LOVE
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Shinn, Florence Scovel
She was very fond of necklaces, and a friend once asked her how many she possessed. She replied, “Sixty-seven.” She bought them and put them away, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. Had she used the necklaces it would have been quite legitimate, but she was violating “the law of use.” Her closets were filled with clothes she never wore, and jewels which never saw the light.
The woman’s arms were gradually becoming paralyzed from holding on to things, and eventually she was considered incapable of looking after her affairs and her wealth was handed over to others to manage.
So man, in ignorance of the law, brings about his own destruction.
All disease, all unhappiness, come from the violation of the law of love. Man’s boomerangs of hate, resentment and criticism, come back laden with sickness and sorrow. Love seems almost a lost art, but the man with the knowledge of spiritual law knows it must be regained, for without it, he has “become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.”
For example: I had a student who came to me, month after month, to clean her consciousness of resentment. After a while, she arrived at the point where she resented only one woman, but that one woman kept her busy. Little by little she became poised and harmonious, and one day, all resentment was wiped out.
She came in radiant, and exclaimed “You can’t understand how I feel! The woman said something to me and instead of being furious I was loving and kind, and she apologized and was perfectly lovely to me.
No one can understand the marvelous lightness I feel within!”
Love and good-will are invaluable in business.
For example: A woman came to me, complaining of her employer. She said she was cold and critical and knew she did not want her in the position.
“Well,” I replied, “Salute the Divinity in the woman and send her love.”
She said “I can’t; she’s a marble woman.”
I answered, “You remember the story of the sculptor who asked for a certain piece of marble. He was asked why he wanted it, and he replied, ‘because there is an angel in the marble,’ and out of it he produced a wonderful work of art.”
She said, “Very well, I’ll try it.” A week later she came back and said, “I did what you told me to, and now the woman is very kind, and took me out in her car.”
People are sometimes filled with remorse for having done someone an unkindness, perhaps years ago.
If the wrong cannot be righted, its effect can be neutralized by doing some one a kindness in the present.
“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before.”
Sorrow, regret and remorse tear down the cells of the body, and poison the atmosphere of the individual.
A woman said to me in deep sorrow, “Treat me to be happy and joyous, for my sorrow makes me so irritable with the members of my family that I keep making more Karma.”
I was asked to treat a woman who was mourning for her daughter. I denied all belief in loss and separation, and affirmed that God was the woman’s joy, love and peace.
The woman gained her poise at once, but sent word by her son, not to treat any longer, because she was “so happy, it wasn’t respectable.”
So “mortal mind” loves to hang on to its griefs and regrets.
I knew a woman who went about bragging of her troubles, so, of course, she always had something to brag about.
The old idea was if a woman did not worry about her children, she was not a good mother.
Now, we know that mother-fear is responsible for many of the diseases and accidents which come into the lives of children.
For fear pictures vividly the disease or situation feared, and these pictures objectify, if not neutralized.
Happy is the mother who can say sincerely, that she puts her child in God’s hands, and knows therefore, that he is divinely protected.
For example: A woman awoke suddenly, in the night, feeling her brother was in great danger. Instead of giving in to her fears, she commenced making statements of Truth, saying, “Man is a perfect idea in Divine Mind, and is always in his right place, therefore, my brother is in his right place, and is divinely protected.”
The next day she found that her brother had been in close proximity to an explosion in a mine, but had miraculously escaped.
So man is his brother’s keeper (in thought) and every man should know that the thing he loves dwells in “the secret place of the most high, and abides under the shadow of the Almighty.”
“There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”
“Perfect love casteth out fear. He that feareth is not made perfect in love,” and “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.”