The Five Signs
Retreat Within
RELAXATION
Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.-Ps.46:10.
LEARNING to relax, mastering the art of “letting go,” was a problem for me, who had lived for twenty-five years on the qui vive, like an animal, always alert to danger, sleeping fretfully with one eye open, as the saying goes, fearful of the law on the one hand-the guns of the underworld on the other. Suspense and intensity-these had been my life. Even at the time of my contact with the old lifer I still slept with taut nerves and muscles drawn tight for instant action.
“You must learn to limber up,” the lifer said, “to pour yourself out, like a cat; to go limp, like a baby.” He quoted the Master on the easiness of his yoke and the lightness of his burden. “There must be times of stillness,” he continued. “God’s voice is still and small. It can’t reach you if your temples are throbbing and your pulses pounding. Stillness in you can soothe and calm the jangling nerves in others. Even the elements obeyed the quiet command of the Lord.”
. . . and He said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm . . . And He said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?
“It’s important, son, that you learn how to let go. Learn to ‘commune with your own heart,’” he quoted, “’upon your own bed, and be still.’” (Ps. 4: 4.) And again from Psalm 139: 18: “’When I awake, I am still with thee.’” He added: “ Learn how to enter sleep and you’ll know how to wake.”
And so the old lifer taught me how to relax. It was a nighttime practice. The position was a reclining one. He went into some technical explanation in order to show me that nature herself was willing to assist me in my efforts.
“You see, son,” he said, “the law of the earth is inertia. You have to keep the spine erect to overcome the earth’s pull. When the spine is straight the currents which most play upon it are electrical. Like this----” He stood up, his spine perpendicular, and worked his fingers up and down rapidly to illustrate the activity of electrical vibrations. “Electrical currents induce action;” he went on, “magnetic currents, inaction.”
He then informed me that when the spine was held in a horizontal position the currents playing upon it were predominately magnetic. “And so,” he finished, letting his neck and shoulders go limp, “when we recline or lie down we get drowsy. This is nature’s way of helping us relax.”
After the reclining position had been assumed, he then instructed me in the matter of emptying my lungs of stale air. Then I was to fix my attention on a dual process: on that of breathing and on the word peace.
Both the inbreath and the outbreath were to be slow and even and unrestrained This was achieved by the will. The inbreath was to be shorter by several counts than the outbreath. A one-count pause was to be made at the end of the inbreath, and a two-count pause at the end of the outbreath.
I was assured that, while this was difficult at first, if persisted in, the particular rhythm would eventually establish itself and become a subconscious habit, thus eliminating the tedium of will control. On the slow-moving outbreath the word P-E-A-C-E was to be mentally and slowly pronounced.
It was amazing to see how this practice overcame tension and induced sleep and relaxation-a relaxation far deeper than that attained in ordinary sleep. And it eliminated subconscious activity in the form of dreams and restlessness. It produced a quality of restful slumber that can best be described as “peaceful.” It was, in fact, and in a certain way, a spiritual experience with implications too far-reaching to suggest here.
In this experience of entering into peace at night, I have found the time element most bewildering. It is as though you drop off to sleep, and then wake suddenly a moment later. But the astonishing thing is that this moment has actually been a whole night. You’re in the same position when you wake as you were when you dropped off to sleep. You apparently have not turned over and your body is so thoroughly relaxed that it may take a minute for it to respond to your will to move.
I am speaking here, of course, of my own experience. I do not presume to know just how proficient another may become in the practice of this particular method. But I do know that it has been a boon to me through the years. It has extended my working day, because four hours of this sort of sleep are more refreshing than a dozen hours of the half-conscious kind I used to know. From the practice of this method I have reaped a harvest of benefits in my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual life.
CONCENTRATION
. . . a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.--James I:8.
INATTENTION, divided attention, scattered attention-in plain words, double-mindedness and double-heartedness-was another enormous weakness in me.
As I said at the beginning, the lifer’s ability to focus his attention on the thing at hand struck me as being an outstanding characteristic of the man. No matter what it happened to be, if it merited his interest, he could fix his attention upon it instantly, and centralize all his energies around it. He could likewise shift his attention from it and back to it at will.
This ability to concentrate had given him a memory that was the talk of the prison. As for prison history, he was a veritable encyclopedia. What he read he remembered accurately. The fairy tales and classic myths he could recite verbatim, ancient and modern history were open books to him. I have never met his equal in comparative religions, and it seemed to me that there was no subject he could not discuss with the knowledge and assurance of an authority. He had ranged over the field of philosophy and psychology, he was an expert theologian, and he had familiarized himself with all the best thought concerning the complicated subject of crime. Yet like Thomas Aquinas, when he came into a close personal experience of Christ, he pushed all the books on religion aside and devoted himself almost entirely to his Bible, and particularly the essays of Paul.
“You’ll have to learn to concentrate, son,” he told me, “if you expect to make a success in this life; if you want to have ears that can hear and eyes that can see.”
He put the Bible before me and had me open it to the book of Nehemiah before he began his lesson on concentration. As he told me to do, I read the 6th verse of chapter one, and I’ve never forgotten that line: “Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of they servant.”
He assured me that God’s attention must be gained through our attention, a fact known well to the Psalmist when he sane: “Lord hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.”
As the old lifer taught me there are two fundamental methods for surrendering to the will of God. One of them is by way of single-minded attention of God and His Commandments, and the other is by way of relaxation, the opposite pole of action.
Psychology teaches us that our success in the world is due to our ability to organize our energies around the thing that we wish to accomplish. In other words, to be single-minded, to use concentration. For concentration fixes the attention upon the desired goal, and while the attention is thus focused our energy will flow in that direction.
“If concentration can give us worldly health and success,” the lifer said, “isn’t it logical to think it can give us spiritual success also?”
He did not immediately explain the various reasons behind his lesson on concentration. These reasons gradually dawned upon me, and then he discussed them from the vantage point of the results obtained. Primarily the lesson was an attack upon my sick- and double-mindedness. This was the way he explained it:
We lived in what Professor William James called “the stream of consciousness.” Our minds, if we so willed, could operate as filters in this stream, or as a sort of clearing house, separating the good thoughts from the bad, and retaining the good and discarding the bad. The harm was not that bad thoughts entered our minds. The damage was done only by our being content to let such thoughts remain in our minds. Until a thought evoked and fused with feeling it had little power one way or another over us. It was purely a matter of selection, the ability for which we possessed.
Until I could concentrate at will I should be the victim of the stream of consciousness and not its master. I should have no power of selection amounting to anything. Hence my mind would act as a retaining sponge for all matter of thoughts, good, bad, sick, indifferent; my attention would be hopelessly scattered and I should be double-minded in all ways.
“That condition,” he said, “is failure.”
He presented two methods for correcting the condition of scattered attention. These were to be jointly employed until the desired result had been obtained.
The first method was to keep my mind so filled with spiritual thought that thought of a non-spiritual nature, when entering in, would be transformed into the image and likeness of that which resided in my habitual consciousness.
The other method was that of conscious will control, or of exercising my power of selectivity. This was to be in the nature of a game. It demanded close attention, like playing a game of chess. If, for instance, a negative thought entered my mind, I was not to give it attention, either by retaining it and reacting upon it, or by rejecting it with resentment. But I was to welcome it as an opportunity to counter immediately with two or more positive thoughts.
Within a few days I could readily observe the beneficial results of this latter practice. The old lifer assured me that any person, no matter to what depths of degradation he had sunk, no matter to what extent he had become victim to negative thinking, could change the whole course of his life by putting this method into practice for thirty days.
It is astonishing to note the rapidity of results when one buckles down in this unrestrained manner to take dominion over his thinking. It is essentially a method of substitution, rather than rejection. We are what we think we are, and when our thinking has been changed from negative to positive our whole life, including our environment, corresponds to the new order of things. But more astonishing is the fact that people are content to suffer defeat and all the miseries implied in the word when, with only a few weeks of earnest practice, their minds can be so reoriented as to overcome the destructive mental habits of a lifetime.
I have invented and practised a dozen or so methods of concentration effectively. None of these have been an improvement over those taught me by the lifer. I have tried the mental fast with varying results. But this is a rejection method, which, while effective, is still force. It is not the kingly way. It cases out thoughts it does not like. And where do they go when cast out? Right back into Professor James’ stream of consciousness to be picked up and to victimize countless others. The lifer always had concern for the other fellow. So his ideal was not to cast out evil, but to transform it with the substitution of good. Every vice has its virtue and every virtue its vice. Hence he rejected nothing, but sought to release the virtue in everything, knowing that when the virtue had been thus extracted the vice would automatically cease to have existence. He used to remind me:
“Nothing has permanence but virtue. Nothing has impermanence but its opposite. Virtue is real. Vice is its shadow. Take the vice from the virtue and the virtue remains. The vice disappears. Take the virtue from the vice, and still the virtue remains, and the vice disappears.” Hence his method of keeping the mind filled with spiritual thought, with virtue, with that which had permanence, eternal life, rather than with the shadows which courted defeat and ended in death.
For what it may be worth I shall pass on to you a concrete example of concentration practice taught me by the lifer, representing one of the main features in this particular lesson. It has made concentration in other specific fields easier for me; and what it has done for me it will do for anyone else who is willing to persevere with a strong and earnest desire for improvement.
The lesson on relaxation was a night-time practice. The lesson on concentration was a morning practice. The objective of this latter practice was to make an actual conscious contact with God the first thing in the morning, so that I could be fairly certain of being sustained through the many harrowing temptations that swirl about the life of a convict every day. I am frank in saying, however, that I never could have persisted in this morning practice had it not been for the unimaginable patience of my old cell buddy.
The reason is this: the hour he set for me to practise was four a.m., at which time the pull of the earth is very great, and lassitude well-nigh unconquerable.
Had I been permitted to rise, stir about, or refresh myself, it would not have been so difficult. But right at this point the lifer was not interested in removing difficulties, but rather in arranging harder ones, saying, “The tougher the opposition, the more power must be released to overcome it.” Always he was interested in releasing my latent power.
I soon learned to wake at the appointed time, but for quite a while the lifer had to prod me each morning before I would make the voluntary effort to keep my tryst with the God of morning.
It, too, was a bed practice. Upon waking I was not to get up, but merely to sit up, and put my mind on God as Love.
It sounds much easier than it is, for at this hour one can sleep with the greatest of ease. And a thousand reasons will crowd in to convince one that it is perfectly justifiable to turn over and drift away once more. When the earth is pulling you, as it does at that time, the intellectual mind can have small interest in looking Godward, and personal will is far from being in a co-operative mood for this sort of effort. When you consider these mental and physical oppositions being fantastic and futile, you may well imagine that the practice is anything but easy. God could not afford to confine the heavenly approach to such a practice, for if He did I fear few of us would ever wind up in heaven.
But this I can say for those who have a flair for self-imposed discipline: a few weeks of persistence with this practice will be handsomely rewarded if, finally, the ability is gained to overcome inertia and keep the attention consciously fixed on the God of Love to the exclusion of all lesser thoughts. Even if the God-consciousness is not entered, the accomplishment is still a great mental victory with far-reaching values.
I still practise the method. It is no longer an effort with me. It has become a joyous habit. I’m not always successful in making the desired contact, but I do meet with more success than failure. The element of time and the factor of duty often interfere and thus determine success or failure. If given enough time success is almost certain.
Sometimes the vast serenity of the God-mind is entered within a few minutes. Sometimes it takes an hour, or even two. But, as I say, there are still other times when, though concentration is uninterrupted and easy, the experience is persistently deferred.
On those mornings when the God-mind is entered the effect throughout the day is like the running of spiritual tides. The mind is exceedingly clear and vigorous on those days. A large amount of work can be accomplished without mental weariness or physical fatigue. The appetite is good, digestion and assimilation are excellent. The heart seems to sing, and the time clock becomes an alien invention. There is a marked tendency, however, to consume too little water and breathe too little fresh air. I was advised to overcome this inclination by the exercise of will.
The lifer told me that the deeper one pressed into the world of Spirit, the less desire one had for water. He claimed a connection between this fact and the Master’s statement to the woman at the well, that if one drank of the water which he possessed one would never thirst. However true that may be, my experience has been as stated above.
One the other hand, when the morning contact with God is not made the effect is often quite the opposite, with the result that the mental, emotional, and physical energies seem to flow at low tide. I have learned to operate on these days under the thought that in quietness and confidence shall come my strength.
Most of the people I have informed concerning this practice for the improvement of concentration have begun with enthusiasm, but to my knowledge only one has overcome the tug of inertia and wandering thoughts, to attain to direct and revelatory communion with the consciousness of God. But this one has become a skilled craftsman in the workshop of Christ. And if one more, because of reading this book, should achieve an equal capacity, the present chapter will have contributed greatly to the world’s need, God.
The trouble is, perhaps, we haven’t all an understanding friend who cares enough for our souls to tarry with us through the heart-breaking exasperations of the first few weeks, and who is willing to keep us prodded awake and persevering when it all seems so useless in comparison with the sweet sleep we could enjoy were it not for this tedious annoyance.
The Master was more considerate of his students than was the lifer. He told them to sleep on, justifying them on the ground that the spirit was willing though the flesh was weak. Sleep is a huge paradox: it makes what is sluggish seem light, and what is light seem sluggish.
I am glad that my old cell buddy was not so lenient with that weak flesh of mine. I am grateful that he kept it prodded until it could say to the spirit, “I, too, am willing.”
The above practices were taken from passages in Starr Daily's Release
Joe Wolfe
Spirit Light Outreach
P.O. Box 20827
Sedona, Arizona 86341
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