When you are accomplished in it, you may tell in five seconds whether you can trust a person or not. Trust in people is the corner-stone of all business success. Even thieves must trust to confederates in order successfully to accomplish a burglary.
Napoleon the First accomplished his great successes through this intuitive, self-taught knowledge of men, and for what they were best adapted. Christ chose the twelve best fitted to receive his truths, and teach them to others, through the same intuition. Intuition means the inward teaching, and the inward teacher. This teacher resides in all of you. Give it free play, and demand also of the infinite Spirit wisdom, guidance, and suggestion, and it will grow into genius, and your genius. Genius recognizes diamonds in the rough, and the qualities for success in men and women, whether externally they be peer or peasant, cultured or uncultured, according to the worldly standard of learning. Genius may sometimes talk bad grammar, yet remove mountains, build cities, and put railway and telegraphic girdles around this planet. Culture may write and speak elegantly, yet not be able to remove a mole-hill. Culture often struggles and starves on ten dollars a week in an office, as the mere tool of an ungrammatical, uncultured, and inhuman genius, who makes his thousand to culture’s ten.
The mood of repose, of unruffled and serene mind, is the mood in which all manner of discoveries are made, and ideas grasped or received. The eye on the lookout, ever strained and eager, does not at sea catch sight of the distant sail near as quickly as the one not looking for it. The name of the person temporarily escaped from memory rarely comes when we are “trying hard” to think of it. It is only when we cease trying to think, that the name comes to us.
Indeed, this trying to think causes an unconscious straining of muscle. We try to work our brains. We send the blood to the head in this effort. All this is an obstacle to the spirit. We set its force at work the wrong way. It is made then to pile up obstacles, instead of taking them away. Because, the more quiet is kept all that belongs to the body, the more force is added to the spirit, to use whatever of its own its interior senses and functions it would, to bring us what we desire. Our spirits have their own, their peculiar senses, distinct and apart from the sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch of the body. They are finer, more powerful, more far-reaching. Your interior, or spiritual, sense of feeling can, when trained or brought out of its present dormancy, feel or communicate with the same sense of another person, whose body is in London or Pekin, and possibly is now doing so continually: for there may be a spirit whose body is now in London or Pekin, in closer alliance, relationship, and rapport with your own, than is any other spirit in the universe; and with such spirit you may now be in daily and hourly communication, through this interior and far-reaching sense which scorns the idea of distance as we interpret that word.
The profit of not over-working or over-straining the body is proven all about us in the every-day affairs of life. The most successful man in business is he of the coolest head,—the self-contained man, who has intuitively learned to keep his body free from fatigue, so that his spirit can work. Yet that same man may not know he has a spirit, or rather a power and a sense, which goes out from his body, and brings him plans and schemes and crafty ideas for his world of getting and gaining. Because spiritual powers can be used for all manner of purposes, no other power is used. Spiritual law is worked in the interest of craft, as well as for higher motive. But the higher motive, when it comes to recognize this force, and use it intelligently, will always command the greater power, the keener thought, and the highest genius.
Successful effort in every phase of life comes of the exercise of this power. It is “being led of the spirit.” If you have lost your way, you will find it much quicker by going very slowly, so keeping the spirit concentrated, instead of rushing the body about hither and thither, without aim or object. The experienced hunter puts himself in this frame of mind, and saunters through the woods; while the ignorant city boy, wild with excitement, rushes over miles of territory and sees no game. In both these cases, when the body is made to a degree apathetic, does a certain power, an unrecognized sense, go out and find for you your way. It finds the hunter his game. There is a great truth in being “led of the spirit;” and it applies to all grades of spirit, and consequent motive, be it high or low, kind or cruel, gentle or harsh.
Sometimes you find yourself, without knowing why, in the self-contained, satisfied, contented mood of spirit. You are able to walk leisurely. You are in no hurry. No wild or unconquerable desire is upon you. You feel at peace with all the world. You have forgotten your enemies, your cares, your anxieties. It is then you most enjoy the woods, the skies, the passing crowd about you. It is then, when you are amused by them, that you most study them. You see peculiarities of person and manner which would escape you at other times. Your mind, quiet and undisturbed, is constantly receiving agreeable and vivid impressions. You wish such moods could last forever. So they can. This is the mood born of the concentrated spirit. Your spirit is then focussed to a state of rest; It is holding its strength in reserve, only expending enough to move your body.
We are, when in this state, absorbing thought. To absorb thought is to absorb lasting power. But if, when in the act of such absorption, any thing annoys or hurries us, this power of absorbing thought is instantly destroyed. Our spirit ceases then to be the open hand receiving ideas. It becomes the clinched fist. It is then combative. It goes straight to whatever annoys or hurries it, and rages and frets around it. When we say “goes,” we mean our thought as an element literally goes out to the place we are hurrying to, or the person who troubles. It is a real thing so going out. It is our strength of both body and mind which is constantly leaving us. We cease then to study. Repose and serenity of mind means a condition of perpetual study; and, with such, a continual in-drawing of strength. We can discipline ourselves to such repose, until it will accompany and pervade all efforts, so that we shall rest as we work.
This is the mood of mind proper for study, work, or enjoyment. These three things should mean but one,—enjoyment. Without this mood, nothing can be really enjoyed; with its cultivation, every thing becomes more and more enjoyable. It is the mood of construction. Our unseen forces are then massed together: so massed, they can turn their full strength on any thing at a moment’s notice. It is the mood in which you want to walk into the office of the hard, purse-proud man who proposes to crush you with a look. Keep in this mood, and you are more than his equal. He will feel your power before you speak. It is the mood of mind which you need to deal with the wily shopkeeper, who makes you feel by his manner that he expects you to buy something, whether you wish to or not, and generally succeeds in making you do so. These people throw their thought-force on you for this purpose. They are commercial mesmerizers. Their mesmeric control is as genuine as that shown at public exhibitions. They may not recognize it in this form; yet they work it on their customers, unconscious of the law by which they work.
It is in this mood that the spirit becomes as a magnet. As its forces are so drawn to a centre, their power of drawing to you ideas becomes greater. This power will increase continually by exercise. If you are so ever drawing to you ideas, you are drawing more and more power; you are drawing to you new plans, schemes, and inventions; you are sharpening all your faculties for any kind of work or business. Your spirit so massed is a power, either for resistance, or a power to draw in strength.
The trouble with many of us learners is that we wish to learn too rapidly. We have little knowledge of the power which really brings us all we do acquire,—the power which reaches out from us when the other faculties are temporarily suspended, and brings back not only ideas, but teaches the muscles how to carry out ideas. New invention comes to the mind which originates it when in this state, not when the mind is straining after its plan. You will make a perfect circle on paper with pen or pencil far easier when you do it idly, and care little whether you succeed or not, than if you are tremulous with anxiety to make one. When you are free from that anxiety, your real power has opportunity to act. That is the power of the spirit. It is the man who throws all thought of success or failure to the winds, who is most likely to accomplish the daring act at which others shrink, or, if they try, try with great dread of failure, which is mistaken for care. The best pilot through raging rapids is the man who has the power to forget all danger and see only obstacles. His spirit then possesses his real self. Self-possession
