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Lesson VII
FAITH, OUR GUIDE THROUGH THE DARK
(Part 1)

Helen Wilmans
A Home Course in Mental Science
Benedict Lust, N.D. M.D., Publisher
New York, 1921.

[119] No man has the slightest conception of the Law of Attraction abstracted from the living organisms in which it is manifested. We can only perceive it by that which recognizes it. It is growth in the tree; it is development in the animal; it is evolution in all nature; and in all things, from low to high, evolution is prompted by the desire of the organized creature pushing forth to its own accomplishment. Then all we can know of the Law is made manifest through desire. We cannot do otherwise than believe in the law. Therefore, we cannot do otherwise than believe in desire. To throw ourselves upon our desires and trust them is to throw ourselves upon the Law and trust its absolute infallibility.

In spite of the manner in which we have crucified our desires, they have still operated to work all the benefit the world has ever received. Look back to the cave dwellers, and farther, and see that the course of the race has been progressive and not retrogressive. Is not this so? And what influence has operated to produce this constant improvement; this greater and still greater manifestation of the Law? I answer, it has all been unfolded from the actualization of the desires of man. Every change in government, from the nomadic tribes up through kingcraft to our democracy, has been the growing desires of man acting upon the negative creations about him.

The world exists for the unfoldment of man’s desires. The unfoldment of man’s desires is the unfoldment of the man. The unfoldment of the man is the making of the latent possibilities of the Law manifest in the world of effects, and the multiplying a thousand-fold the new uses by which the whole race shall climb the ladder of civilization to higher heights than any previous civilization has ever attained, or ever dreamed possible of attainment.

I am my own eternal “want to.” I want to do this, and I want to do that, and every “want to” is the impulse of the Law of Life which I do but embody for the purpose of showing it forth. The Law of Attraction, or the Life Principle--which is the Law or organization by which atoms cohere in the myriad of forms we see in nature--pushes through my “want to.” Shall I believe in the law, and execute this “want to,” or shall I say, “The Law is all wrong; it is a sinful, wretched affair,” and so turn aside and drift with the inorganic negatives which my “want to” could control if I could but trust it?

My “want to” is my immortal self-hood. It points forever in the direction of happiness; and I have but one object in life--that of being happy. That my “want to” may lead me in the wrong direction is not to be considered for a moment. It is sure to do so, because we are but children in the dark groping toward the light, and [120] we hurt ourselves and others in the effort. But with happiness as the goal of every effort--the one eternal enticement--“all roads lead to Rome.” The lode-star of the spirit’s everlasting yearning is always shining fair and clear, and our eyes never waver in the intentness with which we regard it, even though our feet may be the brambles in the path, and our bodies bruised all over in blind collision with our struggling bodies on the same journey. As the star becomes brighter and the light clearer, there will be fewer mistakes. And eventually, in the broad light of splendid day, we will perceive that the desirable is the attainable, not only for ourselves, but for all; that the supply is equal to the demand; and then competition will have developed into emulation, where each one, instead of striving to get the most good, will strive to do the most good.

I find myself quoting a good deal from the Bible, and yet I have none of that superstitious clinging to the Bible that marks the theologian. I have been a student of it, and it contains some remarkable things that have been quite overlooked by the clergy--one of which is that there is no special reference made to the future state of life after death. All the promises refer to a fulfillment in this world. In fact, everything points to a time when death should be overcome right here, and when the “Lord’s chosen” should inhabit the earth forever. The two factors that were to bring about this condition were expressed in the words “believe” and “overcome.”

To Him Who Conquers

To him that overcomes is every promise made. And what is it that is to be overcome? The religion of the world says that it is our desires that are to be overcome.

I say that if desire could be overcome (which it cannot be, though the pressure upon it has forced it into a great variety of dreadful expressions) the Life Principle would be overcome; and nature--which is the visible and audible manifestation of the Life Principle--would be wiped out.

To overcome presupposes that which is to overcome, and that which is to be overcome. That which is to overcome is the Life Principle in man, as expressed in desire. That which is to be overcome is all that stands in the way of the fullest expansion and operation of man’s desires.

And what is it that stands most in the way of the expansion and operation of man’s desire? It is the thousand and one ignorant beliefs into which the race is born; beliefs that hedge our desire at every step; that press in on us more and more, making us reflections of themselves instead of reflections of Life, thus marring and maiming, and finally killing us.

These beliefs are real conditions. Everything being mind, all conditions are beliefs and all beliefs are conditions. [121] These beliefs or conditions, then, are the crude surroundings which await us at birth, and which are our tools and servants, to be used by us in working out our desires to larger ends than we have yet dreamed of, thus making them our allies in the more perfect manifestation of the Life Principle in the world.

It has been said that a man is a bundle of beliefs; and so he is after being pressed into conformity with the world’s beliefs; but in his primordial essence he is not a bundle of beliefs, but a bundle of desires. As spoken from out of that unexplored void from whence all life issues, he is an aggravating spark of pure sex fire, to grow and grow forever through his loves or desires--these loves, or desires, stretching forth all the time and crying, “More, more!” And he entered this world of negative beliefs, not to conform to these beliefs, but to shape them to his own liking. There is a life of perpetual conquest before him; perpetual overcoming.

And does man conquer? No, not yet. He conforms to the negative beliefs into which he was born. Now and then he presents a weak face of semi-resistance to them, always to back down from the contest, defeated. Indeed, he is defeated before he begins the contest--defeated by the belief that even his God is against him; for he has been educated to believe this. And yet, being a bundle of desires, he attempts to actualize them in spite of his belief that they are of the devil. He temporizes with his conscience on this point to a certain extent, and in the meantime builds ramparts, as it were, for his own protection against the overwhelming and constantly encroaching negatives; not knowing that his desires are meant for his guides; not knowing that desire is the heaven-born master of belief, and that he, as the incarnation of desire, has only to announce his mastery in order to see belief give way before him until it is utterly routed and destroyed.

When the full understanding of this great truth--that desire is the master of those conditions or beliefs that have so long mastered us--first burst upon me, I was as one reborn. The very moment this great truth worked its slow way through my thought, and at last banished every cobweb of doubt, I stood revealed to myself as a babe just come into a new world. And, indeed, it was so. I was born out of earth beliefs, into the heaven of unlimited aspiration and unlimited fruition.

Forever in search of truth and never before satisfied to rest one moment, I yet knew, at this point, that I had found a resting place; a place not on the incline where I might slip back again, but on the summit where it was safe to rest. And for several days I did rest just like a sleeping infant who has passed safely from its dark, narrow, embryonic home into the world of air and light and freedom. I knew that I was safe; I knew that my feet had been placed on the right road, and all I had to do was to push forward; to push forward to overcome those negatives which had so long been my master. Being born into the truth, I felt that I had nothing to do but to grow in it.

After a few days, I began to question myself whether I was really growing or not. I went over the old ground. “I am reborn,” I said, “into the true life of love, whose manifestation is aspiration, but why do I still remain so weak?” The answer came. I had crushed my desires so long they were almost dead. I recalled the time, and almost the hour, when I could look into the shop windows upon the splendid array of velvets and laces and jewels without wishing any for myself. I recalled how, at that time, I had congratulated myself on the self-conquest this fact showed forth. I did not know that the amount of self-conquest the circumstance registered, also registered the amount of deadness that had come to me as the result of my supposed victory. I remembered how (long ago) any little disappointment nearly [122] broke my heart, and how glad I was, as time passed, to be able to have my desires crushed without such keen suffering. But every bit of palliation brought by the years was evidence of the amount of death each crushed desire had left; until at last, when the great truth for which I had been so long searching burst upon me, I seemed already dead in the death of every hope my nature had ever given birth to. I was in that fearful and most irreclaimable condition called “content.” I was fast becoming an old woman--something I never intended to be. I saw the whole situation. If I intended to live and grow in the new life to which I had been born through my intelligence, I must, indeed, become again as a little child.

And what is it to become again as a little child? It is to be one continual incarnation of “want,” and to want not only with my soul, but with my body, for body and soul are one. A child is all want; and the moment its thought goes after a new want, its hands reach for it. Of course, the child and its wants are but the type of the man and his wants.

Then, in trying to gain strength after my new birth, my first denial was this: “No, I am not dead in negation.” (This being dead in negation of life is what the Bible calls being “dead in trespasses and sins against God”--as manifested in our natural desires.)

This was the death that I denied. “I am not dead, but only sleeping. I will awake. I will sedulously affirm the existence of all those pure and harmless desires I once tried to overcome” (too successfully). And so I tried to make myself believe that new dresses and new rings were desirable; and, above all things, that the desire for anything whatever that would quicken the expiring vitality was desirable. For vitality, which is Life, is born of desire--the child of love.

To overcome our doubts of the divinity of our own desires is now in order. How are we to do this?

We are to do it first of all by a calm, clear conviction that desire is the spirit of growth in man, as in all things. We can only get this conviction by much thought and introspection. Look within yourself fearlessly, and in utter disregard of the opinions of the churches and of all your friends and acquaintances for demonstration of this truth. Cultivate your own powers of analysis by the closest observation, and turn a deaf ear to everything that does not conform to the conclusion you come to.

CONTINUE
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