Is Life a Mystery? – 5
HENRY SMITH BUYS STEEL, LOTS OF IT. HE BUYS it BE-cause it is his job to keep his firm supplied with steel and other raw materials from which its products are made. Henry Smith wants steel, needs steel constantly.
George Brown sells steel. His company’s name is well known in the trade, and it has stayed profitably competitive for many years. George Brown, who sells steel, calls on Henry Smith, who needs steel. But Henry doesn’t buy, and George doesn’t sell.
Bob Green sells steel, too. His company is reputable, but no more so than George Brown’s company. Bob also calls on Henry Smith. Henry buys, and Bob sells.
To him who has shall be given
Why did Bob sell his product, and why did George fail to do so? Both men were offering good steel to a man who needed steel. Why did Henry Smith buy from one and not the other?
The answer is a mystery to George, but it is no mystery to Bob. And the answer has nothing to do with the tangible product in question. The same question could be asked about two people applying for a job with an employer who needs help badly. The two applicants could be equally well qualified for the position, yet one is readily chosen over the other, the mystery of "why" hangs over the head of the rejected applicant.
People make life a mystery
No, the mystery of "why" isn’t related to the product offered for sale or to the technical qualifications of the applicants. The mystery is related to people, and the answer is related to people. Life is a mystery only if people make it so. I’ll prove that to you.
Up to this point, I have been asking you to take quite a bit on faith. I have been guiding you into experiences which have most unusual slants to them. And I have been telling you that there will be certain outcomes if you do certain things. The outcomes I have been predicting are uncommon in the lives of most people, so why should I have such confidence in forecasting them in your life?
It could seem as though I am asking you just to have faith in me until I can cause something dramatic to happen to you. But this isn’t so. Most certainly I want you to have faith in me, as a person. I should want that to be if I were your neighbor and your friend, or your working associate, or if we were just having a cup of coffee together. I consider it a privilege to warrant your faith. In our present relationship, I am simply the interpreter of some facts in this, your book. I feel that I
warrant your faith in my role as spokesman and, I hope, "teacher" of a good way of life, because this book is the culmination of more than a quarter century of the same relationship with many thousands of people.
Focus your faith on your whole life
But none of this is intended to be the focal point of your faith. I want you to focus your faith on life itself, in a way of living that can help mankind meet its best destiny and, above all, in yourself. For these reasons, you were guided into establishing evidence of the value of your own importance to yourself. For these reasons, you were asked in the last chapter to make that initial "plan," based upon those fundamental urges of yours. And for these reasons you should know that there is no mystery to life. The true meaning of life is manifest all about you, and it takes only a self-influenced open mind to have it revealed to you.
Life has been labeled a "mystery" because two questions have been left unanswered in the lives of too many people. Two big questions that live like a parasite in people’s lives are: "What should I do, and what will the outcome be if I do make a choice?" Another apparent enigma is: "How can I have more positive, and fewer negative, conditions in my life?"
Permitting influences to combine willy-nilly to have unpredictable effects in their lives causes many persons to assume that they are not supposed to be able to "call the shots" very often and that they just have to expect negative effects to outnumber positive ones. This leads to a resigned, submissive attitude—the attitude of a person with little faith in himself or in life. It leads to private thoughts in which a person says to himself: "I wish I knew how to be more successful and happier. I wish I could get rid of these fears and anxieties." He looks enviously at the lives of persons who go through life with "all the flags flying," and he believes that they either "got all the breaks" or that they are blessed geniuses.
You know people like that, with resigned, submissive attitudes. Perhaps there have even been times when you have felt that way yourself. In any case, just where do thoughts and attitudes like that originate? They are born, and they continue to live, within the person himself! If we were looking for a dramatic example, none would be more striking than this demonstration of tragic self-influence. Such people have influenced themselves to let those two questions remain questions in their lives. They are making life a mystery!
Self-influence builds up faith
Of course you know the antidote for all this. It is self-influence, with a completely positive slant to it, and subsequent action that will bring answers to those two questions. Left unanswered, those two questions prompt many to call life a mystery. It is having faith in life, in your own pattern of living and in yourself that will give you the answers.
True faith is based upon trust, and trust is based upon understanding. It is hard to trust another person, or an environmental condition, or a relationship, you do not understand. Even more to the point is that a person who doesn’t understand himself really can’t trust himself, because he can’t predict his reactions.
On the other hand, your own experience has proved that if you understand another person, you can even disagree with him and still trust him. You have found that if you try to understand our social customs and laws, you are more inclined to have faith in them than if you delved into only one side. Such understanding comes from open-mindedness, the great attribute of a positively self-influenced person.
To understand yourself—understand others
The best way to induce faith in yourself, and in life, is to have a good understanding of all people. Understanding people—the children of the Creator and as your "brothers" in the life-span allotted you—removes any "mystery" about life, simply because people are life! In this sense, all people are created "equal." A "likeness" in the pattern of life of all people is to be expected. This "likeness" is the basis of the society of mankind, and there are many reasons to be thankful for it and to have faith in it. All people have the same fundamental, human urges. Prompting everyone’s actions are the urges for self-preservation, for self-expression, for recognition, for love and affection, for adventure. Thus, when you see a person acting in a certain way—which you do not understand and which might lead you to mistrust him—you can become an astute observer of human behavior by doing just one thing. Try to relate his actions to one of those basic urges and thus learn why he is acting this way. You will find that he is trying to satisfy one of the same kind of urges you have. You might not want to copy his actions, but now you understand him.
Nine times out of ten, this kind of understanding will prove that there is no reason at all to mistrust him. His methods may not appeal to you, but his motive is good. You find that you can get along fine together, he in his way and you in yours. You find that you can even be friends!
There are people with wrong motives
However, we cannot close our eyes to that possible one time out of a hundred when your search for understanding reveals a person whose motives are wrong. Sometimes people like this flash across the world like a fireball, apparently hell-bent on knocking everybody and everything down in their perverted urge for recognition and self-expression. Sometimes such people become petty irritants, apparently wanting to run contrary to the accepted code of society.
I am not suggesting that you close your eyes to the fact that such people do exist. But I do call your attention to the fact that such behavior among people is over-emphasized in the reporting and publishing of what is happening every day in this world of ours. Sensational news seems to be the only news when we evaluate what we read about everyday. If you read and hear, for example, only what is reported as the story of the "passing scene," you would get the feeling that things were always at a negative crisis stage in our national government. Yet, behind the scenes, thousands of people are doing superb jobs every day in rendering service as governmental representatives. This is so regardless of which party is in power at the moment!
You only have to read one of the thousands of books about people who have accomplished good things, who have inspirational messages to tell, or who are telling about how to do the good things, to know that the majority of people do have the right motives. You have only to consider all of the people you know, and to apply the principle of "understanding" to them, to learn that they all have good motives. If you find even one whose motives are questionable, you will find that he is mentally, physically or morally ill. That, too, you can understand, and possibly you can even help him.
Faith in others brings faith in life
What is the significance of these observations of a true understanding of people? It means that most of the time you can have faith in people. It means that you can justify this faith with a self-influenced attitude of open-mindedness. It means that most people are like you, in that they want to live good lives. For these reasons, you can have faith in life. It means that in a test of the pattern of life in our world today, you will find that the motives of the greatest majority are good. I agree that you will find that not enough individuals are motivated strongly enough to live as they want to live. But that is no reason not to trust them or not to have faith in their relationships to your life. You have great reason to be thankful that you are like most people in many respects, since this means that you can place your faith in this "union" of people who believe in the "Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man." Help this "union" be strong by influencing yourself to have faith in it!
Distinctiveness is your birthright
Yes, you are an "equal" as far as most people are concerned. But along with that equality that is inherent in your birthright, you were created as a distinctive person; you were endowed with a distinctive purpose in life. It was part of the Creator’s plan that you be endowed with this distinctiveness. Whatever your academic interpretation of the Supreme Being is, I know that it includes faith in His word to His children. Viewed objectively, His word is to live according to His laws and to live a purposeful life, according to your own standards. This last part of His word is what makes you distinctive. It means that as you have faith in Him, you will also have faith in yourself and have faith in your standards of living a good life.
Does God help those who help themselves?
Consider what has been said here. Consider it carefully, because it removes all the "mystery" from life. We have said that you are like all other people in many respects and that you could prove this by understanding others. But we have also said that you are unlike others in many respects. This is an intentional distinctiveness that is your birthright. This distinctiveness tells you that you can and should live your own life, with faith in yourself. Why does all of this cancel out any mystery of life? Simply because it makes a glaring truth out of that popular adage, "God helps those who help themselves." Look around you and see what is happening to others. With an open-minded observation, you see that people who are progressively helping themselves are also getting "help" from many other sources. They are not getting "lucky breaks." They aren’t geniuses. They are simply controlling the influences that surround them. With an open mind, with an alert mind, they deliberately seek answers to those two big questions in life. They expect to find the answers, because they have influenced themselves to have faith in life. They find the answers, because they have faith in themselves. Under that kind of plan of living, there is no "mystery" to life!
Join the club
You can join this "no mystery to life" club. In fact, you have already paid your initiation fee if you have completed those "agreements" you made with yourself in Chapter 2.
Why have these actions removed the mystery from life? Consider the results with an open mind and you will see why. As the result of those agreements, you demonstrated a belief of yours by taking part in a progressive activity. And you proved that you trusted another person by serving him. What else is there to life except to have beliefs, to act progressively and to get along with others? An everyday diet of that kind of living is almost ideal, isn’t it? And you have just had an experience with that kind of living. That experience was the result of the influence you had over your own actions. Is there any reason why you cannot repeat and repeat this pattern? No reason at all! No reason, that is, as long as you keep an open mind and understand what you are doing. There just can’t be any mystery to a life like that!
But it all depends upon that factor of faith. It depends upon your having faith in yourself!
IN SUM
Faith in yourself, in others and in life stems from understanding.
This faith dispels the "mystery" of life.
Faith enables you to see that you can help yourself.
Expand your relationship with this concept of faith by expanding your experience with it. When you were deciding upon the actions that are related to those original three agreements you made in Chapter 2, there were several choices you could have made for each, weren’t there? Those that you did choose probably were the most appropriate, according to the terms of that Project. Reconsider those possible choices that were not included in that project. Consider those actions which might require a bit more "push" to get them going. There are some things related to a belief, or progressive action, or service, that you should have done long ago. Perhaps some of these may have assumed the role of an "obligation" or "duty," by now, and you might be inclined to feel a bit embarrassed over your avoidance of them. Now, make up another set of three agreements where action requires you to "take a deep breath and plunge in." Within the next 24 hours, act according to these agreements.
A safe prediction is that the meaning of faith will appear like a neon-lighted sign in your life, both because of the effect of this action within you and the effect from the response of others who are affected by your actions. You will prove that faith in yourself takes care of the "hard" things as well as the "easy" ones.
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