As a man thinks, so is he

All right, Sister, this is Helen, Oh, I don't mind the criticism about being too wordy. It's true, and so I need it. If you would rather have Harry, he will come. Yes, I understand. I am not easily hurt when I feel you all love me. Feeling hurt is always the result of self-pity, and we don't indulge in that here.

Tee wishes to know about the souls of animals here. Perhaps I can answer before he arrives. We did not see any animals when I first came, but later they seemed to gravitate here, or perhaps we drifted elsewhere. It is hard to tell sometimes whether we ourselves move on, or the environment comes where we are. We all have power to create environment, and it may be that animals came when we felt a desire for them. Here one must have a hospitable spirit or there are no guests.

Oh, yes, any can be alone who so elects. Solitude is a simple proposition. We can create it anywhere. Anyone may, in any place, even with you. It only requires concentration. Just draw into your own shell. Each soul must be able to withdraw from others at times. No one can bear to give out constantly. He must take in once in a while—live rhythmically, in fact. Work and play, give and take, struggle and rest. Otherwise, there is no balance, no poise. That is what ails you right now. You need to relax and rest, to take in. Stop going for a while. Rest until the desire is strong to work again, no matter how long.

Don't fret about the dog, or the letters. Life is too fine and beautiful for that. Just sit happily and make plans for next summer. Harry says the western trip is perfectly feasible in spite of tales to the contrary.

Let other things slide for a time, and look up routes. Go somewhere everyday alone with John, and begin improvements on the car. Don't do anything from a sense of duty for a while. It is not your duty to care for anyone but John and Tee. Enjoy the little boy while he is little. They are so soon grown up. This is your chance to be rested and jolly. Cut out everything which interferes with personal poise. You help none when nervous.

I will write for you tomorrow. Sister. Yes, go now, and cheer up.

Helen

Harry is here to write Tee a personal letter.

Sister has been going downhill badly from overdoing, and Helen told her yesterday to quit. I want to add a word along the same line.

It's a true test of whether you are obeying the law when you find yourself either sick or nervous or blue. You know by any of these symptoms that you have drawn too heavily on your reserve vitality and let other people drain you. The remedy is perfectly simple. After work hours just disappear from people. Go into your shell and wait until you have time to fill up again. Relax your whole nature. Don't give anything out, either by sympathy or brain power, but lie quietly and make happy plans for the future.

Always remember the cheerful thought is what renews one's poise. Never brood over disaster. Forget it as rapidly as possible, and begin to make prosperous pictures of your future. Always picture the future, whether tomorrow, next year, or after death, as happy; as full of pleasant possibilities and happy incidents. We thus insure our future against evil happenings.

The plan of your happy future is a real concrete substance which must be destroyed on this plane before any contrary fact can be born on your plane. Someone then must deliberately design your downfall or unhappiness, and work hard over here to that end before your own pictured future can be eliminated. Do you get me?

I will repeat to make sure. A personal plan or vision of a desired future is a visible, concrete thing here, holding solidly together so long as its creator holds it firmly in his brain. More than this the vision has power to build on your plane its counterpart in what you call fact, by a process of magnetic attraction. The law is one of the basic ones, and never fails unless the person is vacillating or weak.

Picture a certain form of disaster and you create it just as certainly as a stone falls through air when dropped from a height. The law is that we create by our own thought our future environment. The swiftness of the actual materialisation depends upon the concentration of our thought, and the distinct quality of our vision; as well also as whether we build it while feeling happy. Happy, cheerful states are splendid creators.

Sister makes most solidly built plans, strengthened by frequent reviews and much detail. If she could plan as well for her restored sight she would get it.

Now, Tee, I will try to answer your query about the dog Pat. Animals here are a most interesting study. They appear only when people seem to expect them. Pat came to me one day as I sat alone, thinking over my life with M. As I brought back the picture of Cuba I recalled Pat, and at that moment I felt his tongue on my hand. He seemed overjoyed to see me, and has rarely left me since. I believe he has a soul, and I am trying to find out if he is a descending human, or a man in the making, I can't say. We are studying this in a class I belong to, and we gather data from all sorts of places. I sometimes feel he is a descending man, instead of a rising brute, because he does not obey. The lower orders obey instinctively, but man is a natural anarchist.

Harry

All right. Sister, we are here. Harry wants to dictate.

Sister, tell Tee I am no quitter. I have been on the bandwagon the entire trip up to now, and you can bank on me clear through. Weather conditions don't bother us here, and we enjoy all sorts of landscape. We all commended your spirit there in the car [referring to a close call they had with a traction car, where they escaped destruction by only six inches]. Nothing vitally wrong can occur to any who keep that spirit. Don't forget this fact. These variations only make for adventure. We enjoy hairbreadth escapes more than you do. They add zest to an otherwise tame trip. Just keep your nerve and all will succeed.

It's such a fine, big, stimulating, wholesome thing, this life game.

Mamma may well envy Mrs. T. I have seen her with her son. It was a touching meeting. She was quite fit to come, and we all welcomed her after she had seen her son and husband. They will direct the grandson from here, and he is safer now than her own management alone could ensure.

Mrs. T. wishes mamma to tell the boy that he will be looked after, and never to forget they see all he does and that he must live so his acts will never grieve those who watch and wait above him. This fact should make his inner life just as clean and fair as the one your world can see.

Sister, you are too tired to get a good letter through today; but take it from me, I love my own now as always, and will write again when you are less shaken up and lame.

Toujours a toi,

Harry

With confidence comes fair weather, and mind governs the planet in all its details—mind, which includes feeling as well. As a man thinketh, so is he. As a world feeleth, so is it. The light of faith, held by a few souls, has more than once illumined the path of escape when world disaster threatened.

Leaven is a sort of magic. Faith is like that. The great faith of a few has been able to lift a race—a race otherwise lost. Belgium today is more alive, more successful, than Germany, because her faith is backed up by the undying power of justice. Germany's faith makes for worldly success, but it is built on sand and cannot stand the flood which will come. Right and justice only are immortal. Any success not founded on them has no stability. You have but to look at history. Where material interests outweighed moral interests—that state was doomed. Only through moral integrity, the ideals of individual liberty, and a deep consideration for one's fellowmen, can be secured the immortality of individual or nation. When the cry is to help instead of to dominate, both here and in all other lands, that day the earth sets its foot on the threshold of immortality, and man will rise to be broken on the wheel no more. One must lose one's life, or rather give one's life, to keep it eternally. That is, one must unselfishly give all one has for the general good; not for glory, but for right. To serve one's fellows is to build one's immortality.

Good luck and good cheer from all of us.

Helen