His interest would be alive vivid, and strong, from the beginning until he found himself, with earthly experience completed, ready to return to his friends in Mars.  He would never lose courage or be in any way disheartened.  The more difficult his earthly problem was, the more it would arouse his interest and vigor to solve it.  So many people prefer a difficult problem in geometry to an easy one, then why not in life?  The difference is that in mathematics the head alone is exercised, and in life the head and the heart are both brought into play, and the first difficulty is to persuade the head and heart to work together.  In the visitor from Mars, of course, the heart would be working with the head, and so the whole man would be centred on getting creditably through his experience and home again.  If our hearts and heads were together equally concentrated on getting through our experience for the sake of the greater power of use it would bring,—­and, if we could trustfully believe in getting home again, that is, in getting established in the current of ordinary spiritual and natural action, then life would be really alive for us, then we should actually get the scent of our true freedom, and, having once had a taste of it, we should have a fresh incentive in achieving it entirely.

There is one important thing to remember in an effort to be free from the bondage of circumstances which will save us from much unnecessary suffering.  This has to do with the painful associations which arise from circumstances which are past and over.

A woman, for example, suffered for a year from nervous exhaustion in her head, which was brought on, among other things, by over-excitement in private theatricals.  She apparently recovered her health, and, because she was fond of acting, her first activities were turned in that direction.  She accepted a part in a play; but as soon as she began to study all her old head symptoms returned, and she was thoroughly frightened, thinking that she might never be able to use her head again.  Upon being convinced, however, that all her discomfort came from her own imagination, through the painful associations connected with the study of her part, she returned to her work resolved to ignore them, and the consequence was that the symptoms rapidly disappeared.

Not uncommonly we hear that a person of our acquaintance cannot go to some particular place because of the painful events which occurred there.  If the sufferer could only be persuaded that, when such associations are once bravely faced, it takes a very short time for the painful effects to disappear entirely, much unnecessary and prolonged discomfort would be saved.

People have been kept ill for weeks, months and years, through. holding on to the brain impression of some painful event.

Whether the painful circumstances are little or great, the law of association is the same and, in any case, the brain impression can be dropped entirely, although it may take time and patience to do it.  We must often talk to our brains as if we were talking to another person to eliminate the impressions from old associations.  Tell your brain in so many words, without emotion, that the place or the circumstance is nothing, nothing whatever,—­it is only your idea about it, and the false association can be changed to a true one.