Chapter VI
How to Choose a Career
The Genius in Everyone
I would like to define the genius in the terms of modern mental science, as one who expresses more fully than the rest of us, the quality which belongs to each of us. I would like to express my faith in the inherent greatness of the most commonplace among us, in the face of the chill winds of heredity, “chromosomes,” “sports,” “variations,” “mutations,” or the seekers after miracles. I would still stand with Wordsworth on the principle that “trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home,” conceding only that with the genius the clouds have condensed into a mantle, while with the rest of us they have dissipated into mist. But I insist that with each of us, it is the same kind of “glory” that we trail. The genius is the man who feels within himself the capacity to do or to express along a given line, and who insists with himself and the world that he shall unfold that which he feels himself to be. As Edwin Markham has said,
“To each is given a stone to carve for the wall,
A stone that is needeed to heighten the beauty of all;
And only his soul has the magic to give it a grace.
And only his hand has the cunning to put it in place.”
The genius then is the man who has discovered the stone he is to carve, and who goes on to carve it in spite of all that rises to discourage or oppose.
To so define genius is not to deny biological science. With some, the soul has possessed itself of a better body for its expression; we are not forced to admit that the body has possessed itself of a better soul. In fact, what we have always defined as genius has shown a definite contempt for the physical, frequently housing itself in offensive clay, as though to better reveail its independence of all things material. Anterior to bodies, the soul is not the product of environment, but cleverly adapts the house it occupies to the changing conditions of the objective world and thus survives in the midst of natural forces. Man is like an oak tree growing on the slope of some exposed hill. The fierce winds beat upon it, but it struggles against them, drives its roots into a firmer anchorage, and presents as little foliage as possible to the blast. The wind does not make the oak what it is, the oak makes itself what it is by adapting itself to the situations it meets. So it is with man. He has within himself the power to cope with the conditions of life, heredity, environment, and all the myriad problems of existence.
The genius, then, is the man who, like the rest of us, finds himself equipped with a mind that is equal to the requirement of life; but who, unlike the rest of us, finds out what he can best do and then goes to work to do it.
The mere taking up of a profession or vocation, however, is not enough to constitute the act of genius. Everyone takes up a vocation or profession, but with the vast majority life’s work is accepted rather than chosen; and on other grounds than our inherent individuality of being. We “drift into” teaching school because we “need to make the money”; because others around us have “taken up teaching”; because it “gives us the associations of culture,” and so on: not because we have the “souls of teachers.” One becomes a doctor because father is a physician, or “there is a good income in it after you make good”; not because he has “the heart of a healer.”
Thus men who are natural mechanics enter the professions, women who are natural artists become stenographers, and vice versa ad infinitum. But how can this situation be changed?
Self-Discovery
What is the solution?
Self-discovery.
What could sound more trite! Have we not read from the Delphic shrine “know thyself,” for the last two thousand years and more!
Well, but after all, just what has that meant to us? Do we really know the self? How much has even the most learned among mankind known about his self during these ages? And has not modern Psychology infinitely involved the problem by raising a doubt as to what the self really is? How can you know that which changes so quickly that it is like a swiftly-flowing river, --you touch its surface, and even as you touch it, the point is gone forever! Are you then a succession of selves none of which can ever be discovered?
I introduce this problem merely to eliminate the charge of triteness. It will do us all good to make a scientific study of the self.
For our present purpose however it does not matter whether we consider the self as an entity-drop in the ocean of life, or an entity -”stream-of-consciousness” itself to borrow William James famous phrase. The fact remains that each and every one of us is an individual distinct if not apart from all other individuals.
The question arises however as to the source of this individual drop or stream of consciousness. We admit that individual life is dependent on something, and herein is a problem in comprehension for those who have never considered life and intelligence apart from personality.
Let us think of a universal mind like a vast ocean. It has within itself an infinite variety of ideas and purposes, each distinct, but all harmonious with each other. Let us conceive each one of these ideas or purposes to be an individual current, the Gulf Stream, or Japanese Current, as it were, of the Universal Mind. This Universal Mind expresses in movement, its purposes express in selves. The self, therefore, is life, mind (or spirit) individualizing as a soul. This is graphically represented in the Greek word (psyche?) which we find so often in the New Testament and which means “life,” “spirit,” and which modern science has adopted to designate the self; as in psychology, knowledge of the self; in psycho-analysis, the study and treatment of a “sick self,” etc.
Nothing could be more stimulating to the discovery of genius and its successful expression than the recognition that each self is an individual stream of the Universal Mind or Cosmic Consciousness, separate from all others, unified with all others, different from all others, in harmony with all others, supported by an infinite life, and flowing forth to be and to do a distinct and therefore personal thing.
Your Unique Personality
This then is primary, you are different form every other, you have an individual quality; there is something for you to do which no other can do because you are what no other can be.
Beware again of accepting this merely as a platitude --”there are no two leaves alike,” but what of it? Get behind your platitude. Consider the fact that there is no phenomenon without a noumenon. Take another platitude. “There are no two faces alike.” For this we thank a merciful heaven, we say. But we must esxplain the phenomenon, the face, by the noumenon, the self. It is this self that working in the embryo takes the materials of nature and heredity and constructs a human form; that later adapts that form to changing conditions of environment; and moulds the face to sublime or vicious expression according to the types of thought and desire of the individual.
But dissect your platitude a little further. The reason two faces are not alike is because the mental content is different; but in the case of some husbands and wives who have loved and lived in mutual likes and dislikes for fifty years, have you noted the similarity of expression?
Thus we dissolve not the platitude but the prejudice. We look different because we are different. There is something gloriously individual about us. There is an inherent quality of genius. “Man,” said Emerson, “is the inlet and the outlet of all there is in God.” Even if we modify this we may say that whatever I am is derived from an Infinite Source, shares in the quality of the Parent Mind, and therefore my uniqueness as a self is as genuine as any genius that has ever come into expression.
Does this automatically constitute me a great artist, author, musician, statesman, leader of mankind? Let us leave the question of “greatness” to society and history. That cannot be the moving impulse of genius. My geniums must consist in expressing that which I fundamentally am. There is something in me that can be satisfied only by my living my life along a certain line, in following which I find joy and satisfaction.
The Psychology of Interest Applied to Choice of a Career
How shall this secret of the self be revealed? How can one know when he is following the right course? Fortunately the self knows what it wants and has moments of revelation. It is the psychology of “interest” which is the big word in modern pedagogy. The attention must be engaged. At first an appeal is made through the play instinct as in the Montessori system or the Stoner system. Follows pictorial presentation for geography; field excursions and laboratory for science; dramatization for literature, etc. All these are an appeal to that magician of learning, interest. We develop only as we are interested. We remember best that which intrigues us. And on the other hand deterioration is the history of lost interest as psycho-physicians of every school will testify.
Our fundamental interest is always associated with that which is most closely concerned with the primary quality and purpose of self.
It follows from this that the method of vocational selection is psychological. It is not my purpose here to outline a full technique but rather to point out a way by which we can discover our real “bent” and either choose a vocation with some scientific accuracy or procure some sort of realignment in case we are already off the path of true self-expression.
I suggest that those interested secure a small note book and begin collection of “chief interests.” When you read, what interests you at the most? At the theater? On the screen? At school? On the street? What objects attract attention?
What are your thoughts about what you see? Do you find yourself reverting to these things? Pleasantly or unpleasantly? Why are you pleased or displeased? Do your thoughts about things or happenings please you more than the things do themselves? Do you “day dream” in connection with them? Do you imagine yourself in situations connected with your observations? Do you select certain aspects and ruminate on those? Do you improve mentally upon situations, mechanics, or conversations, that is, have you a better way for anything? In other words, what is your creative impulse?
Write out these things carefully and then underscore with a red pencil what interests you the most.
Keep this up until you have a definite idea as to what your fundamental interests are.
How to Use the Subconscious in the Choice of a Career
Second, engage the services of the subconscious. Your subconscious intelligence is acquainted with a vast variety of facts of which you are not objectively aware.
Here, in the subconscious, is a vast store of material which must be looked over and taken into consideration. Here are desires long since repressed, instincts long denied, passionate preferences shut out of consciousness to fit the apparent requirements of yesterday. For example, you had artistic inclinations but submerged them because father wanted you to go into business. Or perhaps you would like to have entered law but your family traditions headed you into the ministry. Or the spoken drama lured you across the footlights but mother closed the door to the stage. So it came about that your instinctive inclinations, your native purpose, baffled by the practical problem of pleasing the family, making a living or what not, never really had an opportunity to express itself to you. Your dominant interest has never been clear to you, your parent purpose is as vague as the face of your mother who died in your childhood. Only the feeling remains of something beautiful that is gone.
But is has not gone from the subconscious! There your fundamental interest lives beneath the level of objective consciousness, occasionally heaving the surface. Even more, it may, like a fallen angle gather about it a host of hidden forces and attack the very integrity of the organism. For strange as it may seem, the psycho-analyst is daily tracing the cause of phobias, hysteria, neurasthenia, all sorts of neuroses, varieties of liver complaints, goiter, stomach disorders, etc., etc., to its lair in buried memories, repressed emotions, unsolved problems, and unsatisfied interests.
Use of Intuition in Choice of a Career
Indeed, I shall here suggest to the psychoanalyst that the real cause of the diseases which he studies is not the obscure sex conflicts of Freud nor the “inferiority complex” of Adler, although they may play a secondary part. The real cause of all these troubles is the unsatisfied purpose of each human soul. The self, the psyche, has come into the world to fulfill a divine and definite destiny. “For this cause came I into the world that I might bear witness to the truth,” can be said of every man. “Some are prophets, some apostles, some teachers, some have the gift of tongues,” “each according to his gift.”
When the self is not called to the stand, when it cannot bear witness to its purpose, it gets “sick.” Then as there is no phenomenon without a noumenon, or in the language of Professor James, “all mental states are followed by bodily activity of some sort,” the body gets sick.
But how can that which is spiritual get “sick.” Certainly it is incorruptible. We have a slang phrase which covers it. “You make me sick.” “I am mentally distressed because you act the way you do. I am unhappy about it. I shall get no comfort until you correct your conduct and I shall give you none.” Thus the self seeks to arouse the individual and force him back to the original purpose. He must “get right with himself.” He must begin creating along the line of his original purpose. And the self knows.
The self knows! How shall it tell? The voice of intuition speaking through the subconscious.
But what is the technique? We have already learned the method of probing the subconscious. But there is a further method which we can follow.
Let us first review the law of the subconscious, since we are to make our appeal through it.
Briefly stated our law is this:
1. The subconscious is our mental storehouse, it is the builder of the body, it is the epitome of intelligence, its reasoning is deductive, and, given any premise, its logic is conclusive.
2. It accepts any idea impressed upon it.
3. It seeks to give form or expression to every idea.
Let us take, for example, the case of hypnotic suggestion. In hypnotism the conscious mind is, as it were, asleep. The subconscious mind is awake. We suggest to it that flesh is burning. We touch the spot indicated and with some sensitives the response is so strong that an actual blister appears on the skin. In other words, the subconscious works out the idea to a complete conclusion.
In recollecting we say, “I know that, I know that, but I have momentarily forgotten it.” Then we proceed to recall ideas, mental pictures,
associations that surround it, and presently memory disgorges her treasures.
Or we have a mathematical problem and wrestle with it throughout the evening. Unlike Jacob’s angel there is nothing heavenly about it but it gets us on the thigh just the same. We retire with our mind still filled with the “principle of the problem,” that is we “know the rule” and we go to sleep. This is all the subconscious mind requires, that it be given the premises and a free field without interference from the objective mind. We wake later and the problem is solved and we put it on paper.
We all know that this occurs sometimes, why does it not always occur? The answer is that perhaps the subconscious always does solve the problem under these circumstances but so thick is the partition between subjectivity and objectivity that it rarely rises to consciousness. The phrase “thick-headed” was doubtless an intuitive coinage!
To return to our technique.
Go to bed tonight with this thought definitely in your mind. “There is an intelligence in me that knows just exactly what I ought to be doing and it will tell me.” Give yourself this suggestion just as you are falling asleep. In sleep, the objective mind is quiescent, objectivity is stilled, but the subconscious activity of mind is wide awake, “the night is the day of the soul.” It will work out your problem, it will make its connections! The moment you awake ask it the question and it will make its divine revelation!
At first you may experience some vagueness of mental impression, but this is due to inexperience in the practice. After receiving a psychological impulse of this kind, you are free to turn your rationalizing powers upon it. In so doing, you will be assured of its genuineness by the fact that it will work out a line of action or at least a trend in the direction in which you are seeking guidance. As you pursue the path indicated, you will find yourself moving more and more difintely and with greater assurance.
One of my friends, a New York business man, in making decision of importance, mentally maps out the two or three directions it is possible to take; then turns it over to his deeper and better informed intelligence, saying “Tomorrow at eleven (or any other hour selected) I shall know just what to do.” At the appointed time, no matter what else may be occupying his attention at the moment, the subject in question rises spontaneously to his mind. He finds himself able to think clearly only along one line. His mind refuses to go in any other direction. Thus he is drawn into the right current and is swept forward without encountering unnecessary difficulties.
Learn to depend upon this power of intuition, the voice of the indwelling spirit which will bring you into harmony with the Cosmic Spirit and “teach you all things and guide you in the way of truth.”
These answers to our problem do not always come at once, or rather they may come but we do not hear the voice, it is so still and so small. But this is due to lack of practice and we must persist until it speaks to us with some of the certainty of the voices of Joan of Arc, or Socrates, or Jesus.
There is one final word I would like to say for those who are the wrong track already and know it. “Is it ever too late? What shall I do now?”
I do not believe it is too late if you still have any years of active life before you. If you cannot make a complete transition, then make a partial one. If you can no longer choose motherhood, you can still be a “mother to the race.” The sick, the needy, and the orphan can be your foster family.
But aside from pointing out so obvious a “sublimation” as the psychologist loves to call it, I wish to affirm my own faith that the vast majority of men and women can still get on the right track. I have known many men and women who have completely changed their profession or vocation and “made good,” and it should always be borne in mind that the task is easier because you are now working in harmony with the real law of your being, the divine purpose for which you came into the world.
