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.

When we are kept awake from our fatigue, the first thing to do is to say over and over to ourselves that we do not care whether we sleep or not, in order to imbue ourselves with a healthy indifference about it.  It will help toward gaining this wholesome indifference to say “I am too tired to sleep, and therefore, the first thing for me to do is to get rested in order to prepare for sleep.  When my brain is well rested, it will go to sleep; it cannot help it.  When it is well rested, it will sleep just as naturally as my lungs breathe, or as my heart beats.”