Truths

By Donald R. James

Over thirty years ago, I began writing articles to send out as letters to the editor in a number of newspapers. As matters developed, a number of the articles were too long to be put on the editorial page and wound up nesting in my files. A few of the longer ones were published in magazines, but none of them yielded any money. That was okay by me because being a writer had been my desire from childhood. I had strong beliefs regarding various issues affecting my fellow man, and I continued to put to the pen hundreds of articles over a period of forty years. My main motive was to discuss a number of truths that people could benefit from by reading. The more truths a person has under his belt, the better off he or she is. My motive in writing these articles has been primarily altruistic because no money has been involved. I continued to write because doing so was therapeutic for me. I enjoy sharing my mind with anyone who loves to read.

It is my hope that the articles published in this book will add positively to the mind-set of the reader. Although I quote the Bible in perhaps 60 percent of my articles, I do not mean for my writing to take the place of scripture. This book is not the kind that a person is likely to read straight through without a break. It usually takes time for helpful truths to be digested, but it is my hope that the words I pen will help the readers in their efforts to lead satisfactory lives. May the Lord Jesus be with your spirit.

Donald R. James

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514409893

Donald R. James

Donald R. James was born to David F. James and Hattie Freeman James on August 16, 1947, in Desoto County, about a hundred miles north of Carroll County, where the family was soon to live on the family farm. For a dozen years, the Jameses farmed a small acreage by dint of sweat and calluses, and Donald spent hours under a blazing sun, hoeing and picking cotton and doing whatever chores he was called on to do. In the evenings, he and his siblings would go home from school and rush to the fields. Sometimes they would get to ride atop a bale of cotton on the way to the gin. Donald went to two separate schools as a youth and eventually graduated from J. Z. George High School after thirteen years of sporadic study. While going to school at Valley, a small country institution in central Carroll County, Donald spent more time reading library books for pleasure than he did studying his lessons. It was then that he decided to write books because he wanted to give others the pleasure of reading his. Even at that early age, Donald’s altruism was at work. At fourteen, he wrote sixty pages on a western, which, as a senior in high school, he was so disgusted with that he threw it in the fire. Similarly, after he had written four hundred pages on another, he lost interest in it and allowed it to be lost when a neighbor bought the house where the incomplete novel was stored. Pursuant to his desire to be a writer, Donald studied English in Holmes Junior College and worked to get his bachelor’s degree at Mississippi State University, later to teach school at Carrollton, his hometown. But he tired of the stress involved in keeping order in the classrooms, so he began a career in steelwork. In the ensuing years, he was a preacher, a shop foreman, and a politician. Yet his one bid for public office fell short by a small number of votes, and he returned to construction work. Eventually, he met a Louisiana Cajun woman and married her. He was then forty-four. At thirty-one, he had come down with schizophrenia and suffered with the mental confusion of hearing voices in his head, plus experiencing other stresses in his cranium. In spite of the confusion he suffered from, his creative nature helped him to cope with the disorder. In fact, he became more productive in his writings after the disorder struck than he had previously. Writing rejuvenated him, and though he had to take medication, he coped well enough that he didn’t have to spend time in a mental hospital. In fact, some years ago, he wrote a 524-page analytical history of his dealings with schizophrenia. At the present time, he resides with Teresa in Emerald Cottage in Bayou Pigeon.

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Copyright © 2015 by Donald R. James.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015915731

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-0987-9

                Softcover       978-1-5144-0988-6

                eBook            978-1-5144-0989-3

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Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright ©1982 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Rev. date: 10/19/2015

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CONTENTS

A

An Active Mind

A Balanced Subconscious

B

Belief by Inference

Blossoming

Breaking the Ice

The Bottom Line

C

Caring

The Chase

Communication

Communism

The Constancy of Nature

D

Divine Contact

Documentary Evidence

A Dream Turned into a Nightmare

E

Emotions

F

Faith

Faith and Memory

Familiar Faces

Familiarity

A Father’s Desire

Fear and Pain

Feeling Better

Feelings

Figurative Language in the Bible

The Flesh and the Spirit

The Flesh and the Spirit Combination

Focusing

Four-Dollar Gas

Forgiving an Author

Forgiveness

Frames of Reference

Freedom

The Freedom of the Believer

Freedom of Choice

Freedom ofCommon Sense

Freedom’s Limits

G

In God’s Image

H

The Human Spirit

I

Inordinate Skepticism

The Importance of Small Things

Intensity

K

King’s Choice

L

Literalism versus Poetry

M

Mildew

The Mississippi Flag

P

Performability

Procrastination

Promises without Context

Psychic Control

R

Recognizing Faith

S

Segmentation

Self-Concept

A Sign

A Silver Lining

Simplicity

Slavery

Slowing for a Look

Snowflakes

The Spirit and the Flesh

The Subconscious and the Self-Image

Success

Superstition

The Sword of Security

T

Taking a Broad View

Time and Values

The Tradition of Meditation

V

The Voice of Mad Purity

W

What Is Beauty?

Why by Faith?

Why Not Believe?

Having Wisdom is only half of the solution

If thoughts travel in a large enough circle, each one can seem new again and again

Happiness is a state of mind

Thinking about the project is only half of the work

Sometimes thinking about a thing is harder than doing it

Of what value is strength when it isn’t applied

What good is beauty when a veil is worn?

Wisdom is of no value to one who won’t practice it

Few statements are true regardless of the context

A persistent searcher will find an answer

Moderation is seldom possible without self control

Unto the pure, most things are pure

A man usually has more time than he thinks he has

There are many truths, but not all of them will bear repeating

Self assertion is the price of liberty

AN ACTIVE MIND

While I was spending two years of my college life at Mississippi State University, one of my instructors was talking about how the thinking power of persons in a particular culture or nation relates to the language they speak. While it is now evident to me that the vocabulary of a person must affect the thinking of the person, it isn’t true that a person’s entire thinking process is an exercise in word shuffling, for I have established to my satisfaction that part of my mental processes is not in words but in visual images and in a type of summary of thoughts rather than mere words speaking in the brain. Nevertheless, I think the professor was correct in believing that vocabulary affects the cogitating process.

As a Bible student, I had many occasions to observe that the Greek language had more precisely definable words than do many other languages. For example, the Greeks had five or six words that were translated love in English versions. The main word translated thusly is agape, or spiritual love, such as one would have for God or brothers and sisters in Christ. Other Greek words for love depicted other kinds of love, one of which was eros, or sexual love. While I am definitely not a Greek scholar, I am convinced that love can apply to the love of good food, good music, a beautiful painting, and many other facets of existence. There are different levels of love, as well as the different kinds. But as the Bible says, the greatest of these is agape.

I am not saying that a person’s mind is nothing more than a collection of words and phrases, for that would be a very inaccurate statement. As I observed in the classroom at Mississippi State all those years ago, all thoughts are not expressible in one word or one sentence or one paragraph. A thought can be a blend of many words and phrases that the average person isn’t able to put into words, at least not without a lot of effort and a lot of time spent. I think that a person’s emotions and other cerebral icons are at times the vehicles that carry thought. Feelings can stimulate thoughts. A person whose ability to empathize is not well developed is limited in what cohesiveness he can receive from others. Empathy stimulates thoughts, even though all those types of thoughts are not necessarily positive. A person who empathizes with an evil person is going to get some trash in his brain. Or perhaps I should say poison. So a person should be careful whom he empathizes with.

But to show how words are useless unless they are grouped and phrased properly, I invite the reader to define the word fire. There are many types of ways the word can be used. For example, if someone came up to you and out of the blue and exclaimed, Fire! but gave no supporting words or gestures, you would not know precisely what he meant. He could have been telling you to pull the trigger on a firearm, discharge an arrow, or shoot a slingshot. Or he could be referring to the effect of red pepper on a person’s tongue. Or he could use the words to say that someone is to be fired from his job. So it should be evident that few words have a precise meaning except in context. It may take fifty words to explain what one word means, or can mean. That is one reason I say a person’s reasoning processes can consist of blends of many meanings! If a person were to start telling you all he knew about trees, you could be talking a long time, for there are many varieties of trees, many sizes, many ages, many uses, and other points in regard to the base word.

Language is very complex, and while I agree with my professor that Greek affects the way Greeks think, I reiterate my observation that not all of a person’s thoughts are in words. In a person’s mind passes words put into phrases, clauses, sentences, and other tidbits of grammar. And in the reasoning processes of some, if not all of us, the thoughts can be conveyed by words or possibly other agents that make speech possible. But it is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so I say that those who receive the words have a part to play in the interpretation of the communication. Take the word jump, for example. If you were to tell person A to jump, he may refuse, saying that the toes on his right foot are broken. So few words stand alone.

But one reason that a person’s thinking processes can’t be an unbroken stream of grammatical discourse is that a person’s body can’t keep up with his mind. But hopefully, the person can learn to control his thoughts enough that his mental actions will be in sync with his physical actions. The person, upon seeing a fellow he would prefer not to see, may say to himself, I am going to throw an overripe tomato at his ugly mug. So he walks over to the bucket of tomatoes that are on his back steps, hefts several until he finds a big and soft one, walks around the corner of the house, and yells, You tumblebug, here’s a present for you! and lets fly the red missile. It should be obvious that the person’s actions will take longer than merely thinking about what he is doing. So to a degree, in order to keep mentally busy, the person’s mind may consider what he is doing from several different angles, and it may think about what he will do if the target of the tomato seeks to reward him by chasing him with a butcher knife and cutting off his ears, as he once threatened to do. Since a mind can hardly slow itself down to match the physical action, it must jump into a different sort of mental activity than that which led him into deciding to tomatoize the person he didn’t like. An active mind may wander and wonder more than a sluggish one.

The trick is to not let one’s mind wander too far from the topic, for if you do, you may be hit in the face with a rotten tomato!

2/5/15                                          Donald R. James

A BALANCED SUBCONSCIOUS

The belief that the human mind has both a subconscious and a conscious part is a reasonable one. Paradoxically, the subconscious provides the conscious with information and participates in the reasoning process, yet the conscious part is the one that the person is most aware of. Normally, most people are unaware of what goes on in the subconscious. If it were not for the work of the subconscious mind, a person would have to be conscious of everything all the time, in which case the mind would be swamped. Discretionary thought wouldn’t be possible. So we should all thank God for the subconscious. But while the subconscious mind guides the conscious, it does so mostly by suggestion, not by issuing edicts. If most of the ideas that come from within are dictatorial, the mind is out of balance. The person should assert control over himself, for the Bible says that we are to love God with our whole mind, and if we are to do that, we must keep our minds in balance. If the mind is operating under compulsion, it is significant that God has given man a choice between good and evil. If we are to have that choice, God must tolerate a certain amount of evil. Jesus said that calamities must come, and possibly, the availability of the choice is why certain evils must be allowed.

Some of our decisions are conscious and deliberate, while others are largely subliminal, wherein the person does things inadvertently, without full cognition.

In a way, the subconscious looks ahead, going beyond the present and projecting present considerations into the future. The person is led to deal with things mentally before the actual moment arrives. Sometimes that is okay, but it is also true that the person sometimes is so preoccupied about the distant or not-so-distant future that he can’t use all his mental energy in dealing with the present. And a person usually has to pass through the present in order to get to the future. Again, I say that a person needs to work out a balance between subconscious and conscious activity.

Several years ago, my wife, who is to a degree claustrophobic, was scheduled to have an MRI done. In those days, the MRI involved a person’s whole body getting into a tube-like affair, and the very idea was frightening to Teresa. The day before she was to experience the MRI, the prospect of the tube was so oppressive that she couldn’t sleep. Teresa’s radar worked all too well. Eventually, the mental pressure caused Teresa to cancel the MRI. The point is that semiconscious fears caused Teresa to be miserable.

One of the main duties of the subconscious is to help the conscious avoid unnecessary conflict, and to do that, the mind has to project into the future. The subconscious goes beyond a person’s intentions in anticipating what a person may experience. A person normally doesn’t deliberately worry—that is often the result of mental habits accumulated over a lifetime intersecting the present-day realities. But Jesus left us with very sound advice in that he said that a person shouldn’t worry about tomorrow, that sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. Jesus said that the Father takes care of sparrows and that he will certainly take care of his children. But in all things, there needs to be a balance so the person can avoid the torment of extremes. While a person shouldn’t try to anticipate in detail what might happen, he should make an effort to be practical in making day-to-day plans. Some forethought is necessary and good. On the other hand, we do need to let go of the future when it becomes oppressive and possessive.

I have mentioned the inadvertent mind, the part of us that makes decisions without our taking conscious thought at the moment of action, whether the action is purely mental or is also physical. In other words, sometimes the person does a number on himself without intending to at that time.

These days, there are many books written about the importance of the self-image, which is the view we have of ourselves. Often we must believe we can do something before we can do it. I do not pretend to have a 100 percent understanding of how the mind works, but I have learned by studying books and by examining myself and talking to others a measure of knowledge about what goes on in my upstairs chamber. Through the use of radar, the subconscious strives to steer the person’s thoughts away from conflict and awareness of contradictions. It is necessary that this be done, for if all the conflicts were visited on the person’s consciousness at the same time, the mind would be deadlocked. So it is necessary for the subconscious to screen out possible conflicts. This fact is particularly important when it comes to the self-image. The subconscious, in order to hold down conflict, strives to make the person live up to, or down to, his self-image. So if the person has a bad self-image, the subconscious guides his thinking along those lines, and the person won’t be able to live up to his potential. So it is advisable that each of us cultivates the positive aspects of our lives and refuses to be ruled by negative mental habits and predilections.

We may not be able to make decisions in regard to what we do think, but we do need to decide what we think about. In Philippians 4:8, the Bible says so. We have the right before God to pick the subject we think about. We may not be able to predict what ideas may visit our craniums while we are thinking, but we do have a choice of topics we think about. If that were not so, the Bible wouldn’t say for us to meditate on things of good report.

Sometimes we can condition ourselves to guide our thoughts to positive areas. But Satan has some input into our minds and will try to stimulate destructive thoughts in us. A lot of the time, it is easier to think negatively than positively, at least at first. Sometimes there is a negative barrier that we must allow our subconscious to overcome. The trick is to learn how to allow the bad thoughts to pass out of our consciousness. It is worth the time and effort to condition ourselves to get rid of thoughts that poison our psyches.

But it is no easy chore to rid oneself of perceptions that are compulsive, burdensome, and oppressive. But some years ago, I learned how to get oppressive thoughts off my mind. The accumulative mental habits of years in the making were working overtime in me, and I was literally possessed by a syndrome of heavy, heavy, heavy thinking that was affecting my thoughts and actions. When under the pall of heavy, gouging mental activity, my neck would bend, and my head would lean forward, as though affected by an actual, physical weight. So one day, in protest, I said to myself, I’m not going to think about this anymore. But when I said that, my subconscious laughed at me, for it knew I was going to think about it again. So I was in despair, for it seemed like I would receive no subconscious support for what I needed to do to rid myself of oppressive, burdensome mental activity. However, later, perhaps later in the same day, an inspiration came to me, and I said to my other self, "I’m not going to think about this now. My subconscious couldn’t laugh at me then because it knew that I could quit thinking about the problem for a limited period of time. So I received subconscious support, and hope sprang up in me. Like magic, the oppressive ideas and feelings left me. Of course, later the syndrome started up again, but immediately I said again, I’m not going to think about it now." And again, like magic, the oppression lifted. In the days that followed, I used my formula to good effect until the oppression was past tense. But it was necessary for me to be consistent and immediate in my reactions when thoughts came. I’d say I wasn’t going to think about it today and the oppression would lift. I had established a victory pattern in my mind.

It is possible to establish a victory pattern in your mind, as I did. But in saying that, I must add how I deduced that there are patterns in the mind that guide, or at least influence, the thoughts. I would imagine that everyone who has been through school has had to work adding a column of figures, sometimes making mistakes in the process. The trouble with those mistakes is that if I added the column again, I arrived at the same wrong answer! That shows that the thoughts sometimes leave trails that are able to influence later mental activity. Otherwise, why do people sometimes repeat mistakes? I’m convinced that patterns affect the mind in ways that are not mathematical. In the mind, words are sometimes associated with other words, and when one thinks of one, the associated word comes to consciousness.

According to the reading that I have done, thoughts are formed by electrical currents passing through chemicals in the brain. So when the electrical activity takes place, habits are formed, and it is easier to think of something the second time than it was the first time. No doubt there are other factors that relate to the formation of thought, but I am convinced that electricity and chemicals are a factor. Of course, spiritual matters affect thought as well, though I doubt that anyone could say just how spiritual values affect thoughts and feelings. Perhaps in a hundred ways or more. At any rate, the more a person’s mental activity is in sync with spiritual truths, the better off the person is.

In a way, my brother gave me light on how faith can work. He likes to fix things, and he told me that one time he tried to fix something but couldn’t. But he tackled an easier project and solved it and then returned to the first job and successfully took care of it. Jesus said that to him who has, more shall be given. He made that statement when giving the parable of the talents. The servant whose trading netted ten talents was given the one talent that the slothful servant didn’t use. So Jesus said, To him that hath, more shall be given. I believe sometimes faith can grow if a person tackles something that is not out of his reach and solves it, and then more faith is added to him, built on the first instance of success.

I think knowledge of oneself, both conscious and subconscious, can help make a person’s walk with God easier. There are precepts that if a person learns, he will be able to make better decisions. While it is sometimes expedient to make exceptions to rules, too many will erode the effectiveness of the precept and the subconscious likes to have things in order, but there are instances where following a rule requires discretion. I am reminded of how the Pharisees hated Jesus because he healed on the Sabbath. It ought to have been obvious to anyone that an act of the Lord is okay, whether he did it on Saturday or another day. Jesus said that the Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath. He pointed out the time David and his followers ate the showbread, which only the priests were allowed by temple law to eat. So with Jesus, the proper value is ascribed to the precepts mentioned in the Bible.

Another device for settling down the mental activity is the use of repetition to help bring about self-assertion. A person can’t be creative all the time, and if the person loses the needed ability to assert himself, he can repeat a word or phrase over and over till his mind is settled. Repeating a sentence like It is good over and over brings about self-assertion, and asserting oneself is generally always beneficial. Good, healthy emotion, such as anger or excitement, can energize the mind in a productive manner. Chanting with energy can help level out subconscious activity that is out of balance. I do not say that a person should walk around chanting all the time but I say that he should do it whenever it is profitable to do so.

Another device for settling the mind is to focus it visually on an object right in front of you. Also, a person can focus himself visually on several objects at a time if he has one main focus with peripheral focuses. He can fix them in his mind by memorizing the objects in a location relative to himself. Visual memorization helps bring order to the mind, and it doesn’t take long to get relief. You can stop the feeling of your brain being scrambled. That’s worth a lot. The way you feel mentally affects performance.

The problem with these devices for putting one’s mind in order is that the person may just not be in the mood to do them. The person feels like he is taking time out of his life by doing them. However, if the