V. I Am Life

       Table of Contents

      I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

      - Jesus.

      The infinite always is silent, 'tis only the finite that speaks.

      - John Boyle O'Reiley.

      The granite rocks disorganize

       To feed the hungry Life they bear!

       The very moss drinks daily Life, From out the viewless air.

      - J. L. McCreary.

      I am the Way, the Truth and Light;

       In me all Being flows. I'm one with rock and star so bright.

       God's spark within me glows.

      - Sam Exton Foulds.

      There is but one Life and I am that Life. This thought you are to hold and thus concentrate Life into One and not as in the past diffuse and limit it in amount. ALL the one life is mine. With this thought you cannot either lose or waste. All life is yours and you may use it as you choose. You have no less life at any moment than you had at first. You have as much at 80 years as you had at birth. Under the old thought habit of scattering and diffusing Life, you were at times weak, weary, or ill. Under the New Thought you are never thus, but are at all times One with the All-Life. Learn to think from this thought of life. Concentrate upon it. Do not let your mind wander off into old channels, but keep your attention fixed always upon some aspect of the ONE.

      It is an excellent practice to image yourself as an inlet of an infinite ocean of Life. Imagine a current setting into you as a bay, just as it comes through our beautiful Golden Gate; and as it fills this magnificent bay, so see Life fill you. Say to yourself, - "I am a bay filled through the Golden Gate of Love from the Infinite ocean of Life. The tide never ebbs. I am at all times full. I have but to let Life flow through me into expression, and as fast as I let it flow out, I am filled again. Thus I have life only as I give it expression. O Life; Healthful Life; Beautiful Life. Mine now and forever!" Be this your constant song.

      Constantly keeping a chosen thought uppermost is Concentration. As you practice it will grow easier, till you will have formed the habit of thinking of God, of Life as One, and then think of yourself as God and as Life in manifestation. You will grow to think of the fullness of life, just as you have been accustomed to think of your want of life.

      Mental habits are the only habits you should cultivate or allow. There are good mental habits but there are no good habits in the objective life. To think rightly is to allow fullest liberty in the objective life, because Thought cannot take the same objective form through you to-day, as it did when you were five years old, or as it did when you were ten, or twenty or thirty years of age. As you change, your environment changes; you will find your thought of Unity taking a new physical manifestation. For instance - You may to-day, under the thought of the Infinity-of-Life, find it to your happiness to attend theatre or attend the sick, and be up all night, but your ordinary habit is to retire early. But when you make it a habit to retire early you fetter yourself, and will feel the loss when you do not.

      Create the mental habit of doing what you think is best at the time and for the occasion and you will either retire or remain up with equal physical comfort. Mental habits are formed from Principle, from love of right; physical habits are formed from attention to details. Principles have millions of applications. Create a habit of temperance and you will need no pledge, and any pledge will fetter you when you wish a larger liberty. A mental habit of thinking no evil will keep you from fault-finding and criticism, while a habit of overlooking the faults of others will shut you out from seeing them and open the better to your vision. Mental habits are results of demonstration along certain thought lines. "I don't demonstrate!" Why? Because you have created a mental habit of letting the mind run at random. Create a new habit. How? By doing as you always have done save to choose your thought. There is no change in law or method. It is a simple thing to choose other thoughts where you have been thinking unpleasant ones. This requires will and effort till you create the habit and then the right thought will think itself.

      Automatism is to be made of conscious use; habit is automatism.. By a course of right thinking we change nerve tissue; build cells which like storage batteries hold the thought and, when cells enough have been created, they do the work without our conscious volition. We materialize our thoughts and our will into muscle and nerve. Gray matter is secreted in the ends of the fingers of the blind, and in the fingers of the pianist and the deft artisan. The fingers do not think, but the thought out of which they have been made, does the work. So is it in any line of labor; the body becomes materialized so that the less of conscious thought is put upon it the better work it does. This is done under the universal Law of Concentration. You are consciously to obey the Law to a chosen end, as you have in the past involuntarily and unconsciously obeyed it, to an end chosen for you by necessity. In the old thought and labor you were slave; in the New Thought you are Master through Self-direction.

      You do not surfer from lack in concentration, for without concentration nothing is done. Every step you take and every word you speak is the result of concentration. What you complain of arises from a lack of proper thought choice. People differ in the power to concentrate at will upon a chosen thought and their power to hold by will to a chosen thought for any definite time. Some people have persistence and consecutiveness while others are fickle, veering, and easily discouraged. But discouragement, fear, grief, pain, sorrow, worry,, anxiety, jealousy, anger, and weariness are all like their opposites, the results of concentration. What is the difference? Is it because some persons possess less will? Can one person have more Life than another? Each one has All Life and can draw at will. Can a person then have less will than another? The All-Will belongs to each, and each has all of the All-Will that he or she wills to use. There is no such thing as a weak or a strong will, any more than there is a strong or a weak life. There may be a strong or weak manifestation of life and will through the same individual. No person exercises the will in the same way at all times.

      The very fact that we notice the difference between the exercise of will on occasion, is evidence that will is limitless and we can use all we desire. Therefore it is not a valid excuse for a person to say of another, "He has a stronger will than mine!" because each person has a will of equal strength. It is merely a question of how you will to use the Ego as Will.