Chapter XX
DISCOURAGEMENT
W. John Murray
The
Realm of Reality
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1922.
“Why art thou cast down, O
my soul? And why art thou disquieted in
me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet
praise Him for the help of His
countenance.”
--Psalm 42:5
[232] Have
you ever asked yourself this question of
the Psalmist, when there seemed to be no
justifiable reason for your
discouragement? Have you ever had moments
of unshakable depression when it seemed
as if life were not worth living, and
yet, when you stopped to consider your
affairs, you could see that others were
much worse off than yourself and were not
making nearly so much fuss about it? No
doubt everyone has had the blues,
sometimes because of conditions which
have thrust themselves suddenly into his
experience, and then, again, for no
apparent reason. Discouragement is a
disease which is no respecter of persons,
and for which no antidote has been
discovered in the world of medicine. It
is a ruthless blight which destroys the
flower of hope and the fruit of
one’s labors, and leaves nothing
behind but a road for itself to travel
over again.
[233]
Because discouragement is so general we
have come to regard it as inevitable and
something to be expected, as is an
occasional cloudy day. But we know that
discouragement is neither necessary nor
profitable. We can see no good thing in
it, and yet we do not see how it can be
avoided. At times we feel that we have
very good reason for feeling discouraged.
The odds are all against us and
everything to which we put our hands
crumbles like a tinseled toy. Yesterday
our prospects were encouraging, today
they are shattered. A telegram, a letter,
a telephone call pricks the pretty bubble
of our hopes and it vanishes into
nothingness before our very eyes. Some
men are born pessimists, others become so
through experience. In the hour of
despair men become blind. In the fog of
self-pity they cannot appreciate their
blessings.
On the
morning after the great Chicago fire a
man and a woman sat by the dying embers
of their once beautiful home. The woman
was the man’s wife and she was
preparing some coffee by means of a fire
fed by fragments of wood from a home in
which they had lived and in which they
had hoped to die. In a night their dream
had been shattered, and as she cooked he
cried. He was inconsolable, and so she
cooked and kept quiet. He repeated again
and again, “Everything is
gone,” and presently she touched
his arm and she said, “John, you
still have me.” He looked at her
through his tears and said, “Yes,
thank God, I still have you. I had
forgotten that.”
[234] The
warmth of an almost forgotten love dried
his tears and he joined her in drinking
the coffee. What a wonderful thing a good
woman is! We have no idea how many of
them cook while men lament. In the midst
of this man’s calamity he had been
reminded of something so important that
one marvels how a man could forget it.
Peering into the future with its dismal
prospects, he quite forgot the love and
constancy of his wife who knelt by his
side. Like so many of us, he could weep
over the morrow’s obligations while
utterly losing sight of today’s
blessings.
The
recognition of his one remaining blessing
brought with it a new resolution. He
finished his coffee, kissed his wife
goodbye and started for the center of the
city where a few days before had stood
his warehouse. He was aimlessly walking
in the direction of his place of business
when he met the president of the bank
with which he had always done business.
They talked as they walked, and when they
parted the banker assured him that just
as soon as certain loans which he
expected from the East came in, he would
advance him sufficient to resume his
business again. Gloom gave place to a new
hope, and as the years went by this hope
was realized in a bigger business than he
had ever had before.
The effect
of discouragement is not limited to
man’s mental processes, for it not
only makes a man unhappy, but it makes
him unhealthy, and in addition to this it
renders him unproductive. A [235]
discouraged man is a debilitated man, and
it is only a question of time when mind,
body, and business must show the effects
of the poison of discouragement. When a
man dies from an affection of the heart,
or brain, or from a chronic intestinal
difficulty, superinduced by persistent
discouragement, we say he died a natural
death, but according to some wise men
there is but one natural death, and that
is falling asleep at the end of a life
well spent at a ripe old age. There are
those who tell us that discouragement is
a sin, for the reason that it implies
lack of trust in God.
Discouragement comes from the false
belief in a power opposed to God. It is
the natural consequence of spiritual
ignorance. When a man becomes spiritually
enlightened he becomes convinced of the
allness of God, and when a man becomes
convinced of the allness of God, he loses
his belief in the reality and power of
evil, and when he loses his belief in the
reality and power of evil, discouragement
becomes a thing of the past. If, then, we
can so trace the cause of discouragement,
it ought not to be difficult for us to
find a cure for it. In our moments of
discouragement and despair we should sit
down quietly and ask our souls what David
asked of his. We should talk to ourselves
in the quiet of our rooms as if we were
talking to another whose difficulties we
were endeavoring to dissipate. We should
question our inner selves, our
subconscious mentalities, as did the
Psalmist, “Why art thou cast down,
O my soul? And why art thou disquieted
[236] in me?” What is the reason
for all this anxiety and nameless dread?
Is it that temporary trials and external
conditions are too much for thee? Why art
thou cast down, O my soul? Hast thou come
face to face with apparently
insurmountable obstacles and discovered
the apparent smallness of thyself? Does
it seem to thee that evil is more real
and more powerful than God, and that
there is no refuge save in
self-destruction? Then, O my soul, do
what the stalwart David did: “Hope
thou in God.”
Hope is the
medicine, a cheap and universal,
infallible cure for discouragement. When
dark thought gropes around the soul, if
we but whisper this magic word to it,
there will be instant response. Have we
struggled with disease and reached the
point where the doctors declare our
malady is incurable? Has black despair
seized upon the heart so that our friends
seem to us like Job’s comforters,
and all their words but empty platitudes?
This is the time to ask of the soul,
“Why art thou cast down? Is it
because thou hast lost thy faith in Him
to Whom nothing is incurable? Is it
because the best efforts of man have been
found unavailing that thou art so
disconsolate? Then hope thou in God. Look
away from the finite to the Infinite, and
the Lord of Glory shall come in and thy
sickness shall be healed.”
Is the case
of discouragement due to the fact that we
have labored for success and found
failure? Are demands being made upon us
that are [237] just, but with which we
cannot comply because of financial lack?
Have we exhausted every resource and
reached the conclusion that we shall
presently be dispossessed, and because of
this is the soul disquieted so that the
head is dizzy and the heart faint? The
sovereign panacea for all discouragement
is Hope. Not an aimless hope which has no
definite direction nor fixed center in
which to place itself, but hope in God
Who is able to do for us more than we can
ask or even dare to expect.
It may be
that our discouragement is not due to any
specific anxiety, and that if we were
asked the reason for it we could say
only, “I do not know; I just woke
up this morning feeling as if the whole
world were about to collapse.” This
form of discouragement is not at all
uncommon. It ought not to be difficult to
explain this seemingly unnecessary
condition if we only realized the
operations of the subconscious mind and
its sensitiveness to suggestions. Men
feel that they are subject only to those
influences which reach them through the
avenues of the senses. They can
understand how they can be affected by
things they see, hear, and touch, but it
is difficult for them to understand the
effect of invisible forces in producing
certain emotive conditions. We can
understand the possibility of detecting a
perfume in the atmosphere, even when we
do not know where it comes from, but it
is difficult for us to believe that we
can be affected by the thoughts of [238]
others who are no nearer to us perhaps
than suffering Europe. This will become
acceptable to us, however, when we
realize that, just as odors pleasant and
unpleasant become a part of the
world’s physical atmosphere, so
thoughts goods, bad and indifferent,
escaping from the minds of men, tend to
become a part of the world’s mental
atmosphere.
It is this
world’s mental atmosphere or race
belief by which we are affected when we
are discouraged for no particular
personal reason. We are all more or less
barometrical so that we feel and register
the mental temperatures of the world,
without knowing the law back of it all.
Our mentality is the barometer which
indicates the atmospheric pressure of the
world’s emotions. Ignorant of the
force of mind, we are like thermometers
which can only register the temperature,
but cannot change it. This is why so many
of us are at the mercy of every mental
wind that blows. The difference between a
man and a thermometer is the difference
between an intelligent personality and an
unintelligent piece of mechanism.
Another
important point that must not be
overlooked is the fact that the
thermometer in no wise contributes to the
atmospheric condition of the world, while
man does. The thermometer generates
neither heat nor cold; it simply
indicates them, but man is constantly
contributing to the mental atmosphere of
the world. Every thought he thinks is
taken up on the etheric waves of
subconscious [239] mental activity and
unites itself, as by chemical affinity,
with every other thought of a similar
character.
For this
reason, then, we must be ever on our
guard lest we contribute to the ocean of
thought which we do not wish to return to
us after many days. Our every thought is
a casting of bread upon the waters, and
it is for us to decide whether it shall
be food for future success or future
failure.
Chapter
21
* * * * *
The Realm of Reality
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
Center)
