The Wayfarer on The Open Road ( Audio Book )

The Wayfarer on The Open Road – Ralph Waldo Trine / Chapter One

Ralph Waldo Trine

The Wayfarer on the Open Road

To be observed today, to be changed tomorrow, or abandoned, according to tomorrows light.

To live to our highest in all things that pertain to us, and to lend a hand as best we can to all others for this same end.

To aid in righting the wrongs that cross our path by pointing the wrong-doer to a better way, and thus aid him in becoming a power for good.

To turn toward and to keep our faces always to the light, knowing that we are then always safe, and that we shall travel with joy the open road.

To love the fields and the wild flowers, the stars, the far-open sea, the soft, warm earth, and to live much with them alone; but to love struggling and weary men and women and every pulsing, living creature better.

To do our own thinking, listening quietly to the opinions of others, but to be sufficiently men and women to act always upon our own convictions. To do our duty as we see it, regardless of the opinions of others-seeming gain or loss, temporary blame or praise.

To remain in nature always sweet and simple and humble and therefore strong.

To play the part of neither fool nor knave by attempting to Judge another, but to give that same time to living more worthily ourselves.

To get up immediately when we stumble, face again to the light, and travel on without wasting even a moment in regret.

To love and to hold due reverence for all people and all things, but to stand in awe or fear of nothing save our own wrong doing.

To recognize the good lying at the heart of all people, of all things, waiting for expression all in its own good way and time.

To know that it is the middle ground that brings pleasure and satisfaction, and that excesses have to be paid for always with heavy and sometimes with frightful costs. To know that work, occupation, something definite and useful to do, is one of the established conditions of happiness in life.

To realize always clearly that thoughts are forces, that like creates like and like attracts like, and that to determine one’s thinking therefore is to determine his life.

To take and to live always in the attitude of mind that compels gladness, looking for and thus drawing to us continually the best in all people and all things, being thereby the creators of our own good fortunes.

To know that the ever-conscious realization of the essential oneness of each life with the Divine Life is the Greatest of all knowledge, and that to open ourselves as opportune channels for the Divine Power to work in and through us is the open door to the highest attainment, and to the best there is in life.

In brief- to be honest, to be fearless, to be just, joyous, kind. This will make our part in life’s great and as yet not fully understood play one of greatest glory, and we need then stand in fear of nothing-life nor death; for death is life. Or rather, it is the quick transition to fife in another form; the putting off of the old coat and the putting on of the new; a passing not from light to darkness, but from light to light according as we have lived here; a taking up of life in another form where we leave it off here; a part in life not to be shunned or dreaded or feared, but to be welcomed with a glad and ready smile when it comes in its own good way and time.

1. To live to our highest in all things that pertain to us, and to lend a hand as best we can to all others for this same end.

DOES it pay? Are there any real, substantial reasons that we live to our highest?

The fact that we have ideals and aspirations, and that we always feel better the more fully we follow them, indicates that it pays. That we are conscious that something is not right, and that we suffer when we do violence to that which we know or which we feel to be the better thing, indicates that there is a law written in the universe through the inexorable operation of which we are pushed onward and upward, unless we are wise enough to go of our own accord.

As excessive eating or drinking, as excesses of every nature bring with them something that convinces an ordinarily bright mind that they don’t pay, is an indication that there is a law of moderation, the observance of which brings good, the violation of which brings its opposite, pain and loss; as to live in discord with, in hatred or envy or jealousy of one’s fellows brings its own peculiar destructive results, indicating that there is a law of love, of kindness, of mutuality, that will admit of no violation without striking home its punishments and inflicting its losses, so the lack of self-respect, the sense of loss, the general feeling that we have missed the higher and the satisfying in pursuing or being contented with the lower and the transient, indicates that the higher, the better, really pays, and that to follow it is a manifestation of simply good everyday common sense.

2. To aid in righting the wrongs that cross our path by pointing the wrong-doer to a better way, and thus aid him in becoming a power for good.

WRONGS and injustices of one type or another come to our notice almost daily. They seem worthy of condemnation, many times of punishment. Wise however is he who is able to differentiate between the perpetrator of the wrong and the wrong that is done.

Only he who is perfect himself is in a consistent position even to judge another, to say nothing of condemning. The truly wise therefore will be slow to judge, and he will refuse to condemn. This must ever be so until he who would judge be perfect himself. We are all in the process of attaining – none have yet arrived.

The one whose zeal for justice is so keen can, moreover, rest at least in part peace when he is able once for all to realize that every wrong-doing carries with it its own punishment, that such is a fundamental law, and that by virtue of it the perpetrator of a wrong or an injustice suffers many times more than the one against whom it is directed.

3. To turn toward and to keep our faces always to the light, knowing that we are then always safe, and that we shall travel with joy the open road.

A KNOWLEDGE of the fact that we grow into the likeness of those things we contemplate, of those things that we live mostly with in our mental world, is one of the greatest assets of human life. Thought is at the bottom of all progress or retrogression, of all that is desirable or undesirable in life. We have it entirely in our own hands to determine what type of thought we entertain and habitually live with; thereby it is that we are the makers of our own good or ill fortunes.

A knowledge also of the fact that it is not what we actually accomplish at any particular time or times, but what we earnestly endeavor to accomplish, makes the road easier and should make all effort even a joy. It is the law of the reflex nerve system that whenever one does or endeavors to do any given thing in a certain way, a modicum of power is added whereby it is a trifle easier at the next effort, an added trifle at the next and the next, until that which is difficult and is done only with great effort in the beginning becomes easy of accomplishment – that which we do haltingly and stumblingly at first, bye and bye, so to speak, does itself, and with scarcely or even without any conscious effort on our part. This is the law; it is the secret of habit forming, character building, of all attainment.