Happiness and Marriage | Page 7

burdens on him who offered to bear them; and you refuse to bear them yourself. Instead you distribute them around among your relations and friends and then fret your soul because they won't accept your distributions. Of course you excuse yourself by acknowledging "your share of responsibility" for the unpleasantness of conditions, but if you will examine carefully you will find that your portion of the responsibility includes most of the good things in your conditions, whilst you have portioned off almost all the responsibility for the bad things among your protesting--or indifferent--relatives. You always say, "I try so hard," but you never balance that with, "He tries so hard,"--"They try so hard." You get all the I-try-items in your own pile and the don't-try-items in other folk's piles. "If it were not for Tom and Dick and Harry and Fan you would do wonders--if they'd only treat you with half the consideration other people give you, or half they give other people!--if!--if!"
I wonder why they don't indeed! It is just because you are you, and you attract your own particular kind of treatment. To all intents and purposes Tom, Dick, Harry and Fan are a punch and Judy show and you pull the strings. When other people pull the strings there's a different sort of show. YOU are the motive power in all their treatment of you. Not a tone or look or act of theirs in your direction but you are responsible for; it was you and no other who drew them to you; and it is you and no other who hold them there.
Now don't say, "I don't see how!" Of course not--you haven't wanted to see how--you've been too intent justifying yourself. And anyway, it takes an open mind, and some time, and much faith to enable us to see the principles of things. We have to act as if they were so, a long time before we see that they are. If you had acted upon the principle that you are a magnet and that all that comes to you comes by your attraction, you'd have long ago had your eyes opened to "see how." And you'd have made progress and changed your conditions.
If you are ever going to be a magnet you are one now. If you are ever going to be able to attract to the hair's breadth whatsoever you will then you are doing it now. There will be no miraculous change in the running gear of this universe to enable you to attract what you want.
What you now are in essence and working principle you have always been, and you will always be--the same yesterday, today and forever--a self-made MAGNET, working to the hair's breadth.
ONLY BY CHANGING THE QUALITY OF YOUR MAGNETISM CAN YOU CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT AND ATTRACT DIFFERENT TREATMENT FROM TOM, DICK, HARRY AND FAN.
Sweetness within brings sweetness without. You have been more or less bitter and self-justifying within, and Tom, Dick, Harry and Fan have danced to the strings you pulled.
As long as you think you try and they don't; as long as you think your judgment superior to theirs; your ideals loftier and worthier; your ways better; you will get from them responses of carelessness, bitterness, lack of consideration, selfishness.
You are inconsiderate of their ideas, ideals, judgments and ways; in self-preservation they are inconsiderate of yours. If you had your way they'd be pretty little putty images of your ideals, judgments, wishes, ways and feelings. The Law of Individuality prevents your imposing yourself on them. You think you are finding fault with their "lack of consideration"; you are really condemning the law of being.
If you are ever to be a magnet you are one NOW. All that comes is "your fault." If anything different comes it will come through your change of mental attitude and action.
It will not do to throw it on "Karma" either, and say you are receiving now the unpleasant things deserved in a previous state of existence. The mills of the gods grind slowly but they are not so dead slow as all that. What you thought and did in a previous state has determined your parentage and childhood environment in this. But the pangs you suffer today have their roots in yesterday or day before, or the year before that. Cause and effect trip close upon each other's heels--so close that the careless or ignorant observer misses the trip. He exaggerates the effect if it be an unhappy one, and goes nosing for a bigger cause than the real one. How could his little slip of this morning, or yesterday, be the cause of this terrible evil which has befallen him?--and he slides completely over the real cause. And keeps on repeating it.
Self-righteousness, by blinding your eyes to the truth, is the