nd insist upon giving our attention entirely to yielding
out of the contractions which the painful discomforts cause. In other
words, we must give up resisting the grip. It is the same with any
other disease or any pain. If we have the toothache and give all our
attention to the toothache, it inevitably makes it worse; but if we
give our attention to yielding out of the toothache contractions, it
eases the pain even though it may be that only the dentist can stop it.
Once I had an ulcerated tooth which lasted for a week. I had to yield
so steadily to do my work during the day and to be able to sleep at all
at night that it not only made the pain bearable, but when the tooth
got well I was surprised to find how many habitual contractions I had
dropped and how much more freedom of action I had before my tooth began
to ulcerate. I should not wish to have another ulcerated tooth in order
that I might gain more freedom, but I should wish to take every pain of
body and mind so truly that when the pain was over I should have gained
greater freedom than I had before it began.

You see it is the same with every pain and with every disease. Nature
tends toward health and if we make the disease simply a reminder to
yield--and to yield more deeply--and to put our positive effort there,
we are opening the way for nature to do her best work. If our entire
attention is given to yielding and we give no attention whatever to the
pain, except as a reminder to yield, the result seems wonderful. It
seems wonderful because so few of us have the habit of giving our
entire attention to gaining our real freedom.

With most of us, the disease or discomfort is positive, and our effort
against it is negative or no effort at all. A negative effort probably
protects us from worse evil, but that is all; it does not seem to me
that it can ever take us ahead, whereas a positive effort, while
sometimes we seem to move upward in very slow stages, often takes us in
great strides out of the enemy's country.

If we have the measles, the whooping cough, scarlet fever--even more
serious diseases--and make the disease negative and our effort to free
ourselves from it positive, the result is one thousand times worth
while. And where the children have the measles and the whooping cough,
and do not know how to help nature, the mothers can be positive for the
children and make their measles and whooping cough negative. The
positive attitude of a mother toward h