THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE

Life is too serious to be taken in anything less than a face-to-face way. Life always seems harsh and severe to the one who refuses to face it squarely. Since our purpose is to make life our servant instead of our master, our fundamental premise must be established in the cold, naked truth. This premise is that our outer seen life is an exact duplication of our inner unseen thought life.

Others may deny this principle, argue with it, or ignore it. It does not alter the fact. It operates relentlessly whether we agree or disagree with it. The wise man is he who, seeing a principle begins to cooperate with it. The unwise one evades or runs counter to it and is hurt by it or rather is hurt by his own foolish non-cooperation with that principle.

THE OUTER LIKE THE INNER

How do we know that our fundamental premise is true? This is a fair question and one that warrants our taking time enough for investigation.

Some time ago a business man came in for a consultation. His business was falling off. He said that he had increased his advertising budget recently because he had always found advertising to be productive of sales. He had also put on additional salesmen but in spite of his increased effort, the volume of business had steadily declined. He said that he could not understand this because these increased efforts seemed to indicate that his thought was upon better business. As we talked it developed that several business houses dealing in a similar line had failed recently and buried far beneath the surface of his thought was the fear that he, too, might succumb to the prevailing business depression. Further, he suspected that his salesmen were "laying down on the job" as he put it. In other words, fear and suspicion were the dominant notes in his life. His outer gestures indicated confidence; his inner almost hidden thoughts were of an opposite nature. This was pointed out to him and instruction given as to what he must do to change his inner attitudes into those of confidence and expectancy of the good instead of the bad. He changed his general line of thinking. Gradually, as his inner confidence grew his thought reflected this change until the growth was phenomenal but the growth did not come until the negative fear thought was deliberately replaced by a new line of confident expectation.

The outer change never fails to come when the inner thought is intelligently changed. The reason for this fact is that man is all Mind. He is not a physical organism containing and using a mind. He is a Mind using a body. That mind built the body as a vehicle for Intelligence and expresses its thoughts in physical form, appearance, and circumstances. Thus all the exterior happenings in his life are merely extensions of his own thought.

BODILY ATTITUDES REFLECT THE INNER LIFE

We have said that one's appearance or facial expression is the effect of his thought. This can be observed very readily. We say of a person, “He has a kind face or a hard face, etc.” By this we mean that his thoughts have evidently been of a kindly nature or the reverse for so long that the inner thought has drawn the face into lines that correspond to itself. The eye gradually takes on the reflection of the inner thought life.

We see a person and we say, "What a hang-dog expression he has." Life has whipped him so often or for so long that his inner consciousness of defeat has written itself in his expression, in the furtive look in his eye, perhaps in the very stoop of his shoulders. And mind you, this is all entirely unconscious. If someone acquaints this person with the fact that he has a certain expression, he may endeavor to throw it off through conscious effort. But if the hidden thought life is still one of defeat or cruelty, or avarice, as the case may be, the change that he tries to assume will be very short-lived unless the inner thought is entirely changed.

Just one more illustration, concerning outer form and its correspondence to inward thought. The petulant individual or the cross one, assumes a pouting expression or draws the mouth into a hard line when crossed. Along with this, the creases between the eyes appear. After one has done this many times that hard mouth-line and the creases become deepened and assume more or less of a permanent character. Thus we can judge the quality of his habitual thinking. In other words, Mind writes the story of its activity in clear words upon the tablet of the face.

CHANGING THESE ATTITUDES

If we wish to change these outer expressions we must change our thinking, for outward changes can come only when the inner thought life is changed. If we could take the selfish man and replace his thought with that of a sincere interest in others, as frequently has happened when one has had a real change of heart, then without any conscious effort at changing the exterior, the facial expression will automatically change, in line with the inward change. If the defeated man can be brought into an inner consciousness of victory there soon appears a new lift to his step, a new forthrightness in his manner, an appearance of adequacy to meet any situation. In other words, he comes to bear an expression of being “sure of himself.”