It is right to play and amuse ourselves for rest and recreation. We
play in the wrong way when we use ourselves up in the strain of
playing, in the anxiety lest we should not win in a game, or when we
play in bad air. When we play in the right way, there is no strain,
no anxiety, only good fun and refreshment and rest.
We might go through the narrative of an average life in showing
briefly the wonderful difference between doing right in the right
way, and doing right in the wrong way. It is not too much to say
that the difference in tendency is as great as that between life and
death.
It is one thing to read about orderly living and to acknowledge that
the ways described are good and true, and quite another to have
one's eyes opened and to act from the new knowledge, day by day,
until a normal mode of life is firmly established. It requires
quiet, steady force of will to get one's self out of bad, and well
established in good habits. After the first interest and relief
there often has to be steady plodding before the new way becomes
easy; but if we do not allow ourselves to get discouraged, we are
sure to gain our end, for we are opening ourselves to the influence
of the true laws within us, and in finding and obeying these we are
approaching the only possible Freedom of Life.
II
_How to Sleep Restfully_
IT would seem that at least one might be perfectly free in sleep.
But the habits of cleaving to mistaken ways of living cannot be
thrown off at night and taken up again in the morning. They go to
sleep with us and they wake with us.
If, however, we learn better habits of sleeping, that helps us in
our life through the day. And learning better habits through the day
helps us to get more rest from our sleep. At the end of a good day
we can settle down more quickly to get ready for sleep, and, when we
wake in the morning, find ourselves more ready to begin the day to
come.
There are three things that prevent sleep,--overfatigue, material
disturbances from the outside, and mental disturbances from, within.
It is not uncommon to hear people say, "I was too tired to sleep"--but
it is not generally known how great a help it is at such times
not to try to sleep, but to go to work deliberately to get I rested
in preparation for it. In nine cases out of ten it is the
unwillingness to lie awake that keeps us awake. We wonder why we do
not sleep. We toss and turn and wish we could sleep. We fret, and
fume, and worry, because we do not sleep. We think of all we have to
do on the following day, and are oppressed with the thought that we
cannot do it if we do not sleep. First, we try one experiment to see
if it will not make us sleep, and when it fails, we try another, and
perhaps another. In each experiment we, are watching to see if it
will work. There are many things to do, any one of which might help
us to sleep, but the _watching to see if they will work keeps us
awake._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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