The art of natural sleep : $b with definite directions for the wholesome cure of sleeplessness : illustrated by cases treated in Northampton and elsewherePowell, Lyman P. (Lyman Pierson)
Religion
The art of natural sleep : $b with definite directions for the wholesome cure of sleeplessness : illustrated by cases treated in Northampton and elsewhere
Powell, Lyman P. (Lyman Pierson)
Emmanuel movement; Insomnia; Sleep
The main reliance, however, in the Emmanuel treatment is on faith,
reinforced first by hetero-suggestion and then by patient and
persistent auto-suggestion. The man who would be permanently free
from insomnia must be an optimist. He must have a philosophy of life
wholesome enough to keep him buoyant, cheerful, and serene amid all
the changes and the chances of this mortal life. With the Persian
he may hold that “He’s a Good Fellow, and ’twill all be well;” with
Socrates that “To the good man no evil thing can happen;” or with St.
Paul that “All things work together for good to them that love the
Lord.”
Whatever language he may use in the formulation of his life philosophy,
he must believe with all his heart and soul that life in spite of all
appearances is worth living, that there is love and goodness at the
heart of things, that the word God, whatever be its content, does
stand for a concept indispensable in our everyday existence, and that
there is somewhere, everywhere, One who, by a paradox as strange as it
is true, is both the centre and circumference of all that has been,
is, and ever is to be—The Absolute and Unconditioned wherever we
may chance to be in time or space. “If I climb up into heaven, Thou
art there: if I go down to hell, Thou art there also. If I take the
wings of the morning: and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there also shall Thy hand lead me: and Thy right hand shall hold
me.”[12]
A man who wants that serenity of mind on which the soundest sleep
invariably depends must get right and keep right with God, whether he
defines Him in the terms of Persia, Greece, or Christianity.
But this is not enough. A man must be right also with his fellow-men.
He must love his neighbour as he loves his God. “He that loveth not
his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not
seen?” He must have more than a languid interest in his brother. He
must wish him better than well. He must have done forever with sharp
practice, hard bargaining, ungracious criticism, and that subtle
disloyalty which often through sheer cowardice stands mute while
slander wags its tongue or envy shoots its Parthian arrows back as it
retreats.
With the spirit’s eye he must see even in the poorest and the meanest
of his fellows some charm which others have not found. He must with the
Christ insight pierce to the heart of the roughest boulder that was
ever hewn from the hard mountain-side of seamy human nature and let
loose the imbedded angel always there and always struggling to be free.
No man has any right to sleep, in fact to any of God’s better gifts,
who goes through life with slanting eye and lowering brow sullenly
protesting to himself:
As I walked by myself,
I talked to myself,
And thus myself did say to me:
Look to thyself,
And take care of thyself,
For nobody cares for thee.
FOOTNOTES
[12] Psalm cxxxix., 7-9.
THE SPECIFIC TREATMENT
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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