The Mind is in Itself a Place – Sunday, January 25, 1981
George Bernard Shaw reportedly said that life is a series of smiles, sniffles and sobs: with the sniffles predominating. Surely none of us will escape the sobs that are part of this life, and hopefully we will enjoy our share of smiles. But what of the sniffles—the gray and humdrum outlook that can dampen our spirits and darken our days—are the sniffles an inescapable part of our existence? They need not be, because it is not our outward condition but the inward set of our minds that determines our world.
So many of the great writers have caught this vital insight and tried to pass it on to us. Shakespeare wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”1 Sir Edward Dyer said, “My mind to me a kingdom is. . .,”2 and John Milton wrote in his immortal poem, Paradise Lost, “The mind is in its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”3
If we accept these great writers at their word, then we must conclude that much of our happiness or misery is of our own making and depends upon our state of mind.
How can we open the curtains of our mind and let the sunlight stream in? We cannot will ourselves to be happy or at peace, because the mind has a mind of its own. When we try to force it we become a little like the man who made a resolution saying, “I want more patience and I want it now!”
Nor can we gain happiness by trying to avoid thinking of unhappiness and expecting joy to rush in and fill up the empty space. Our mind will shift and turn and twist until it focuses again upon the very thing we were trying to exclude.
The key to inner peace and joy is to fix our minds upon the good and true and beautiful. But alas, these are mere abstractions, hard to hold to. Our conscious minds demand an object, an experience to refer to; something to personify the principle.
And so, the Christ came down to show us what the Lord meant when he spoke of love. and with this light of love before us we need never walk in gloom and darkness.
As Paul wrote many years ago, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”4
1William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Raphael Tuck and Sons Ltd, London, No copyright date
2 Sir Edward Dyer, “My Mind to me a Kingdom is,” quoted in The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations, J.M and M.J Cohen eds, Penguin Books, New York, 1960, p 150.
3 Sir Egerton Brydges Bart ed., The Poetical Works of John Milton, Phillips, Sampson and Co., New York, 1854, p. 124.
4 The New Testament, Romans 8:38-39
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January 25, 1981
Broadcast Number 2,684