How to Use the Will
TO set about getting rich in a scientific way, you do not try to
apply your will power to anything outside of yourself.
Your have no right to do so, anyway.
It is wrong to apply your will to other men and women, in order
to get them to do what you wish done.
It is as flagrantly wrong to coerce people by mental power as it
is to coerce them by physical power. If compelling people by
physical force to do things for you reduces them to slavery,
compelling them by mental means accomplishes exactly the same thing;
the only difference is in methods. If taking things from people by
physical force is robbery, then taking things by mental force is
robbery also; there is no difference in principle.
You have no right to use your will power upon another person,
even "for his own good"; for you do not know what is for his good.
The science of getting rich does not require you to apply power or
force to any other person, in any way whatsoever. There is not the
slightest necessity for doing so; indeed, any attempt to use your
will upon others will only tend to defeat your purpose.
You do not need to apply your will to things, in order to compel
them to come to you.
That would simply be trying to coerce God, and would be foolish
and useless, as well as irreverent.
You do not have to compel God to give you good things, any more
than you have to use your will power to make the sun rise.
You do not have to use your will power to conquer an unfriendly
deity, or to make stubborn and rebellious forces do your bidding.
Substance is friendly to you, and is more anxious to give you
what you want than you are to get it.
To get rich, you need only to use your will power upon yourself.
When you know what to think and do, then you must use your will
to compel yourself to think and do the right things. That is the
legitimate use of the will in getting what you want--to use it in
holding yourself to the right course. Use your will to keep yourself
thinking and acting in the Certain Way.
Do not try to project your will, or your thoughts, or your mind
out into space, to "act" on things or people.
Keep your mind at home; it can accomplish more there than
elsewhere.
Use your mind to form a mental image of what you want, and to
hold that vision with faith and purpose; and use your will to keep
your mind working in the Right Way.
The more steady and continuous your faith and purpose, the more
rapidly you will get rich, because you will make only POSITIVE
impressions upon Substance; and you will not neutralize or offset
them by negative impressions.
The picture of your desires, held with faith and purpose, is
taken up by the Formless, and permeates it to great
distances-throughout the universe, for all I know.
As this impression spreads, all things are set moving toward its
realization; every living thing, every inanimate thing, and the
things yet uncreated, are stirred toward bringing into being that
which you want. All force begins to be exerted in that direction;
all things begin to move toward you. The minds of people,
everywhere, are influenced toward doing the things necessary to the
fulfilling of your desires; and they work for you, unconsciously.
But you can check all this by starting a negative impression in
the Formless Substance. Doubt or unbelief is as certain to start a
movement away from you as faith and purpose are to start one toward
you. It is by not understanding this that most people who try to
make use of "mental science" in getting rich make their failure.
Every hour and moment you spend in giving heed to doubts and fears,
every hour you spend in worry, every hour in which your soul is
possessed by unbelief, sets a current away from you in the whole
domain of intelligent Substance. All the promises are unto them that
believe, and unto them only. Notice how insistent Jesus was upon
this point of belief; and now you know the reason why.
Since belief is all important, it behooves you to guard your
thoughts; and as your beliefs will be shaped to a very great extent
by the things you observe and think about, it is important that you
should command your attention.
And here the will comes into use; for it is by your will that you
determine upon what things your attention shall be fixed.
If you want to become rich, you must not make a study of poverty.
Things are not brought into being by thinking about their
opposites. Health is never to be attained by studying disease and
thinking about disease; righteousness is not to be promoted by
studying sin and thinking about sin; and no one ever got rich by
studying poverty and thinking about poverty.
Medicine as a science of disease has increased disease; religion
as a science of sin has promoted sin, and economics as a study of
poverty will fill the world with wretchedness and want.
Do not talk about poverty; do not investigate it, or concern
yourself with it. Never mind what its causes are; you have nothing
to do with them.
What concerns you is the cure.
Do not spend your time in charitable work, or charity movements;
all charity only tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to
eradicate.
I do not say that you should be hard hearted or unkind, and
refuse to hear the cry of need; but you must not try to eradicate
poverty in any of the conventional ways. Put poverty behind you, and
put all that pertains to it behind you, and "make good."
Get rich; that is the best way you can help the poor.
And you cannot hold the mental image which is to make you rich if
you fill your mind with pictures of poverty. Do not read books or
papers which give circumstantial accounts of the wretchedness of the
tenement dwellers, of the horrors of child labor, and so on. Do not
read anything which fills your mind with gloomy images of want and
suffering.
You cannot help the poor in the least by knowing about these
things; and the wide-spread knowledge of them does not tend at all
to do away with poverty.
What tends to do away with poverty is not the getting of pictures
of poverty into your mind, but getting pictures of wealth into the
minds of the poor.
You are not deserting the poor in their misery when you refuse to
allow your mind to be filled with pictures of that misery.
Poverty can be done away with, not by increasing the number of
well to do people who think about poverty, but by increasing the
number of poor people who purpose with faith to get rich.
The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only
sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness,
or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or
two; but inspiration will cause them to rise out of their misery. If
you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become
rich; prove it by getting rich yourself.
The only way in which poverty will ever be banished from this
world is by getting a large and constantly increasing number of
people to practice the teachings of this book.
People must be taught to become rich by creation, not by
competition.
Every man who becomes rich by competition throws down behind him
the ladder by which he rises, and keeps others down; but every man
who gets rich by creation opens a way for thousands to follow him,
and inspires them to do so.
You are not showing hardness of heart or an unfeeling disposition
when you refuse to pity poverty, see poverty, read about poverty, or
think or talk about it, or to listen to those who do talk about it.
Use your will power to keep your mind OFF the subject of poverty,
and to keep it fixed with faith and purpose ON the vision of what
you want. |