So, having no money of my own, I had nothing to tempt me from my desire to heal myself.

I am glad of it. I healed myself and I know how I did it. All healing is self-healing, but all is not consciously done. Only conscious knowledge makes one truly wise to help themselves and others.

Whilst I was going through these experiences there were many times I could not see that I was making headway in the new directions. I was like the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness. It seemed to take me 40 years to do what 40 days ought to suffice for. I seemed too, to wander around and come back to the same starting place, as people are said to do when lost in a wilderness. But every discouraged spell preceded another spell of trying, and on I went.

I know now what I never suspected then, that there are UNSEEN tides of spiritual force which work in and through, us, and which rise and fall, rise and fall, as do the tides of ocean. When these spiritual tides are rising we are impelled to greater activity and accomplishment. Then it is we congratulate ourselves that we are "growing." But as these spiritual tides ebb again we feel an inertia creeping through us; we don't want to try. We grow frightened at our own backslidings and imagine we are all wrong. And many times fear lashes us into desperate strivings, which only tire us and accomplish nothing at all. It is as if we had been joyously swimming with an incoming wave of the ocean, and then fought despairingly against the outflow as it struck us.

Now a wise swimmer never battles against the outflow. He works with the incoming wave; dives under its breaking crest; and then floats and rests and lets