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By Root 617 0

it its body. The only existence it has, is that which you give it by temporarily ensouling it with your thought. Withdraw this—and it fades into nothingness. You have thought the error into existence, consciously or, more often, unconsciously. Now unthink it. It is always your thinking that matters. Indeed, as Shakespeare says, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Now, fear, hatred, and resentment are ideas heavily charged with emotion, and these, when added to any difficulty, recharge it with fresh and vigorous life and make it all the more difficult to overcome. Again, the mere rehearsing in thought of any difficulty endows it with new life. Going over old grievances mentally; thinking how badly someone acted at some time, for instance, and recalling the details, has the effect of revivifying that which was quietly expiring of neglect.

With a new difficulty of any kind, it is the reception that you give it mentally, and the attitude that you adopt towards it in your own thought, that completely determine its effect upon you. That is what matters. What matters to you, truly, is not people or things or conditions in themselves, but the thoughts and beliefs that you hold concerning them. It is not the conduct of others, but your own thoughts that make or mar you. You write your own history for tomorrow and for next year by the thoughts that you entertain today. You mold your own life destiny day by day, entirely by the manner in which you react mentally to experience as it comes. Right reaction is the supreme art of life, and Jesus compressed the secret of that art into a sentence when he said: Resist not evil.

Resist not evil, spiritually understood, is the grand secret of success in life. A correct understanding of this commandment will lead you out of the Land of Egypt, and out of the House of Bondage; regenerate your body; liberate your soul; and, in short, remake your life from top to bottom. As soon as you resist mentally any undesirable or unwanted circumstance, you thereby endow it with more power—power which it will use against you, and you will have depleted your own resources to that exact extent. Whether you have to meet a physical, or a personal, or a business difficulty, you must not, as people usually do, hurl yourself against it mentally, or even stand stubbornly in the middle of the road saying, “You shall not pass” but, observe the master rule of Jesus, and resist not evil. Refrain from resisting the trouble mentally; that is to say, refuse to feed your own soul-substance into it. Feel out, mentally, for the Presence of God, as you would feel out physically if thrust suddenly into a dark room. Hold your thought steadily to that Presence as being with you, and as being also in the person or the place where the evil has presented itself; that is to say, turn the other cheek. If you will do this, the difficulty, whatever it is, the undesirable situation or the trouble that someone is making, will fade away into its native nothingness, and leave you free. This is the true spiritual method of loving your enemy.

Love is God and is therefore absolutely all powerful. This is the scientific application of Love, against which nothing evil can stand. It destroys the evil condition and, if a person is concerned, it sets him as well as you free. But to return hate for hate, curse for curse, or fear for aggression, has the effect of amplifying the trouble, much as a feeble sound is multiplied in volume by an amplifier. Meeting hatred with Love in the scientific way is the Royal Christ Road to freedom. This is the perfect method of self-defense in all circumstances. It renders you absolutely invulnerable to any kind of attack.

If someone makes himself personally obnoxious to you, do not resist him in thought. Resist not evil; realize the Indwelling Christ in your “enemy,” and all will be well. He will cease to trouble you, and either change his attitude or else fade out of your life altogether, besides being spiritually benefited by your action. If you receive bad news, do not resist it in