The Power of Silence

Nor is it necessary to analyse sensation or try to discover the various moods that cause our trouble. No one who has passed through the torments of self-consciousness, to find only one’s own insignificant self looming up through the introspective mist, like a repellent spectre from which one would fain be free, will ever advise another to brave these torments. The human self with the divine Self as a background is the only picture of the inner life which one can bear to look at long. This picture will paint itself. The other is of our own vain contriving. In those moments of calm reflection when one ceases to analyse self, and puts aside the cares of the busy world, the deeper consciousness will be quickened. One falls into a gentle revery. Pleasant memories and past experiences come before the mind. One sees wherein one has failed to practise one’s truest wisdom, or sees the meaning of an experience that seemed hard and inexplicable at the time. Then, as one gradually turns in thought from personal experience to the larger experience of humanity in its relation to the great Over-soul, all these varied events and personalities will be regarded in relations unsuspected before. One will have new glimpses of truth,—of the deeper truth which is ever ready to make itself known when one is intuitively awake and receptive.

A synthesis of these spontaneous reflections will give more genuine knowledge of self than any purely introspective process. And likewise in any moment of trouble or sickness, when we need help, it is better to open out like the flower, receptively, quietly, expectantly, conscious of the nearness of the divine Helper, than to pursue our own thought, and try to solve the difficulty. We are too active as a rule, too sure of our own way, too much absorbed in our own plans and fears. The Spirit demands but little of us— quiet, lowly listening—but it does ask this much. Here is the real power and value of silence. All that we perceive in these moments of quiet reflection has a lasting effect upon us. It is then that we grow. It is then that ideals take shape, and become permanent directions of mind. It is then that we become newly adjusted to life; for, after all, this task is never completed. Something new and perplexing is ever coming to test us; and always there is this one resource, to find our inward centre, and there to stand firm and contented.

It is also in these more deeply reflective moments that we learn our own limitations and possibilities. We become aware of that deepest tendency which lies at the basis of temperament and personality, through which the great Spirit speaks. We learn a deeper and truer self-reliance, which ultimately means trust in God. We learn through experience when to obey this inner moving and when the impulse is merely our own personal desire. In a word, conduct reduces itself to one simple rule: Study to know when you are moving along the lines of your own deepest nature, your own keenest sense of what is wise and right, and when you are off the track. It is right and necessary to have certain standards by which conduct may be judged, to have a philosophy which teaches one to look on all sides of an issue and to reason carefully. It is well to look to friends, to public teachers and books, for help in all humility and willingness to learn. But standards vary. The conscience of a people changes from age to age. Even intuition must be empirically verified; it must find support in reason, and undergo the test of experience. The surest and simplest method, for those who have become aware of such guidance, is to await the divine emphasis, to act when the whole being speaks, to move along those lines in which no faculty of one’s being interposes an obstacle. All ultimate questions of right and duty should obviously be settled within the sacred limits of one’s own personality, where the great God speaketh, if He speaks at all. “The soul’s emphasis is always right,” says Emerson.

To some this doctrine may seem like mere individualism, urging one, as it does, to find a resource for all trouble in one’s own nature. Yet, rightly interpreted, it is by no means selfish; it seeks to give the individual mental freedom and opportunity for development within the limits of what is required of him as a member of society. We have thus far considered the problem of adjustment in its simplest form. All that has been said in the foregoing chapters properly enters into the question—the nature and relationship of the immanent God to His manifestations, and all that we know about those manifestations.

Society is, ideally at least, an organism. Human minds as well as human customs and social institutions are evolving together. One by one, and individual by individual, we are related in one great mental, social, and universal experience. Each need, each aspect of the organism, the adjustment of part to part and of means to ends, demands special consideration. We must, for example, consider and preserve our physical well-being. In this endeavour we are aided by all that science has discovered concerning the human body, its evolution, its care, and the need of exercise. We have duties to our fellow-men in regard to the well-being of society. Duty enters into every department of human life. We owe it to our neighbour, to the universal brotherhood or the divine fatherhood, to be doing something in particular all the time, to choose this line of conduct and reject that. And this knowledge of duty should rest on a scientific interpretation of the universe, on a study of life in its total relations.

No one can think deeply about life without considering these larger issues. But, even in approaching the problem of adjustment in its simpler and more individual aspects, we discover many ways in which we may pay our large debt to society. One cannot develop far beyond the less thoughtful masses without leading them on; and, since man is an imitative creature, there is no surer way of helping him than by setting him a nobler example. Our uncharitable, our faultfinding and fear-carrying words and thoughts are sometimes as harmful to others as to ourselves. When we overcome these wrong habits of thought, our friends will not be slow in noticing the change. With the advent of a habit of looking for the good, of deriving encouragement from everything, and of disposing of our troubles in a quiet way ourselves, instead of burdening others with them, the reaction on our associates will prove wonderfully helpful.

This doctrine, then, says in a word. Be unselfish; have an ideal outlook; see yourself as you would like to be, healthy, happy, well-adjusted to life, helpful, wisely sympathetic, ever ready with an encouraging word, looking for the good, growing strong in wisdom and power; patiently awaiting occasions, yet always sufficiently occupied, so that you will have no time to be annoyed, fearful, restless, or morbid. It points out new ways in which we may be of service to our fellow-men. It makes us aware of our own responsibility, and shows us that life is an individual problem. It warns us never to look upon that problem as too difficult to solve, if we approach it moderately, hopefully, and full of cheer.

Is it not a duty to be supremely happy, for ever young in spirit? We have all met people whose very being seems to thrill from some unseen source of happiness. What influence can resist such a power, and what trouble can long weigh down such a bounding spirit? It is like the glad song of the birds, which will not let us be melancholy, or the feeling of worship for the Source of all life, which wells up in the presence of some beautiful landscape. It is health. It opens one to the renewing, the indwelling energy, by which we exist, whereas fear contracts, and causes one to shut out that energy. There is something profoundly unhealthy in our thought if any trouble whatever leads us to suppress this happy tendency. Its source is eternal, its spirit perennial. Its power in counteracting the selfish and morbid tendencies in life is boundless. It is not to be sought for its own sake alone. It is not the end of life. It is rather the spontaneous accompaniment of the highest usefulness, the deepest worship, the truest love, the greatest thankfulness, the profoundest repose and trust in God. It is the truest sanity. It marks a well-balanced mind. Science and philosophy do not always satisfy the soul. Reason sometimes leaves room for doubt. Pessimism and despair often rush in, if we do not check them by some happy thought. The greatest assurance, the one that never fails, is this happy restfulness, which no doubt can shake, this feeling that we are right, this sublime faith which sees no barrier between the soul and its perennial source.

A sense of trust and thankfulness wells up with this deep assurance, a feeling of joy in the blessing of existence, which defies the subtlest scrutiny, which unites the simplicity of childhood with the profoundest reaches of manhood’s thought. It is well to take note of its conditions when it comes, to observe what a range of thought and sentiment is opened up by genuine happiness, and then, when the spirit of depression weighs heavily upon us, to recall these conditions, to let the morbid thought languish for mere want of attention, to stir one’s self, to arouse a forced happiness if one cannot shake off the heavy spirit in any other way.

It is a matter of economy to be happy, to view life and all its conditions from the brightest angle. It enables one to seize life at its best. It calls power to do our bidding. It renews. It awakens. It is a far truer form of sympathy than that mistaken sense of communion with grief and suffering which holds our friends in misery instead of helping them out of it. It is a far nobler religion than that creed which causes one to put on a long face, and look serious. Once more, there is something wrong in our philosophy if it sanctions melancholy and pessimistic thoughts. We have not yet looked deeply enough into life. We are still thinking and acting contrary to, not in harmony with, the happy world of nature by which we are surrounded. By maintaining this mournful attitude, we show our want of faith in the goodness of things as much as when we fear. A deep, unquenchable spirit of joy is at once the truest evidence that we believe in the beneficence of the Father, and that we have penetrated deep enough into life’s mystery to see how best, most economically, most courageously and helpfully to take it.

Patience, too, is a word that suggests much that is needful in the adjustment to life. Hard, indeed, is it for some to abide nature’s time, hard to eliminate the idea that creation was completed long ago. Consider for a moment the vast age of our fair earth, how many æons of cosmic time it revolved in space ere vegetation appeared, and then pass in imagination down through the long cycles of struggle and development which led the way to the production of the first man, a creature with whom we would not own kinship. History is still young. It is made to-day with unwonted rapidity, and one can hardly keep pace with the advancing times. Yet nature is just as moderate as ever, and our century is but the bursting bud of ages of measured preparation. Long ago the ancient Greeks spoke for beauty of form. Long ago Jesus spoke for the beauty of service. Not so long ago Luther spoke for freedom of conscience and reason. Slowly the great world is brought round to the perception of these great prophets, who stand like guide-posts, indicating the will of the Most High.

Progress is as measured in human life. We cannot hasten events. We may as well accept the conditions of progress as we find them, and not postpone our lesson. My experience of to-day is the outcome of my experience of yesterday, of my past life, and is largely conditioned by it. My intuition tells me of grander experiences to come. It gives ideals. But I cannot enjoy those experiences now, I cannot yet realise the ideals, because I cannot omit one step in my progress. I am ready, in the full sense of the word, only for the step which logically follows the one I am just now taking I must not overreach or work myself into a nervous strain. I must not let my thoughts dwell on the future. I must not be anxious nor assert my own will, for I do so at the peril of my health and happiness. I ought rather to live in the living present, understand my experience in the light of immediate cause and effect. I must build my new future by gradual modification of the changing present. I must select and reject, choose and neglect.

For, despite the fact that this endless chain of causes and effects, whereof my fleeting experience is a part, is law-governed and fate-driven, I have a wonderful amount of freedom. I am able not only to choose between accepting life’s conditions trustfully, contentedly, making the most that is good out of them, or rebelliously complaining at them all. I not only make of the world what I put into it, and thus regulate my own happiness and misery; but I cause infinite misery to other people. I may sin, I may degrade myself lower than the animals, I may be thoroughly wicked and mean,—all within certain limits,—I may make of myself what I will; but I can never escape the torments, the inevitable results of my own acts. Not all the creeds, not all the good men, not all the prayers and sacrifices in the world, can ever change natural law, or save me from the heaven or the hell which I am preparing for myself by my daily conduct. What I am doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my future—a future in which there is no expiation except through my own better conduct. No one can save me. No one can live my life for me. It is mine for better or for worse. If I am wise, I shall begin to-day by the simplest and most natural of all processes to readjust my conduct. As surely as the great world of human thought comes round to the position of one wise man, so surely does the whole fabric of personal thought and action respond to our will. We have only to wait, be patient, renew our ideals day by day, remember that ideas have regenerative life and a natural law of growth, then act.

Here, then, is the secret of the whole matter. To look persistently toward the light, toward the good, toward what we would rather be, and as we would rather feel when we are suffering, with some happy prospect in view if we are morbid, with some deed of kindness in mind if we are idle and in need of something which shall absorb and fix the attention. Such will-power as this is irresistible. It is the God and one that make a majority.

Adjustment to life, then, is an individual problem, and varies with temperament, surroundings, and habits of thought. Its principles are universal. First, to realise in our own way the truth of Chapter II., that we live with God; that God lives in us; that He is completing us, moving upon us through the forces, the events, the world in which He resides, through our weaker nature, through our faults, through the conflicts which we have so long misinterpreted, through pain, through happiness, and all that constitutes experience; that we have no power wholly our own, but that we use and are used by divine power; that we are equal to any task, any emergency, any struggle, for God is here. Help is near. We need not go anywhere for it. It is omnipresent. It abounds. It comes to us in proportion to our receptivity to it, our faith in it, our happiness, our hope, our patience. Then to choose wisely what we wish to be in co-operation with the immanent Life, since “whatever determines attention determines action”; to see one’s self not in the introspective, but in the divine light; to be practical in the choice of ideals; to be ever happy, ever young, ever hopeful, and never discouraged.

But can we practise all this? If we could apply the entire doctrine at once, it would be of little value. We must have ideals—ideals which we may begin to realise to-day; and our discussion has been of some use, if it has shown the necessity of moderation, of quiet, trustful imitation of the methods whereby the great world of nature has come into being.

Every one who has dwelt for a season in that joyous world of the larger hope, where one is lifted above self, above the thought of space and time, so that one seems related to the revolving orbs of space and to the limitless forces of the universe, knows that there is a sudden, almost painful descent to the realities of every-day life. Life is a constant readjustment. It requires a daily renewal of one’s faith, and then a return to the tasks, the struggles, which at times well-nigh weigh us down. It means repeated failure. It means a thorough test of all that is in us. It often means trouble and discouragement whenever one receives new light and regenerative ideas, since a period of darkness similar to the decay of the seed in the ground follows every incoming of greater power. But it is priceless knowledge to know that we are equal to the occasion. It is a long step toward self-understanding when we learn to see in facts that once caused discouragement profound reasons for hope and cheer. It is a decided step toward self-mastery when we learn to meet these “ups and downs,” these regenerative periods, in a broadly philosophical spirit, at once superior to our circumstances and to the thoughts and fears which once held us in their power. It is fortunate, indeed, if we no longer deem life’s task too hard, if our faith be sufficiently strong to sustain us through the severest tests, thereby proving our fitness to be made better, our willingness to persist, though all be dark, with an iron determination to succeed.