fixes itself upon, or whatever it opens itself to. Allow yourself to fear, and you will fear more and more. Cease to resist the tendency to fear, make no effort to forget fear, and you open the door, and invite fear in; you then demand fear. Set your mind on the thought of courage, see yourself in mind or imagination as courageous, and you will become more courageous. You demand courage.
There is no limit in unseen nature to the supply of these spiritual qualities. In the words “Ask, and ye shall receive,” the Christ implied that any mind could, through demanding, draw to itself all that it needed of any quality. Demand wisely, and we draw to us the best.
Every second of wise demand brings an increase of power. Such increase is never lost to us. This is an effort for lasting gain that we can use at any time. What all of us want is more power to work results, and build up our fortunes,—power to make things about us more comfortable, to ourselves and our friends. We cannot feed others if we have no power to keep starvation from ourselves. Power to do this is a different thing from the power to hold in memory other people’s opinions, or a collection of so-called facts gathered from books, which time often proves to be fictions. Every success in any grade of life has been accomplished through spiritual power, through unseen force flowing from one mind, and working on other minds far and near, as real as the force in your arm lifts a stone.
A man may be illiterate, yet send from his mind a force affecting and influencing many others, far and near, in a way to benefit his fortunes, while the scholarly man drudges with his brain on a pittance. The illiterate man’s is the greater spiritual power. Intellect is not a bag to hold facts. Intellect is power to work results. Writing books is but a fragment of the work of intellect. The greatest philosophers have planned first, and acted afterwards, as did Columbus, Napoleon, Fulton, Morse, Edison, and others, who have moved the world, besides telling the world how it should be moved.
Your plan, purpose, or design, whether relating to a business or an invention, is a real construction of unseen thought-element. Such thought-structure is also a magnet. It commences to draw aiding forces to it so soon as made. Persist in holding to your plan or purpose, and these forces come nearer and nearer, become stronger and stronger, and will bring more and more favorable results.
Abandon your purpose, and you stop further approach of these forces, and destroy also such amount of unseen attracting power as you have built up. Success in any business depends on the application of this law. Persistent resolve on any purpose is a real attractive force or element, drawing constantly more and more aids for carrying out that resolve.
When your body is in the state called sleep, these forces (your thoughts) are still active. They are then working on other minds. If your last thought before sleep is that of worry, or anxiety, or hatred for any one, it will work for you only ill results. If it is hopeful, cheerful, confident, and at peace with all men, it is then the stronger force, and will work for you good results. If the sun goes down on your wrath, your wrathful thought will act on others, while you sleep, and bring only injury in return.
Is it not a necessity, then, to cultivate the power of forgetting what we wish, so that our current of thought attracting ill, while our body rests, shall be changed to the thought-current attracting good?
To-day thousands on thousands never think of controlling the character of their thought. They allow their minds to drift. They never say of a thought that is troubling them, “I won’t think of it.” Unconsciously then they demand what works them ill, and their bodies are made sick by the kind of thought which they allow their minds to fasten on.
When you realize the injury done you through any kind of troubled thought, you will then commence to acquire the power of throwing off such thought. When in mind you commence to resist any kind of such injurious thought, you are constantly gaining more and more power for resistance. “Resist the devil,” said the Christ, “and he will flee from you.” There are no devils save the illy used forces of the mind. But these are most powerful to afflict and torture us. An ugly or melancholy mood of mind is a devil. It can make us sick, lose us friends, and lose us money. Money means the enjoyment of necessities and comforts. Without these we cannot do or be our best. The sin involved in “love of money” is to love money better than the things needful which money can bring.
To bring to us the greatest success in any business, to make the greatest advance in any art, to further any cause, it is absolutely necessary that at certain intervals daily we forget all about that business, art, or cause. By so doing we rest our minds, and gather fresh force for renewed effort.
To be ever revolving the same plan, study, or speculation, or what we shall do or shall not do, is to waste such force on a brain treadmill. We are in thought saying to ourselves the same thing over and over again. We are building of this actual, unseen element, thought, the same constructions over and over again. One is a useless duplicate of the other.
If we are always inclined to think or converse on one particular subject, if we will never forget it, if we will start it at all times and places, if we will not in thought and speech fall into the prevailing tone of the conversation about us, if we do not try to get up an interest in what is being talked of by others, if we determine only to converse on what interests us, or not converse at all, we are in danger of becoming a “crank,” or “hobbyist,” or monomaniac.
The “crank” draws his reputation on himself. He is one who, having forced one idea, and one alone on himself, has, resolved, perhaps unconsciously, to force that idea on every one else. He will not forget at periods his pet theory or purpose, and adapt himself to the thought of others. For this reason he loses the power to forget, to throw from his mind the one absorbing thought. He drifts more and more into that one idea. He surrounds himself with its peculiar thought, atmosphere, or element, as real an element as any we see or feel.
Others near him feel this one-ideaed thought, and feel it disagreeably; because the thought of one person is felt by others near him through a sense as yet unnamed. In the exercise of this sense lies the secret of your favorable or unfavorable “impressions” of people at first sight. You are in thought as it flows from you always, sending into the air an element which affects others for or against you, according to its quality, and the acuteness of their sense which feels thought. You are affected by the thought of others in the same way, be they far or near. Hence we are talking to others when our tongues are still. We are making ourselves hated or loved while we sit alone in the privacy of our chambers.
A crank often becomes a martyr, or thinks himself one. There is no absolute necessity for martyrdom in any cause, save the necessity of ignorance. There never was any absolute necessity, save for the same cause. Martyrdom always implies lack of judgment and tact in the presentation of any principle new to the world. Analyze martyrdom, and you will find in the martyr a determination to force on people some idea in an offensive and antagonistic form. People of great ability, though dwelling in one idea, have at last been captured by it. The antagonism they drew from others, they drew because they held it first in their own mind. “I come not with peace,” said the Christ, “but a sword.” The time has now come in the world’s history for the sword to be sheathed. Many good people unconsciously use swords in advising what they deem better things. There is the sword (in thought) of the scolding reformer, the sword of dislike for others because they won’t heed what you say, and the sword of prejudice because others won’t adopt your peculiar habits. Every discordant thought against others is a sword, and calls out from others a sword in return. The thought you put out, you receive back of the same kind. The coming empire of peace is to be built up by reconciling differences, making of enemies friends, telling people of the good that is in them rather than the bad, discouraging gossip and evil speaking by the introduction of subjects more pleasant and profitable, and proving through one’s life that there are laws, not generally recognized, which will give health, happiness, and fortune, without injustice or injury to others. Its advocate will meet the sick with the smile of true friendship, and the most diseased people are always the greatest sinners. The most repulsive
