This conversation, if entered into in the spirit, accompanied by an earnest, sincere desire for its fulfilment, re-enforced by the thought forces, and continually attended by that absolute magnet of power, firm expectation, will, if all are firmly and persistently held to, bring the full realization of one’s fondest desires with a certainty as absolute as that effect follows cause.  The higher self will invariably master when it truly and firmly asserts itself.  Much the same attitude can be assumed in connection with the body in disease or in suffering with the same results.  Forces can be set into operation which will literally change and make over the diseased, the abnormal portions, and in time transform them into the healthy, the strong, the normal,—­this when we once understand and vitally grasp the laws of these mighty forces, and are brought to the full recognition of the absolute control of mind, of spirit, over matter, and all, again let it be said, in accordance with natural spiritual law.

No, a knowledge of the spiritual realities of life prohibits asceticism, repression, the same as it prohibits license and perverted use.  To err on the one side is just as contrary to the ideal life as to err on the other. All things are for a purpose, all should be used and enjoyed; but all should be rightly used, that they may be fully enjoyed.

It is the threefold life and development that is wanted,—­physical, mental, spiritual.  This gives the rounded life, and he or she who fails in any one comes short of the perfect whole.  The physical has its uses just the same and is just as important as the others.  The great secret of the highly successful life is, however, to infuse the mental and the physical with the spiritual; in other words, to spiritualize all, and so raise all to the highest possibilities and powers.

It is the all-round, fully developed we want,—­not the ethereal, pale-blooded man and woman, but the man and woman of flesh and blood, for action and service here and now,—­the man and woman strong and powerful, with all the faculties and functions fully unfolded and used, all in a royal and bounding condition, but all rightly subordinated.  The man and the woman of this kind, with the imperial hand of mastery upon all,—­standing, moving thus like a king, nay, like a very God,—­such is the man and such is the woman of power.  Such is the ideal life:  anything else is one-sided, and falls short of it.

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The most powerful agent in character-building is this awakening to the true self, to the fact that man is a spiritual being,—­nay, more, that I, this very eternal I, am a spiritual being, right here and now, at this very moment, with the God-powers which can be quickly called forth.  With this awakening, life in all its manifold relations becomes wonderfully simplified.  And as to the powers, the full realization of the fact that man is a spiritual being and a living as such brings, they are absolutely without limit, increasing in direct proportion as the higher self, the God-self, assumes the mastery, and so as this higher spiritualization of life goes on.