Around the Year with Emmet Fox - 22 September 2010
FACING TWO WAYS
Are you double-minded? Jesus says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, and that such a person need expect nothing from the Great Law.
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord (James 1:5-7)
This is very obvious common sense. If you affirm one thing now, and the opposite in half an hour; if you meditate helpfully and then go downstairs to talk trouble; it is entirely natural that you should fail to influence people with the peace that comes with prayer.
If you stepped into a taxi at Grand Central and told the driver to take you to Central Park, and then, after a block, told him to drive you to the Battery, and then after a couple of blocks asked him to go to Central Park again, you could hardly expect the driver to land you at any destination. And yet this is what a good many of us do in practice. We affirm both harmony and disharmony until the subconscious mind is completely muddled, and, of course, our lives are in confusion.
Where our words and deeds reinforce one another the effect is powerful and the result certain. Where they are not in accord they cancel out, leaving us where we started, or more likely worse off.