Byways of Blessedness by James Allen

Author:James Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: G&D Media
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Seeing No Evil

The solid, solid universe

Is pervious to Love;

With bandaged eyes he never errs,

Around, below, above,

His blinding light

He flingeth white

On God’s and Satan’s brood,

And reconciles

By mystic wiles

The evil and the good.

—Emerson

If thou thinkest evil, be thou sure

Thine acts will bear the shadow of the stain;

And if thy thought be perfect, then thy deed

Will be as of the perfect, true and pure.

—After Confucius

After much practice in forgiveness, and having cultivated the spirit of forgiveness up to a certain point, knowledge of the actual nature of good and evil dawns upon the mind, and a man begins to understand how thoughts and motives are formed in the human heart, how they develop, and how take birth in the form of actions. This marks the opening of a new vision in the mind, the commencement of a nobler, higher, diviner life; for the man now begins to perceive that there is no necessity to resist or resent the actions of others toward him, whatever those actions may be, and that all along his resentment has been caused by his own ignorance, and that his own bitterness of spirit is wrong. Having arrived thus far he will tax himself with some such questionings as these: “Why this continual retaliation and forgiveness? Why this tormenting anger against another and then this repentance and forgiveness? Is not forgiveness the taking back of one’s anger, the giving up of one’s resentment; and if anger and resentment are good and necessary why repent of them and give them up? If it is so beautiful, so sweet, so peaceful to get rid of all feelings of bitterness and utterly and wholly to forgive, would it not be still more beautiful and sweet and peaceful never to grow bitter at all, never to know anger, never to resent as evil the actions of another, but always to live in the experience of that pure, calm, blissful love which is known when an act of forgiveness is done, and all unruly passion toward another is put away? If another has done me wrong is not my hatred toward him wrong, and can one wrong right another? Moreover, has he by his wrong really injured me, or has he injured himself? Am I not injured by my own wrong rather than by his? Why, then, do I grow angry? Why do I resent, retaliate, and engage in bitter thoughts? Is it not because my pride is piqued or my vanity wounded or my selfishness thwarted? Is it not because my blind animal passions are aroused and allowed to subdue my better nature? Seeing that I am hurt by another person’s attitude toward me because of my own pride or vanity or ungoverned and unpurified passions, would it not be better to look to the wrong in myself rather than the wrong in another, to get rid of pride and vanity and passion, and so avoid being hurt at all?”

By such self-questionings and their elucidation in the light of mild thoughts and dispassionate

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