Читать книгу PEACE, POWER & PLENTY - Orison Swett Marden - Страница 7

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However discordant or troubled you have been during the day, do not go to sleep until you have restored your mental balance, until your faculties are poised and your mind serene.

PHYSIOLOGISTS tell us that the mental processes which are active on retiring, continue far into the night. These mental impressions on retiring, just before going to sleep, the thoughts that dominate the mind, continue to exercise influence long after we become unconscious.

We are told, too, that wrinkles and other evidences of age are formed as readily during sleep as when awake, indicating that the way the mind is set when falling asleep has a powerful influence on the body.

Many people cut off the best years of their lives by the continuation in their sleep of the wearing, tearing, rasping influences that have been operating upon them during the day.

Thousands of business and professional men and women are so active during the day, live such strenuous, unnatural lives, that they cannot stop thinking after they retire, and sleep is driven away, or only induced after complete mental exhaustion. These people are so absorbed in the problems of their business or vocations that they do not know how to relax, to rest; so they lie down to sleep with all their cares, just as a tired camel lies down in the desert with its great burden still on its back.

The result is that, instead of being benefited by refreshing, rejuvenating sleep, they get up in the morning weary, much older than when they retired; when they ought to get up full of vigor, with a great surplus of energy and bounding vitality; strong and ambitious for the day’s work before them.

The corroding, exhausting, discord-producing operations which are going on when they fall asleep and which continue into the night, counteract the good they would otherwise get from their limited amount of sleep. All this shows the importance of preparing the mind to exercise a healthful, uplifting influence during sleep.

It is more important to prepare the mind for sleep than the body. The mental bath is even more necessary than the physical one.

The first thing to do is to get rid of the rasping, worrying, racking influences which have been operating upon us during the day —to clean the mental house—to tear down all the dingy, discouraging, discordant pictures that have disfigured it, and hang up bright, cheerful, encouraging ones for the night.

Never allow yourself, under any circumstances, to retire in a discouraged, despondent, gloomy mood, or in a fit of temper. Never lie down with a frown on your brow; with a perplexed, troubled expression on your face. Smooth out the wrinkles; drive away grudges, jealousies, all the enemies of your peace of mind. Let nothing tempt you to go to sleep with an unkind, critical, jealous thought toward another in your mind.

It is bad enough to feel unkindly toward others when under severe provocation, or when in a hot temper, but you cannot afford to deliberately continue this state of mind after the provocation has ceased and spoil your sleep. You cannot afford the wear and tear. It takes too much out of you. Life is too short, time too precious to spend any part of it in unprofitable, health-wrecking, soul-racking thoughts. Be at peace with all the world at least once in every twenty-four hours. You cannot afford to allow the enemies of your happiness to etch their miserable images deeper and deeper into your character as you sleep. Erase them all. Start every night with a clean slate.

If you have been impulsive, foolish, wicked during the day in your treatment of others; if you have been holding a revengeful, ugly, or jealous attitude toward others, wipe off your mental slate now and start anew. Obey the injunction of St. Paul, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”

If you have difficulty in banishing unpleasant or torturing thoughts, force yourself to read some good, inspiring book; something that will take out your wrinkles and put you in a happy mood, and will reveal to you the real grandeur and beauty of life; that will make you feel ashamed of your petty meannesses and narrow, uncharitable thoughts.

Saturate your mind with pleasant memories and with dreams of great expectations. Just imagine yourself the man or woman you long to become, filled with happiness, prosperity, and power. Hold tenaciously the ideal of the character you most admire, the personality to which you aspire—the broad, magnanimous, large-hearted, deep-minded, lovable soul which you wish it were possible for you to become. The habit of such beautiful life-picturing and the power of reverie on retiring will very quickly begin to reproduce itself, outpicture itself in your life.

After a little practice, you will be surprised to see how quickly and completely you can change your whole mental attitude, so that you will face life the right way before you fall asleep.

A prominent business man told me recently that his great weakness was his inability to stop thinking after retiring. This man, who is very active during the day and works at a high tension, has a sensitive nervous organization, and his brain keeps on working both before and after he falls asleep as intensely as it did during the day. In this way he is robbed of so much sleep and what he gets is so troubled and unrefreshing, that he feels all used up the next day.

I advised him to cultivate the habit of closing the door of his business brain at the same time that he closed the door of his business office. “You should,” I said, “insist on changing the current of your thoughts when you leave your business for the day, just as you change your environment, or as you change your dress for dinner when you go home in the evening. Turn your thoughts to your wife and children, to their joys and interests; talk to them, play games with them; read some humorous or entertaining story, or some strong, interesting book that will lift you, in spite of yourself, out of your business rut. Go out for a long walk or a ride; fill your lungs with strong, sweet, fresh air; look about you and observe the beauties of nature. Or have a hobby of some kind to which you can turn for recreation and refreshment when you quit your regular business. Be master of your mind. Learn to control it, instead of allowing it to control you and tyrannize over you.

“Hang up in your bedchamber, in a conspicuous place where you can always see it, a card bearing in bold illuminated letters this motto: ‘No Thinking Here.’

“Shut off all thinking processes of every kind when you retire for the night, relax every muscle; let there be no tension of mind or body, and in a short time you will find that sleep will come to you as easily and naturally as to a little child, and that it will be as untroubled, as sweet and refreshing as that of a child.”

To all who are troubled as this man was, I would offer the same advice, for its adoption has proved very successful in his case.

It is a great art to be able to shut the gates of the mental power-house on retiring, to control oneself, to put oneself in tune with the Infinite, in sympathy with those about him, and in harmony with the world; to expel from the mind everything which jars or irritates—all malice, envy, and jealousy, the enemies of our peace and happiness—before we go to sleep. Yet it is an art that all can acquire.

It is possible for everyone, either by thinking, reading, or pleasant social influences, to conquer all discordant moods, to overcome every unkind feeling, to banish every frown from the face, every wrinkle from the mind, and to go to sleep with a smile on the face.

When you go to sleep in the right mental attitude you will be surprised to find how serene and calm, how refreshed and cheerful, you will be when you awake in the morning, and how much easier it will be to start right and to wear a smile for the day than it was when you went to bed worrying, ill-humored, or full of ungenerous, uncharitable thoughts.

The devotional attitude on retiring to sleep is of very great value, inasmuch as it tends to soothe, calm, and reassure the mind, to destroy all fear, worry and anxious thoughts and to put one in tune with higher, nobler thoughts.

Persistency in preparing the mind for peaceful, healthful, happy sleep will prolong your life and your youth. More important still, it will have a far-reaching influence on your health and the foundation of your character. The habit of clearing the mental temple of all discords, error, hatred, revenge, everything which tends to gloom and darkness before going to sleep, and persisting in holding bright pictures in the mind, in dwelling on noble and uplifting thoughts, will in time revolutionize the whole life.

We are just beginning to realize that there is an enormous power lying dormant in the Great Within of us, and that this latent force or power seems to be very susceptible to stimulus during sleep, when the objective world and its many disturbing conditions are absent.

We little realize the amount of activity—undirected activity—that goes on in our subconscious minds during sleep.

There is a lot of unconscious philosophy in the expression one so often utters, “I would like to sleep over this proposition,” problem— or whatever it is. Without knowing the secret of it, we realize that things somehow clear up during sleep in a remarkable way. We see things in a different light in the morning. Perhaps the thing we were most enthusiastic over the night before, and which, had we carried out, would have been obviously injurious, often seems silly, ill-advised, impossible to us in the morning, not because we really consciously thought much about it, but because there is something in our subconscious mentality which often solves knotty problems for us while asleep—problems which staggered us in our waking hours.

Great mathematicians, scientists, and astronomers have many times been surprised to find very difficult problems that their reason could not elucidate during the day solved without apparent effort during sleep.

There is no doubt that much of our moral education and character-forming is carried on during sleep subconsciously, and since the psychology of this education and character-forming during sleep is based on the fact that the processes which are going on in the brain when we fall asleep tend to continue during the night, we can readily see what marvellous possibilities lie in the right direction and guidance of this mysterious subconscious power.

I know persons who have performed wonders in reforming themselves by self-suggestion on retiring at night, holding the happy, inspiring, helpful suggestion in the mind up to the point of unconsciousness. Persons have overcome ugly tempers and dispositions in this way as well as other unfortunate traits. The holding of the vigorous, robust, healthy ideal—the ideal and the spirit of youth—has immense possibilities in the way of self-refreshment, reinvigoration, and rejuvenation, and is especially helpful to those who are advanced in years.

If those who are inclined to melancholy and the “blues” would, just before going to sleep, insist on the nothingness of these delusions, and substitute the bright, cheerful, hopeful, optimistic thought, they would very soon overcome this unfortunate tendency.

If poverty is grinding us under its heel, we should affirm before going to sleep that the Creator has provided sufficient to give everyone the necessaries and comforts of life, without any worry about them on our part. Instead of thinking of poverty we should hold in the mind the suggestion of opulence, of prosperity. We thus make the action of the subconscious mind attract to us what we need and desire.

If we have any defect or weakness, we should hold firmly and persistently in mind, before we go to sleep, just the opposite characteristic or quality; this will tend to attract to us the thing we long for. If we desire to overcome any vice, we should plead the wholeness, the completeness which we long to attain.

Bad temper, inebriety, selfishness and deceitfulness, all sorts of vicious and immoral tendencies, have been eradicated in this manner.

Children seem especially susceptible to suggestion, or what, for a better name, may be called the “going-to-sleep” treatment. This is because the subconscious mind is particularly active in the young and much more easily reached, especially during the first stages of sleep, when just dropping into unconsciousness.

Truths emphasized at this time will be remembered more readily by the child and are more likely to be acted upon during the waking hours than those which are emphasized while he is awake, for when he is in the subconscious state he does not antagonize advice.

Some very remarkable results in the correction of vicious tendencies in children have recently been accomplished by appealing to their divine natures—their better selves—through mental suggestion during sleep.

The effective treatment of sickness in infants and children through the medium of such suggestion shows how easily the subconsciousness can be influenced when the child is in the unconscious, or semiconscious state.

If a child is naturally timid, and afraid of “ghosts,” the darkness, or any other thing, the mother can often help it to overcome these fears by talking to it while it is dropping to sleep. If it is weak, delicate or ill, she can suggest the healing Christ-truth, the health-ideal, strength, vigor, harmony. If it is timid, she can suggest confidence and courage.

The suggestion of success to the child who has been backward in school, or who has failed in his studies, will often have a wonderful effect in the way of establishing confidence and hope.

If the mother talks to her child and reasons with it as it drops off into sleep, just as she would if the child were awake, she will find that her words will have far more effect than if he were conscious, for the stubbornness, the natural inclination to resist, to do that which is forbidden, which is present in the child’s mind during its waking hours, is quiescent, and it listens to and heeds its mother’s advice quietly, naturally, unquestioningly. The wise mother who makes all sorts of good suggestions to her children in her talks—substituting the good for the bad, love for hatred and jealousy, unselfishness for selfishness—soon finds a marked change in their dispositions. By injecting into the little life confidence, hope, love, joy, courage, self-reliance, purity—all the higher and nobler attributes—she can wonderfully change her child’s disposition.

The time will come when all mothers will understand the importance of suggestion in influencing a child’s conduct and shaping its character.

A few already recognize the power of mental suggestion in all its forms, but in the new age that is coming, none will be ignorant of its wonderful character-forming and life-transforming possibilities.

If those who have not tried it before begin now, I am sure that in a very short time they will be surprised at the beneficent results that will follow this persistent practice of flooding the mind with pure and noble thoughts before going to sleep—close up to the very point of unconsciousness.

I am sure those who try it will find delight and satisfaction in the habit not only of clearing the mind before going to sleep of all worry and anxiety, all grudges and jealousies—of everything that clouds the intellect—but also in stoutly and persistently claiming the things which they long for as already theirs.

Be sure that when you fall asleep there is only that in your consciousness which will help you to be more of a man—more of a woman. Determine that your mind, when you lose conscious thought, shall have in it no black images and no dark spots, but only beautiful images and thoughts of hope and good will toward every living creature; that there shall be no failure thought, no poverty thought, no ugly, discordant thought, but that everything shall be bright, cheerful, hopeful, helpful and optimistic.