to attend, but there seemed no money on hand for new clothes. When I prayed about the matter, I got the feeling that I should begin wearing my very best clothes in order to help me feel rich. Every day for almost a week I wore my best dress, over and over. One day a gift of money was sent to me for some services I had rendered in the past. Of course, I immediately shopped for the desired new clothes.
When you have released, let go, and formed a vacuum for new prosperity, that is the time to do whatever you can to effect the rich feeling, the rich atmosphere, the rich look with your present substance. Mention the apparent lack or vacuum to no one. Speaking of economic lack and limitation keeps many people in the poorhouse financially. Never think of yourself as poor or needy. Do not talk about hard times or the necessity for strict economy. Do not think how little you have, but how much you have.
As you form a vacuum and let go of what you do not want; as you use your present visible supply to meet the immediate needs as best you can, not withholding it; and as you live as richly as possible in the face of appearances–the rich results will begin to come forth. Almost mysteriously, new channels of supply will appear to meet your needs. You will discover other financial assets in your midst, of which you were previously unaware, to meet your needs. Other people will unknowingly do things to add to your supply, too.
In quietness and confidence is your strength when there is a need for greater prosperity, if you dare to “look up,” bless, and break the substance at hand in whatever ways seem best. Always ask for divine guidance concerning the practical as well as the spiritual ways in which you may form a vacuum for new prosperity when these financial needs loom upon you. Don’t get panicky; this is just further opportunity for you to prove that the invisible laws of prosperity can produce visible, satisfying results. This is just your initiation in the power of prosperous thinking.
If you learn how to form a vacuum for new good early in your conscious development of prosperous thinking, then you do not panic at financial challenges, but know you can and shall meet them victoriously and be much richer in the long run for having learned how to use the invisible laws of supply to meet visible needs.
Often when you are forming a vacuum by using what you have, you find that the amount on hand is sufficient; that too much is wasted or spoiled; and that that amount which at first seems small or even insufficient, becomes adequate as you use it fearlessly. It even seems to supply you during that period when no more substance immediately appears, if you continue to use it fearlessly, and in the faith that every need is being met.
Make Room for Your Good
We all want better financial conditions and we should have them. Here is the way to obtain them: Do not talk about financial lack, but begin thinking in terms of the rich, universal abundance that is everywhere. Then learn to let go, to give up, to make room for the things you have prayed for, worked for and so strongly desire. As you give up and cast away old ideas, attitudes, old possessions, and put in their place new ideas of prosperity and progressive achievement, your conditions will steadily improve. You always want something better than you now have. It is the urge of progress. Just as children outgrow their clothes, you outgrow former ideals, broadening your horizons of life as you advance.
There must be constant elimination of the old to keep pace with this growth. When you cling to the old, you hinder your advance or stop it altogether.
Why not dare to form a vacuum now, and invite that complete prosperity and success which you have so yearned to experience and which is divinely meant for you?
Chapter Four
The Creative Law of Prosperity
Let us get down to business about prosperity. Now that you have formed a vacuum, you are ready to fill that vacuum with rich, new good through the creative law of prosperity. Actually, the creative law of prosperity concerns the three basic steps given in this chapter and the next two: (1) Having a plan, writing out one’s desires concerning that plan, and constantly expanding that plan; (2) Mentally imaging that plan and those plans desired as fulfilled; (3) Constantly affirming their perfect fulfillment. However, the first part of the creative law, as discussed in this chapter, is all-important, because without a plan and notes concerning it, the other two steps are ineffective.
Strong Desire Is Success Power
The first step in the creative law of prosperity is desire, and the ability to do something constructive about that desire. Recently a businessman told me he has discovered in his work that when a customer comes to him greatly desiring certain products, he has found it best always to sell that customer what he really desires. This businessman said that even though he personally may feel that there are other products that would better serve his customer, if his customer has already made up his mind and strongly desires certain products, he never tries to change that desire, because desire is so impelling. He stated that strong desire denotes faith in the product, which almost inevitably brings satisfaction. There is nothing weak or lukewarm about true desire. It is intense and powerful. If properly developed and expressed, a strong desire always carries with it the power for success. The stronger your desires for good, the greater the power of your desires to produce that good for you.
I have discovered in counseling people who have various problems that the right kind of desire will dissolve anything that has stood in the way of fulfillment. Right desire is truly the first step in solving problems and getting on the road to prosperity. How can you release your deep-seated desires for prosperity and success? By centering your attention on one big goal at a time.
One big goal always includes a number of smaller desires that are automatically fulfilled when the big one is achieved. Psychologists agree that we influence people and events by having great desires and great goals. It is as though everything and everybody subconsciously tunes in on our big desires and goals, and gets busy helping us to achieve them. The amazing thing is that, of the millions of people who think they want to be successful, few of them have any really strong, impelling desires. They have been content to idly drift in a stream of small events and small expectations. When you meet a person who is really going places in this world, usually it is a person of intense desire for the highest and best in life. One of the basic statements I have often asked people to use to help expand and intensify their constructive desires is: I desire the highest and best in life, and I now draw the highest and best to me.
Write Down Your Desires
The law of creative prosperity is to take your deep-seated desires and, instead of suppressing them as impossible dreams, begin expressing them constructively through deciding what they really are, and then doing something very simple but very powerful about them: Write them down! That is, make a list or draw up some kind of potential plan, which you should feel free to change, revise, reform and rearrange as your ideas about it unfold. This idea of writing out your desires and formulating a plan on paper clarifies the desires in your mind, and the mind produces definite results only when it has been given definite ideas through which to work.
Many people work hard at prosperity in external ways, but they miss the mark because they are afraid to get definite in their thoughts and desires. They want to live better and to have more money, but they never get definite in their desires about how they want to live better or how much more money they need. In fact, many people hesitate to get definite, fearing that they are telling God what to do. But as Dr. Emilie Cady once wrote: “Desire is God tapping at the door of your mind, trying to give you greater good!’ If you suppress those deep desires, they have no constructive outlet and often turn into destructive channels expressed as neurotic tendencies, phobias, tension, or perhaps as suppression that finds outlet through alcoholism, mental illness, dope addition, sexual imbalance, or other negative actions. The power of writing out one’s desires and plans was first
