Your brakes are off, your petrol tank is full, your engine is running, you know how to drive, you know where you are going, and you have chosen a route abounding in natural beauties that should delight your eye.

But will your mind be free to let you enjoy your drive?

You know from experience that unless your mind is free from worry, the most beautiful things either have but a fleeting influence on you or lose their charm altogether. Worry reigns supreme and nothing seems to have the power to deprive it of the centre of the stage for long.

You may have obtained perfect relaxation, stored up an abundance of nervous energy, distributed it through your whole body, dreamt of yourself as the perfect athlete in action, enjoyed delightful sensory images, but the second your mind flags, there is your worry, back again, staring at you, and denying you, not necessarily your chance of doing work of repair, but your unconsciousness.

There is no doubt about it; worry must be dealt with if you are to have peace.

It is not the first time you have faced it, and your failure to master it unaided has led you to seek advice in many quarters.

You have received advice, tested it, and found it worthless, since worry still holds the stage when you seek unconsciousness.

You have been told to try and think of something else. A poor palliative, for the harder you try and think of something else, the harder you are really thinking of your worry at the back of your mind. You get tired in the end of trying to think of something else to think about, and there is your worry back again and all the more insistent for your futile attempts at repression.

You have been told to chase the thought from your mind. Don't waste any more time attempting that; you cannot tell a worry to go and play in the back garden and not disturb you as you can a boisterous child, and to try and chase a thought away is only to run after it and grip it all the harder.

You have been told to try and make your mind a blank, and if you are ever told such a thing again, take it as an insult to your intelligence. A mind such as yours cannot be made a blank. Even an idiot's mind cannot be made a blank unless he fall asleep, and even then, there is more than a doubt on the point.

And, in any case, your difficulty is that you cannot fall asleep because your mind refuses to go blank.

But, what is left then? Just your worry, right in the middle of the stage.

And there you must keep it, fearlessly, face it, and deal with it.

But how are you to deal with it?

You must learn to do with it consciously what Nature and Instinct have taught you to do, and what you have done unconsciously, with so many of your troubles in the past, and done to your undoubted advantage.

Although you have repeatedly done this thing unconsciously in the past and have invariably reaped the benefit of your action, it is almost certain that you never realized that you were doing it, and quite certain that you never felt guilty of anything reprehensible for having done it.

Nevertheless, it is almost certain that you will be illogical enough to resent being asked to do consciously, deliberately, and for your own immediate good, this thing which you will admit having done so many times unconsciously in the past and without any sense of guilt.

Read on and find out.

What do you do in your mind when you receive good news when bad might have been feared? What do you do when somebody you are fond of, say your mother, is undergoing a serious operation, and you hear that the operation has been completely successful, that she is out of danger, will be up within three weeks, and that in time, after two months of convalescence in the sun, she will be better than she has been for years? Are your thoughts or dreams of death, and funerals, and mourning? Of course they are not. What you dream of is not the operation, not even the first three weeks in bed, but the happy convalescence in the sun, your mother gaining strength every day, enjoying life once again, finding fun once more in all those delightful nothings that had lost all meaning to her, and in time getting back to something better than you can remember and have therefore to create afresh in your mind.

You can see yourself, with good news, accepting in your mind the picture of things exactly as it is given you by the facts of life, and implementing these with something better even than they are, although that something better is still in keeping with possible and probable facts, though not as yet actual facts.

And how do you behave in your mind when you receive bad news when good might have been hoped for? What do you do, for instance, when you hear that your mother died during the operation, and that even had she survived, life for her would have meant at best six months to a year of torture and misery?

Do you still in your mind accept the picture of things such as it is given you by the facts of life, and do you implement these with something even worse than they are, although that something worse might still be in keeping with possible and probable facts, though not as yet actual facts? Do you accept that picture, and hold it and nurse it? And if you don't, is your mental action the deliberate result of careful and determined thinking, and the action you feel you must take, because it is good and right, and the only one open to a strong character?