Do not mistake the disorders which come at first, when turning away from an unnatural and wasteful life of contractions, for the effects of relaxing.  Such disorders are no more caused by relaxing than are the disorders which beset a drunkard or an opium-eater, upon refusing to continue in the way of his error, primarily caused by the abandonment of his evil habit, even though the appearance is that he must return to it in order to re-establish his pseudo-equilibrium.

One more cause of trouble, especially in working without a guide, is the habit of going through the form of the exercises without really doing them.  The tests needed here have been spoken of before.

Do not separate your way of practising from your way of living, but separate your life entirely from your practice while practising, trying outside of this time always to accomplish the agreement of the two,—­that is, live the economy of force that you are practising.  You can be just as gay, just as vivacious, but without the fatiguing after-effects.

As you work to gain the ideal equilibrium, if your test comes, do not be staggered nor dismayed.  Avoid its increase by at once giving careful consideration to the causes, and dropping them.  Keep your life quietly to the form of its usual action, as far as you wisely can.  If you have gained even a little appreciation of equilibrium, you will not easily mistake and overdo.

When you find yourself becoming bound to the dismal thought of your test and its terrors, free yourself from it every time, by concentrating upon the weight of your body, or the slowness of the slowest breaths you can draw.  Keep yourself truly free, and these feelings of discouragement and all other mental distortions will steadily lose power, until for you they are no more.  If they last longer than you think they should, persist in every endeavor, knowing that the after-result, in increased capacity to help yourself and others, will be in exact ratio to your power of persistency without succumbing.

The only way to keep truly free, and therefore ready to profit by the help Nature always has at hand, is to avoid thought of your form of illness as far as possible.  The man with indigestion gives the stomach the first place in his mind; he is a mass of detailed and subdued activity, revolving about a monstrous stomach,—­his brain, heart, lungs, and other organs, however orderly they may be, are of no consideration, and are slowly made the degraded slaves of himself and his stomach.

The man who does not sleep, worships sleep until all life seems sleep, and no life any importance without it.  He fixes his mind on not sleeping, rushes for his watch with feverish intensity if a nap does come, to gloat over its brevity or duration, and then wonders that each night brings him no more sleep.

There is nothing more contracting to mind and body than such idol-worship.  Neither blood nor nervous fluid can flow as it should.