Most important factors in Living the Radiant Life are Living the Life of _Possession_ and Living the Absorptive Life. To radiate one must possess, and to possess one must absorb. To give largely and well, one must receive largely and well. The Absorptive Life is as essential as the Radiant Life. Out in the great silences are the eloquent voices of God ready to speak to the attentive soul; out in Nature a million voices are ready to impart knowledge to the ignorant. All one has to do to receive is to "ask"; not with the voice but with the whole being. As a sponge absorbs water up to the limit of its capacity, so should man absorb, and then, unlike the sponge, which must be squeezed from without ere it will give off that which it has received, man should radiate from within all that he has received.
There are few people in the world who are true absorbers. We are so full of prejudices, conceits, notions, that we refuse to receive from this, that, or the other source, because, forsooth, we in our pride deem the source unworthy. The true life receives from every source. Call nothing unclean. All things are yours. God is over and in all. Prove all things. Open your heart to all good from whatever source. Stand humbly before God ready to receive. Keep your hands open; your eyes, your ears, your nostrils, your whole nature in a state of active receptivity. Be afraid of nothing. Some one comes and tells you that in this or that he has found spiritual life and help. You, however, have been taught to regard that as a dangerous thing, so you are afraid of it. Arise and be above such fears. Are you a man, a woman, a human soul, made in the image of God and given powers of thought, of discernment, of decision? Or are you a mere puppet to be worked by the string of other men's thoughts, other men's ideas, other men's opinions? Listen for yourself; think for yourself; decide for yourself; act for yourself. If a thing seems right to your own soul do it though the heavens fall and you suffer the condemnation of all mankind. True and rapid progress will never come to the race until individual men learn that they alone are the arbiters of their own destiny.
Go out into Nature, into the silences, into the workshops and the marts of trade _and absorb_. Listen to every good voice that speaks, and if you are not sure whether the voice is good or not, listen anyhow and "prove" it by the infallible tests of purity, unselfishness, and uplift.