Further Use of the Will
YOU cannot retain a true and clear vision of wealth if you are
constantly turning your attention to opposing pictures, whether they
be external or imaginary.
Do not tell of your past troubles of a financial nature, if you
have had them, do not think of them at all. Do no tell of the
poverty of your parents, or the hardships of your early life; to do
any of these things is to mentally class yourself with the poor for
the time being, and it will certainly check the movement of things
in your direction.
"Let the dead bury their dead," as Jesus said.
Put poverty and all things that pertain to poverty completely
behind you.
You have accepted a certain theory of the universe as being
correct, and are resting all your hopes of happiness on its being
correct; and what can you gain by giving heed to conflicting
theories?
Do not read religious books which tell you that the world is soon
coming to an end; and do not read the writing of muck-rakers and
pessimistic philosophers who tell you that it is going to the devil.
The world is not going to the devil; it is going to God.
It is wonderful Becoming.
True, there may be a good many things in existing conditions
which are disagreeable; but what is the use of studying them when
they are certainly passing away, and when the study of them only
tends to check their passing and keep them with us? Why give time
and attention to things which are being removed by evolutionary
growth, when you can hasten their removal only by promoting the
evolutionary growth as far as your part of it goes?
No matter how horrible in seeming may be the conditions in
certain countries, sections, or places, you waste your time and
destroy your own chances by considering them.
You should interest yourself in the world's becoming rich.
Think of the riches the world is coming into, instead of the
poverty it is growing out of; and bear in mind that the only way in
which you can assist the world in growing rich is by growing rich
yourself through the creative method--not the competitive one.
Give your attention wholly to riches; ignore poverty.
Whenever you think or speak of those who are poor, think and
speak of them as those who are becoming rich;as those who are to be
congratulated rather than pitied. Then they and others will catch
the inspiration, and begin to search for the way out.
Because I say that you are to give your whole time and mind and
thought to riches, it does not follow that you are to be sordid or
mean.
To become really rich is the noblest aim you can have in life,
for it includes everything else.
On the competitive plane, the struggle to get rich is a Godless
scramble for power over other men; but when we come into the
creative mind, all this is changed.
All that is possible in the way of greatness and soul unfoldment,
of service and lofty endeavor, comes by way of getting rich; all is
made possible by the use of things.
If you lack for physical health, you will find that the
attainment of it is conditional on your getting rich.
Only those who are emancipated from financial worry, and who have
the means to live a care-free existence and follow hygienic
practices, can have and retain health.
Moral and spiritual greatness is possible only to those who are
above the competitive battle for existence; and only those who are
becoming rich on the plane of creative thought are free from the
degrading influences of competition. If your heart is set on
domestic happiness, remember that love flourishes best where there
is refinement, a high level of thought, and freedom from corrupting
influences; and these are to be found only where riches are attained
by the exercise of creative thought, without strife or rivalry.
You can aim at nothing so great or noble, I repeat, as to become
rich; and you must fix your attention upon your mental picture of
riches, to the exclusion of all that may tend to dim or obscure the
vision.
You must learn to see the underlying TRUTH in all things; you
must see beneath all seemingly wrong conditions the Great One Life
ever moving forward toward fuller expression and more complete
happiness.
It is the truth that there is no such thing as poverty; that
there is only wealth.
Some people remain in poverty because they are ignorant of the
fact that there is wealth for them; and these can best be taught by
showing them the way to affluence in your own person and practice.
Others are poor because, while they feel that there is a way out,
they are too intellectually indolent to put forth the mental effort
necessary to find that way and by travel it; and for these the very
best thing you can do is to arouse their desire by showing them the
happiness that comes from being rightly rich.
Others still are poor because, while they have some notion of
science, they have become so swamped and lost in the maze of
metaphysical and occult theories that they do not know which road to
take. They try a mixture of many systems and fail in all. For these,
again, the very best thing, to do is to show the right way in your
own person and practice; an ounce of doing things is worth a pound
of theorizing.
The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the
most of yourself.
You can serve God and man in no more effective way than by
getting rich; that is, if you get rich by the creative method and
not by the competetive one.
Another thing. We assert that this book gives in detail the
principles of the science of getting rich; and if that is true, you
do not need to read any other book upon the subject. This may sound
narrow and egotistical, but consider: there is no more scientific
method of computation in mathematics than by addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division; no other method is possible. There can
be but one shortest distance between two points. There is only one
way to think scientifically, and that is to think in the way that
leads by the most direct and simple route to the goal. No man has
yet formulated a briefer or less complex "system" than the one set
forth herein; it has been stripped of all non-essentials. When you
commence on this, lay all others aside; put them out of your mind
altogether.
Read this book every day; keep it with you; commit it to memory,
and do not think about other "systems" and theories. If you do, you
will begin to have doubts, and to be uncertain and wavering in your
thought; and then you will begin to make failures.
After you have made good and become rich, you may study other
systems as much as you please; but until you are quite sure that you
have gained what you want, do not read anything on this line but
this book, unless it be the authors mentioned in the Preface.
And read only the most optimistic comments on the world's news;
those in harmony with your picture.
Also, postpone your investigations into the occult. Do not dabble
in theosophy, Spiritualism, or kindred studies. It is very likely
that the dead still live, and are near; but if they are, let them
alone; mind your own business.
Wherever the spirits of the dead may be, they have their own work
to do, and their own problems to solve; and we have no right to
interfere with them. We cannot help them, and it is very doubtful
whether they can help us, or whether we have any right to trespass
upon their time if they can. Let the dead and the hereafter alone,
and solve your own problem; get rich. If you begin to mix with the
occult, you will start mental crosscurrents which will surely bring
your hopes to shipwreck. Now, this and the preceding chapters have
brought us to the following statement of basic facts:--
There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and
which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the
interspaces of the universe.
A thought, in this substance, Produces the thing that is
imaged by the thought.
Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his
thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about
to be created.
In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the
creative mind; he must form a clear mental picture of the things he
wants, and hold this picture in his thoughts with the fixed PURPOSE
to get what he wants, and the unwavering FAITH that he does get what
he wants, closing his mind against all that may tend to shake his
purpose, dim his vision, or quench his faith.
And in addition to all this, we shall now see that he must live
and act in a Certain Way. |