January 9th, 1917.
Received by James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, your grandmother.
Well, my dear son, it has been sometime since I wrote you, and I feel that I must say a few words to you, as you are in a condition that needs some encouragement and sympathy. I love you as you know and while I have not written you lately, yet I have been with you a great deal watching over you and trying to influence you with my love and powers of bringing to you spiritual thoughts and soul's longings.
Now, I want to tell you a few things that may help you in your moments of worry. When on earth, as you know, I was nearly blind and deaf, and in such condition as would naturally cause me to worry and be unhappy, but I did not worry and was not unhappy; and the secrets was that I had in my soul the Love of the Father, and it was so real to me that no doubt of its existence in my soul ever came to cause me unhappiness. And that Love, I know, and assure you, is the same kind of Love that now floods my whole being and gives me the happiness that I now possess. I remember that I did not have many material things to trouble me, for you looked after my material welfare and was always kind to me and loving, yet, nevertheless, if it had not been for the Love that I speak of, I can readily see that I should have been very unhappy and worried a great deal, for my natural inclination was to worry when things did not go right, as we said.
And so I tell you from actual experience, that all your worries, and by this I mean your causes of worry, may be taken from your conscious self if you will only seek for and obtain, which you certainly can do, this Love of the Father. It is astonishing how efficacious it is to cause the worries and troubles to disappear. They, as you may know, are very largely a matter of the mind and while in a certain sense they are real, yet the mind or its condition is the real cause of the realization of the worries.
And consider for a moment the fact, and I know that you will agree with me that it is a fact, that the indulging in these worries does not in one particular remove the material causes of the worry, and does not in any manner bring relief from the troubles. No matter how much you may allow your mind to dwell on these things, and how intensely you may worry, the cause, the material cause, remains. You may say, and it is natural to do so, that it is easy enough to advise that you should not let these inconvenient things cause you to worry, but when you come to the practical experience and are the sufferer from these conditions, it is not so easy to throw aside the effect of the troubles on the mind. Well, there is much truth in that, but notwithstanding, this Love that I tell you of, when living in the soul, will make even that effort easy to accomplish.
The philosophy of the phenomenon, if you may call it such, is that this Love is of such real substantial essence that it takes control of the mind and eliminates the consciousness of the reality of the causes of the worry. Now I do not want to be understood as intending to convey the idea that these material causes are not real, for I am not a Christian Scientist to that extent, but what I do mean is, that notwithstanding the real existence of these causes, the effects of this Love, and the faith that accompanies it, upon the mind which is the real cause of the worry is such that forgetfulness of these causes of worry takes the place of the constant indulging in the thoughts of their existence, and the unhappy consequence that must flow from them. The cause itself is not removed but the consciousness of their existence, for the time being, is dissipated, and to the mind that is thus influenced by the Love, these causes are, as if they were not. Of course, they are existing and facing you to some extent, but it will come to you that they are not so overwhelming and insurmountable as they would appear were this Love absent from the soul and its influence from the mind. And in addition to this, love and faith creates a confidence in the power of the Father and His willingness to help, that engenders courage, which enables the possessor of this confidence to overcome these causes of worry that he would not otherwise be able to do.
What I have said may be called the philosophy of the workings of this Love in its effective destruction of worry. But the great fact is that the Father does, as a truth, help the one who is in the condition of being possessed with this Love. His Love is real and His help is real, and the effect is to make the causes named things of unreality so far as the happiness of the object of this help is concerned. And as a truth, shown by the experience of mortals, a very large proportion of the worries and troubles that harass and cause so much unhappiness to mortals is a thing of the imagination and never realized.
So my dear son, try to understand what I have written and apply it to your own condition, and you will find that your worries are not near so great as you now think. I know just what is facing you, but as you have been told by others who have written you, in a short time you will be relieved and the sun will again shine in your consciousness of existence, and you will become in a much better condition to do your work, both that of your business and that of the Master. You must not for a moment think that you will not be looked after so that you can do and complete the task that you have been selected to do. This is as certain as that the sun shines, and while for a time yet some disagreeable and disheartening things may confront you, yet it will not be a great while before they will become things of the past, and you will be in condition to do this work without hindrance or interference.
So think of all that I have said and try to believe and make a practical application of my philosophy; and above all pray to the Father for a greater inflowing of this Love, and have faith to realize that it will become yours, limited only by your longings and sincerity of aspirations. Well, I will come soon and write you a long letter on some spiritual truth, that will be of interest to you. I must stop now, and so with all my love and the Father's blessings, I will say, good night.
Your loving Grandmother.