to carry mental healing to what is called in logic a reduction and absurdism.

The spiritual is the biggest thing in man, but for a time at least, this spirit within man is here on a physical plane, earth-bound, if you please, so that the physical and the mental must be recognized and harmonized.

So I say it is most important, no matter what may have been our early religious training or belief, that we develop our spiritual natures, and cultivate religious aspirations and associations if we would attain to the loftiest spiritual plane. One of the aspects of the great Christian Science movement which is open to criticism is that everything is spiritual and religious to the Christian Scientist, so much so that he has overlooked the other important domain of man; the material. This has brought down upon the movement an avalanche of criticism which would have been avoided had the early leaders of the Christian Science cult, instead of denying "matter", recognized the material as well as the spiritual.

While, therefore, we affirm with all the emphasis at our command that we should live scientifically and think rightly, we assert that man is primarily a religious animal and thus to be a rounded out whole, his religious instinct must be developed.

Man is not material only, he is primarily spiritual and to develop this spiritual side to the full, man must recognize the divinity within, the source whence he came, that of which he is a part, the very essence of the divinity, in order to be, in the fullest sense of the word, a spiritual being--"now are we the sons of God."

The normal man and woman yearn for God "as the hart (male red deer) panteth after the water brooks."

It is hardly necessary for me, therefore, gently to admonish you, and direct your attention to the fact, that man has not yet come to the end of the rainbow of health, success and happiness. In- deed, we are only on the way to the crest, and are being swept onward to loftier heights by every gentle wind from the mental realm which touches the leaf on the calendar of time.

We shall know more about truth tomorrow than we know today. That means we shall know more about the natural laws of health and the natural laws of spirit tomorrow than we know today. That is as it ought to be. The wise student will ever be ready and open for the influx of the spirit to guide turn to a deeper knowledge of the laws of man, of nature and of God.

Look for truth everywhere!

As mentioned elsewhere not only may the subconscious mind be used for healing disease, but for warding off the encroachments of sickness. The method necessary to be followed is to hold oneself in the mental attitude of denying the power of disease and thus obtain the mastery over it. The instant the patient recognizes the first symptoms of any approaching sickness, he should vigorously begin auto-suggestions to the contrary, --affirming health, strength, power, harmony, denying that disease will have any power over him while he is in such a mental attitude.

Just as prevention of disease by materia medica has always been an important tenet of medical practice, so the prevention of disease by suggestion and auto-suggestion will in time become the most important phase of all mental healing. Indeed its chief value will eventually be found to consist in the almost unlimited power which the subconscious mind confers upon one to protect himself against contracting disease.

After the patient has persisted in his healing and it has been effected, should there ever be any inharmony a second time or should but one sickness out of many be healed, he will find that the next time he tries mental healing it will not take as long as the first. There will be less resistance of doubtful auto-suggestion to overcome, more strength of body and mind. The subconscious will take the suggestions of healing more easily the second time than the first.

In some instances irregular habits have to be corrected before the healing takes place. Remember, therefore, that after the healing the patient should not return to an irregular way of living-- irregularity in eating, irregularity in drinking, excess in the use of tobacco, alcohol or stimulants, or abnormal sex practice.

Be sure that everything you do, you do with a purpose, using your mind continually. As you walk, you should take your health affirmations or formulae. You should breathe with the thought of health and life, strength, vitality, love, purity and growth. You should eat and drink with a purpose, bringing your mind to the attention of health and life and love and God.

It is not, however, enough in mental therapeutics to present good suggestions: we must also remove previous bad ones. Such a patient must therefore be isolated to avoid conversations about, and sympathy with the patient's sufferings, all of which keeps up the action or vibration of the diseased ideal centers.

Any one who talks much of illness radiates a diseased consciousness.

One who regards soundness as normal and to be expected, sheds it broadcast, and his very presence will strengthen and uplift.

In "Self-Healing through Suggestion," Henry Harrison Brown gives a unique illustration:

Thought-conditions which have lam latent in the system make themselves known to consciousness, just as an imperfect stringer in a bridge will sometime manifest in an accident. When any unpleasant condition becomes apparent we can but say: "'It is an old condition coming to the surface. Let it come and I thus shall outgrow it!" With such thought there will be new nerve conditions instituted so that recurrence of the trouble becomes impossible.

You re-live in old conditions whenever you recall them. You recreate any condition by brooding upon it. Therefore memory is either a life-bringer or a life-destroyer.

When you "note the bright hours only" memory is one great source of health. Cultivate "the gentle art" of forgetting all that is not pleasant. Never recall, never talk about, never think about, the unpleasant past. The outline for right thoughts is given in previous pages. Any thought born in, or that will create, any morbid emotion, is to be avoided as you now avoid poison. Turn from it and affirm the opposite.

Think of yourself as perfect in spirit and as manifesting that perfection through your body, now.' This picture of perfection is your Ideal.

Many a person who allows himself to dwell upon his sickness and to tell others about it comes in time to exaggerate until his imagination leads him to believe that his pains and aches are much worse than those of any one else, notwithstanding the fact that thousands of other good, patient people have actually suffered more than he who talks the most about it. By recalling our sickness and telling others about it (unless we are so well grounded in our own healing and so fixed in the new attitude toward life that we see only the good, think only the good and live only the good), we are quite liable to effect a return of the old habit of thinking about sickness until the sickness may and often does return.

So you see common sense must be applied to psychology if nature is to be given a chance to do its part.

Notice how this acts upon the dyspeptic, gloomy, pessimistic, downhearted and dreary. He enters the house and at once puts his wife on edge with the fear that he will lapse into another fit of temper or spasmodic tantrum, either because he does not like what is cooked, or because his morbid caprice demands something else that is not cooked. The good housewife seeing her dear hubby in the door-way cannot even wait for him to be seated at the table before beginning to admonish him to be careful what he eats. Hubby must eat this, and hubby must not eat that. This will hurt hubby's stomach, and that will clog hubby's liver. Hubby will start to eat something, only to be interrupted by a terrified wifely cry that it will be the death of him.

Now although this precautionary nagging is not maintained through any sinister motive it is none the less the very worst policy of suggestion which could possibly be followed. The solicitous wife thinks she is helping to prevent another attack of dyspepsia, whereas in reality she is merely giving her spouse a few pushes downward into the dyspeptic slough of despond. He takes up the suggestion that this thing or that thing is bad, that his stomach won't stand this or that, and more harm is done than as though he ate a real square meal of the right stuff. He goes about with insufficient nutrition, and what little he does eat is taken in an atmosphere of dread and fear.

The stomach begins to contract, the gastric juice secretion is curtailed, and the sufferer develops a sinking sensation inside. When he reaches the next meal he is as hungry as a bear and this time he overeats despite the fusi-lade of advice from his alarmed counselor across the table. He overeats partly to make up for the scantiness of his previous meals and partly in a spirit of resentment and contention; resentment toward his wife for telling him what he should and should not eat, and contention with himself for eating as scantily as he did.

This is what we mean by having the right atmosphere.

Watch all suggestions which reach you after you have been healed; discouraging the negative and pessimistic and clinging only to the positive and impressive.

We frequently see unhealthful atmosphere generated in communities through such mistaken but well-meaning devices as "cancer week," "tuberculosis week," and other "weeks" of similar nature, when people are advised to seek counsel from a family physician or someone else who is willing and able to give the advice and take the money for it.

Much harm is done in this way, because the indecisive and uncertain state of mind produced. The "what's-it-all-about" feeling engendered, and the naturally resultant dread of a thing so blatantly advertised, all combine to create a worse state of mind than before, not only in the actually sick, but likewise in those who are sensitive and susceptible to suggestion.

Create your own "atmosphere," if negative suggestions are all around.

If conversation about disease is forced upon you by other people, banish such thoughts and turn the discussion into happy and useful channels.

Keep your mind occupied by healthful, happy, bracing and pleasurable ideas. This will stimulate the bodily organs to perform their functions in a normal and vigorous way.

The power of mind to attract disease came most forcibly to me while writing "Fundamentals of Psychology" during a visit to the rural community in Pennsylvania where I was born.

The main conversation in that little town among people on the street corners, and visiting – and here they have the habit of most rural districts, of neighbors and relatives visiting a great deal, especially in the winter--the burden of the conversation was sickness, sickness, sickness. I heard more about cancer in the two months I was in that little town than I have heard in all of my life spent elsewhere. These conversations recalled my boyhood days and the many good people in that section who had died of cancer. It is such a horrible disease that it gives people who are so inclined occasion to talk about disease to their hearts' content.

And so doing, they deeply impress the cancer percept upon the subconscious, with the result that cancer is a very ordinary disease. I never saw anything to beat it. They talk about cancer as other people talk about colds and coughs. What they talk about they get. Members of the Ladies' Aid Society talk about sickness at their meetings, the fishermen talk about sickness, people on the streets and in the stores talk about sickness, punctured and staccatoed and pizzicatoed with cancer until the whole air is filled with cancer, cancer, cancer.

A real way to get cancer is to talk about it, and the safest way to get rid of it is to take mental treatments. Readers of this book will have done with the gossip of cancer before all the pages shall have been read.

If you continually give your cell minds the suggestions of cancer, the cell minds are going to respond to that suggestion. If you tell your cell minds that you are well, you will be well. If you think health, you are thinking health into your cell minds--if you think sickness, you are thinking sickness into your cell minds.

If you cannot get your mind off your own sickness and trouble, become interested in other people who are well and associate with them as much as possible. Study the laws of health and hygiene as a matter of private and necessary business; but seek the companionship of those who talk health success and happiness, rather than cultivating the sort of gossipers who spend their hours swapping stories of indigestion, rheumatism, hardening of the arteries and high blood pressure.

In "Suggestion and Autosuggestion," Baudouin comments very practically and enlighteningly on this line of health talk:

When we have occasion to refer to our habitual ailments, we should be careful always to employ the past tense, saying, ''I have slept bade of late;" instead of the customary present, "I am a bad sleeper," which condenses the present and the future, and involves the future just as much as if we were to say, "I shall sleep badly tonight." Furthermore we should make it a rule to talk as little as possible about our ailments. When we are asked how we are, it is better to reply "Quite well, thank you''--better not only that we may avoid aggravating our own troubles, but in order that we may avoid disseminating suggestive contagion. Speaking generally, we should turn our minds away from "undesirable'" things

The Greeks had the excellent sense not to talk very much about their ailments.

If you are not a Greek, in blood, at least be a good Greek in spirit when it comes to putting the soft pedal on the discussion of your troubles.

When one hits the true gait in talking health, and really gets his own stride in spreading the gospel of well-being, it is easier to talk health than ill-health.

Get your health stride!

We must talk about the things we want; the perfection of that which we hope to reach.

Suppose the artist were always to talk about imperfect models, or the architect always to look at bad plans. Where would they get ?

As the artist must think about perfect models, and the architect think about good plans, so must the health-seeker think about health rather than ill health, perfection rather than imperfection, and harmony and growth rather than sickness and disease.

Jesus gave good advice when he admonished the leper he had cured, "See thou tell no man." It was an injunction which he often repeated during his career as a healer of the sick.

We have had all kinds of exegetical comments on this passage from the Scriptures, but I believe the only correct interpretation is that Jesus understood how when a person is suddenly healed by any process he becomes avid to talk about it in public and private, and to sympathizer, believer, skeptic and scoffer alike.

The skeptical people who doubt the very principle of such things become argumentative, or ridicule the idea of healing by mental processes.

Jesus understood this and realized that skeptics might talk something like this to the patient:

"You have been cured by exciting your imagination. You think you are healed but you are not. Your disease will return as soon as the excitement has subsided. You are on a mental spree, ana when your mental drunkenness wears off you will be worse off than before."

If the one who is healed is not strong enough to maintain his own idea about the thing, and thus ward off such incredulous tirades, he may fall by the wayside, accept the negative suggestions, and by crediting the skeptical theory become worse than before.

Jesus gave no classes in mental therapeutics, but only exhorted his subjects to have faith.

It is essential that every person be thoroughly grounded in the process by which he is healed, if he would safely retain the results of the cure despite contact with negative and materialist minds. To this end one cannot too strongly urge that people who have been made well by the power of the mind refrain from talking about their past troubles.

Of course there is another side to this--a side arising out of the fact that one man's testimony will help to heal others. Testimony was one of the mainsprings whereby Christianity spread so rapidly in the first two centuries after Christ.

Testimony indeed is what helps many a cult to grow; but before you give your testimony (which everyone who has been healed should ultimately do) be sure that you are grounded and anchored and doubly anchored in the faith that you have been healed logically, scientifically and everlastingly. Then you may tell others, but not until then

Besides some who tell of their sufferings suffer again, and the reaction upon the consciousness of the sick man is commensurate with the responses which the sympathetic listener gives to the doleful sick tale.

Along this line you will notice very often that when a patient begins to tell of his serious illness or the sufferings he has endured, he reflects his former symptoms in his actions and his facial expressions. Reciting his old troubles restores to the picture gallery of memory in the subconscious his past experiences and even if this does not bring the old pains back it will very often retard the patient's progress toward recovery.

So when you tell others about the wonderful power of mind for healing and explain that you have been healed, be sure that you hold uppermost in your mind your improvements. Concentrate not upon what you were, but upon what you are, and what you will be. Think only the thoughts that you desire to have manifested in your body.

If a person is always talking about his particular sickness, he conveys his unhappy thoughts to his subconscious mind and his body is affected accordingly--that is, provided he is not strong enough to speak about his sickness without dwelling upon the past. If his thinking concerns itself chiefly with his wholeness today and that which he desires tomorrow, no harm will come of it.

At all events it would be well for all who have just been healed to take positive affirmations after they have told others of their sickness and their healing, such as "I am well, whole and complete," "I am one in spirit, divine in life, whole in body, in tune with the Infinite. I am, therefore, harmonious, well and complete" "Health, Life, Love, God."

Here is another striking reason why it is not well to pay much attention to the cause or to the diagnosis of your disease: A person who is in- disposed, who doesn't know just what is the matter with him, who has perhaps over-eaten or is run down physically, goes to a physician. The good doctor being only human and liable to err, possibly misreads the symptoms and wrongly diagnoses the case. If now the patient is a highly sensitive person, a diagnosis, indicating a malignant or dreaded disease, may arouse in the patient (especially if he be a thoracic or a muscular) an emotional state such that the suggestion erected by the faulty diagnosis really causes a serious disease.

Many physicians will not state the results of a diagnosis in the presence of a person who is in an emotional state.

I should not be understood to assert that nothing but unfriendly suggestions may be readily accepted during emotionalism, for a person in a high state of emotionalism is just as impressionable to favorable as to unfavorable suggestions. How quickly a man in the heat of anger will change his attitude when a sympathetic third person gently speaks to him in terms of confidential and comprehending love. Therefore, all emotional states should be used to call up imagery of the beautiful, of the good, of the wonderful, the successful and the healthful.

We have been taught and have been maintaining certain attitudes toward life in terms of conventional theories of disease and suffering. Your attitude is now beginning to be that of a thoughtful soul, speaking the language of health, not the nomenclature of disease. Out of this attitude will spring new habits of life and better health. Out of this attitude physical changes will come. They are bound to come. They must come. They will come. The essential thing is to attain this serene attitude and enjoy its benefits.

Toward the close of the wonderful Sermon on the Mount Jesus admonished his hearers to be as modest in the matter of prayer as in all other aspects of deportment, in the following words:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.--Matthew 6: 5-6.

Of course, Christ does not mean necessarily to go into a closet--he means to be by oneself in mind. This may be upon the street car as well as upon the desert sands. We may be surrounded by the multitudes and yet our mind be in the inner most recesses of the soul.

The injunction Christ gives means that what you desire you should ask for in secret, and it will be presented to you openly.