If “Take it easy” is good advice in our contacts with others, it is also good advice in personal affairs. If we can relax purposefully, we can often release the creative capacities of the mind, which are vast indeed. Such relaxation can become a highway to higher states of consciousness and awareness.
We can be highly “awake” when we seem to be “half-asleep,” because then both our conscious and unconscious minds may be functioning together efficiently and interrelating their efforts.
Our inner tensions may be reduced and pushed into the background for a time. We may become deeply and subtly aware of what is going on inside of us—how we feel; what others may be feeling and thinking; what we really want out of life; and what practical steps we can take toward realizing these personal and meaningful objectives. But that is only part of the story. We can become highly aware of how we can be helpful to others.
In these states of alert passivity, we can make suggestions and give commands to our “inner selves.” We can plant motives in our subconscious minds as we plant seeds in a garden, and the seeds can bear wholesome fruit.
Each individual is essentially creative and constructive in his drives, a fact for which we can be thankful. The drive to create is universal, but the direction the drive takes may be largely up to the individual, subject to his will and his purposes. It is also related to his social environment, his attitudes toward other people, and their attitudes toward him.
We have considerable control over our personal destinies. A person can, to a remarkable extent, change himself for the better. How effectively he can do this depends on how well he learns the means by which this change can be accomplished. Through gaining insights, we grow. These insights, however personal and unique, are linked up with the insights of others, particularly with those of individuals with whom we are in daily association.
We are interested in those intuitions which release the creativity of individuals, making for liveliness, energy, and happiness, and at the same time enabling them to get along better. There is a kind of altruistic and sociable “individualism” that we may want to develop, hoping that international peace and good will may be established on such a foundation.
“Individualism” is generally conceived in terms of the individual who is against society. The individual and society are never in perfect accord, nor should they be. But there can be an individualism in which the individual is more fair-minded than the “average person,” and more willing to help others in times of need.