be it good or bad, is a thing or construction of unseen element as real as a tree, a flower, a clock. It is already-made before you think or receive it, as your mind through its mood, frame, or attitude attracts it. As you think it, you put it out again to act, move, or influence others. But your thought spoken or whispered in the privacy of your room is put out with more force so to act on others than if you merely “think it.” And if two or more persons talk together without wrangle or disagreement on a common purpose in any business, they send out a proportionately greater volume of force to work on other minds relative to such business. If your company so putting out thought-element or force do not agree, if they are angry and wrangle with each other, the force so sent from them is injurious to that business. If they talk peacefully, and will set aside individual preferences or prejudices in order to work out the common purpose in view, the thought or force they generate is constructive, and acts favorably on other minds far and near to advance that business.
So whenever you think, you are affecting your fortunes for good or ill; and whenever you talk to others, you are making a force still greater to make or lose for you health, friends, and money. Every thought of yours, silent or spoken, has a literal value.
If you receive (that is, think) the thought that you cannot succeed in any undertaking, that thought also goes out, meets and attracts other discouraged, despondent “I can’t” thought, brings you nearer and nearer the hopeless, fretting people’s bodies it is in advance of, injures your health and all pushing business ability, and brings you at last in personal contact with people who only help to ruin each other.
You are working then your thought-power for nonsuccess. You can use this power to bring you good or ill results, as you can use the locomotive to carry your body on a journey, or to crush your body by throwing yourself before it.
Whatever plan or scheme of business you fix your mind persistently upon in the determination to succeed, it commences then as a thought-construction of unseen element to draw aiding forces to you. By “aiding forces” is meant first, ever-growing fertility of mind to breed new plans for pushing your business; secondly, drawing to you the best people to aid you in your plans.
Do not waste your power in looking for such aiding forces with your body. Let silent, persistent resolve in mind do the work. It will do it if you persevere holding to this frame of mind. It is no new power, though possibly new to most of us. It is constantly, though unconsciously, exercised for good or ill all about us. Because your body is not the only power you have to work with. Your body is only the instrument used by your mind, or spirit. Your mind, your invisible self, uses your body in, say, cutting down a tree, or other work of hand, exactly as your body uses the axe. But when such force (thought) is not using the body, it is at work with greater power elsewhere.
To think persistent resolve, to think persistent push in your one aim and purpose,—to simply think it, and do nothing else,—will create for you a power as certain to move and effect results as the jackscrews placed under the heaviest building will move it upward. The power you so create of your mind and of unseen forces will work while you sleep. It will bring to you new devices, plans, and methods for moving your business forward. And as you get these plans, they will move your body to act. You cannot sit still when an idea that means business comes to you: such idea is for you power. But you can tire your body to such an extent that you will have no power to receive an idea when it does come. All successful business is based on a continual in-flowing of new idea, plan, device, scheme.
Your spirit, or thought, acts and works on others while your body sleeps. It may do this with those whose bodies are also asleep. If you are angry or discouraged on going to sleep, your invisible self on leaving its body will probably be attracted to some other angry or discouraged nature. The better mood you are in on quitting your body at night, and entering on your other existence, the better the thought or person you will meet in that existence to further your purpose. If you have no purpose, you will then probably meet with another purposeless nature. To have no special purpose in life, to simply drift, is to have nothing on which to focus or concentrate your thought-power. If it is not so concentrated, but scattered, fastening on one thing to-day, and another to-morrow, you will be restless, moping, and unhappy in mind. If unhappy in mind, you can never be healthy in body.
Spirit, or thought, is always active, be the body asleep or awake. When the body is unconscious in sleep, your mind then enters on its other phase of life and activity. You have only exchanged one form of existence for another. When you awake, you do literally “take the body up” to use for purposes on the earth-stratum of life.
Your thought acts on others, for or against you, far and near, while you are awake. But it acts more strongly on those to whom it is attracted when your body sleeps. It is then less distracted by the hopes, fears, prejudices, customs, and surroundings of its body-life. It is better, then, if you have any purpose in view, not to fix your thought too strongly when awake on such persons as you may think may co-operate with you, because your spirit, when out of its body, has a much wider range of acquaintance and action than when using its body. You may concentrate its force overmuch, while it holds the body, on some person less likely to help you than the person or thought to which it is attracted while away from the body. In such case its force is placed in two directions when it should be but in one. Talking your business plan or project makes force for or against you. A clear plan or idea by which you can make more money represents force. A muddled plan represents a lesser and imperfect force. A new invention is a new force. Talking your business with those who are really friendly to you, actively friendly, and without a shade of envy or grudge against you, adds their thought or force to your own for making clearer plans, and working on other minds, and enlisting them in some way in your favor. Sympathy is force. Any person’s good-will is a real, living, active substance, flowing always to you as that person thinks of you. It has a commercial value in dollars and cents. Ill will is also an element sent from the person that thinks it, and works against you though that person never speaks or acts with the body against you. This you can only successfully oppose by putting out against it the thought-element of friendliness. The thought of good to others is the stronger unseen element, and can turn the bad (the weaker) aside. It prevents it from reaching or harming you.
Through the working of that same law, it is dangerous to make enemies, no matter how good or just the cause.
To talk your business at random, is not only to give your secrets to such as will tell them to others, but it is to send your secrets and plans in thought-element flying far and wide in the air. Then they fall into other minds, and you may find your plan used by others before you. The air is literally full of supposed secrets. They herald themselves to thousands in the form of suspicion and impression.
Every disorderly meeting, every family quarrel, every discordance between man and man, sends into the air a wave of destructive and unpleasant substance. It affects unpleasantly minds thousands of miles distant. The thought so coming from some centre of turbulence forms a wave, or current. If you are by some trifle made angry, you then place your mind in the attitude of a magnet to attract and let in this hurtful thought-current. Your anger, peevishness, or irritation, caused at first by a trifle, is constantly fed from these currents. You must, for relief, turn your mind toward some more agreeable order of thought. Practice in so doing will give you more power, and make it more and more easy to change the character of the thought-element coming to you.
When interest, sympathy, and good-will meet to present pleasantly their opinions or thoughts on any special subject to each other, for an hour, there goes from that company a wave of thought-substance, which strikes other minds, and awakens or renews interest in that especial business, art, or cause, in proportion to the sensitiveness or capacity of such minds to receive thoughts. The new thought coming suddenly to you, comes because somewhere it is being talked out or agitated. The wave so caused acts in unseen element precisely like that made by throwing the stone in calm water. The waves so radiate from the talk-centre; and they will continue to spread out in every direction, striking other minds, so long as the agitation of talk is kept up at that centre. No thought
