Suffering is one of the penalties the human family has to endure as a consequence of misapplied and perverted natural laws.
Harmony of thought and feeling is not incompatible with bodily weaknesses and may be enjoyed if you only pursue the right means to obtain it.
Z. (in spirit) explains—
Much can be done by you yourself—much by those around you—so live in constant watch and control over yourself that no bitter—or angry thought will be allowed entrance—if it comes with its inharmonious suggestions, drive it from you as you would a viper.
Never allow yourself to think that others are unkind, ungenerous, uncongenial—or untrue because they may not happen to think and feel as you do—remember they have minds constituted entirely different to yours—what may interest and benefit you may take no hold on them—they think and judge from their own standpoint and may be quite unable to receive those truths that may be your highest happiness.
In cases like these, much positive suffering often supervenes—all from the want of a little charity and self-control.
Set a guard over yourself—retain your own opinion—at the same time give your opponent the same privilege and leave him to its enjoyment.
Argument in such cases is always bad—it stirs up contention and discords—the temper sometimes fails, then more is said than was meant—or really believed and the suffering is intensified to both parties.
But where there is more intimate union than friendship—where the family circle is broken in upon by these miserable wrangles, sometimes on subjects quite immaterial to the parties, as respects their happiness here—or hereafter, what an amount of misery is induced!
The heavy heart—the sinking spirit—the lost energies and faded person too frequently attest it, but men and women are unconscious of the mischief they are doing and more frequently, think they are performing good service for the cause they desire to advocate.
All contention is wrong—all strife produces suffering—the strong oppress the weak—the rich the poor, and so on.
Whenever one tyrannises over another, there suffering and inharmony is produced.
Follow the perfect law of liberty and continue therein, giving and receiving the freedom God always destined for you—it will not lead to licentiousness—or any other vice if rightly understood, but it is absolutely necessary that it should be enforced and put in practice if you wish to make yourself, and others happy.
Binding the person in chains is bad enough, but fettering the mind and feelings are far more to be dreaded.
Have freedom to follow out your own ideas of happiness.
If you are so constituted that society and pleasurable excitements are your delight, enjoy them—in such things, there is no sin, the sin is in the excess—that you must and will avoid if you are rightly developed and brought up.
If another prefers study and solitude, let him enjoy them—there is no sin, only in the excess—each after his own fancy and each one giving to the other the same privilege he takes himself—the right to be happy his own way.
You must not exalt yourself because you think you have better teachings and live a higher life—the characteristics of the two may be entirely opposite and what is pleasure to the one may be purgatory to the other.
But is that any reason why you should not be as happy in your own way as the intellectual man in his?
Certainly not—you may indeed be the happier of the two if the better feelings of your nature teach you to sympathise with your fellow creatures and relieve their sufferings.
After all, what are you sent into this world for, but to develop for a higher?
And how must you accomplish this in the best manner?
Should this not be your earnest study—the question for you to put to yourself and find out for yourself?
To yourself you must stand—or fall.
If you think you have found out the best means of accomplishing this necessary work, follow them out earnestly, but do not condemn another if you see a different path up this same mount of progress.
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