remove discord, you have but to remove the wrong images — images of ill health, of worry and trouble from within. The trouble with most of us is that we live entirely in the world without. We have no knowledge of that inner world which is responsible for all the conditions we meet and all the experiences we have. We have no conception of “the Father that is within us.”
The inner world promises us life and health, prosperity and happiness — dominion over all the earth. It promises peace and perfection for its entire offspring. It gives you the right way and the adequate way to accomplish any normal purpose. Business, labor, professions, exist primarily in thought. And the outcome of your labors in them is regulated by thought. Consider the difference, then, in this outcome if you have at your command only the limited capacity of your conscious mind, compared with the boundless energy of the subconscious and the Universal Mind. “Thought, not money, is the real business capital,” says Harvey S. Firestone, “and if you know absolutely that what you are doing is right, then you are bound to accomplish it in due season.
Thought is a dynamic energy with the power to bring its object out from the invisible substance all about us. Matter is inert, unintelligent. Thought can shape and control. Every form in which matter is today is but the expression of some thought, some desire, and some idea.
You have a mind. You can originate thought. And thoughts are creative. Therefore you can create for yourself that which you desire. Once you realize this you are taking a long step toward success in whatever undertaking you have in mind.
More than half the prophecies in the Scriptures refer to the time when man shall possess the earth, when tears and sorrow shall be unknown, and peace and plenty shall be everywhere. That time will come. It is nearer than most people think possible. You are helping it along. Every man who is honestly trying to use the power of mind in the right way is doing his part in the great cause. For it is only through Mind that peace and plenty can be gained. The earth is laden with treasures as yet undiscovered. But they are every one of them known to Universal Mind, for it was Universal Mind that first imaged them there. And as part of Universal Mind, they can be known to you.
How else did the Prophets of old foretell, thousands of years ago, the aeroplane, the cannon, the radio? What was the genius that enabled Ezekiel to argue from his potter’s wheel, his water wheel and the stroke of the lightning to an airplane, with its wheels within wheels, driven by electricity and guided by man? How are we to explain the descriptions of artillery in the Apocalypse and the astonishing declaration in the Gospels that the utterances of the chamber would be broadcast from the housetops?
“To the Manner Born”
Few of us have any idea of our mental powers. The old idea was that man must take this world as he found it. He’d been born into a certain position in life, and to try to rise above his fellows was not only the height of bad taste, but sacrilegious as well. An all-wise Providence had decreed by birth the position a child should occupy in the web of organized society. For him to be discontented with his lot, for him to attempt to raise himself to a higher level, was tantamount to tempting Providence. The gates of Hell yawned wide for such scatterbrains, who were lucky if in this life they incurred nothing worse than the ribald scorn of their associates.
That is the system that produced aristocracy and feudalism. That is the system that feudalism and aristocracy strove to perpetuate.
The new idea — the basis of all democracies — is that man is not bound by any system, that he need not accept the world as he finds it. He can remake the world to his own ideas. It is merely the raw material. He can make what he wills of it.
It is this new idea that is responsible for all our inventions, all our progress. Man is satisfied with nothing. He is constantly remaking his world. And now more than ever will this be true, for psychology teaches us that each one has within himself the power to become what he wills.
Learn to control your thought. Learn to image upon your mind only the things you want to see reflected there.
You will never improve yourself by dwelling upon the drawbacks of your neighbors. You will never attain perfect health and strength by thinking of weak-ness or disease. No man ever made a perfect score by watching his rival’s target. You have got to think strength, think health, think riches. To paraphrase Pascal — “Our achievements today are but the sum of our thoughts of yesterday.”
For thought is energy. Mental images are concentrated energy. And energy concentrated on any definite purpose becomes power. To those who perceive the nature and transcendency of force, all physical power sinks into insignificance.
What is imagination but a form of thought? Yet it is the instrument by which all the inventors and discoverers have opened the way to new worlds. Those who grasp this force, be their state ever so humble, their natural gifts ever so insignificant, becomes our leading men. They are our governors and supreme lawgivers, the guides of the drifting host, which follows them as by an irrevocable decree. To quote Glenn Clark in the Atlantic Monthly, “Whatever we have of civilization is their work, theirs alone. If progress was made they made it. If spiritual facts were discerned, they discerned them. If justice and order were put in place of insolence and chaos, they wrought the change. Never is progress achieved by the masses. Creation ever remains the task of the individual.”
Our railroads, our telephones, our automobiles, our libraries, our newspapers, our thousands of other conveniences, comforts and necessities are due to the creative genius of but two per cent of our population.
And the same two per cent own a great percentage of the wealth of the country. The question arises, who are they? What are they? The sons of the rich? College men? No — few of them had any early advantages. Many of them have never seen the inside of a college. It was grim necessity that drove them, and somehow, some way, they found a method of drawing upon their Genie-of -the-Mind, and through that inner force they have reached success.
You don’t need to stumble and grope. You can call upon your inner forces at will. There are three steps necessary:
First, to realize that you have the power;
Second, to know what you want.
Third, to center your thought upon it with singleness of purpose.
To accomplish these steps takes only a fuller understanding of the Power-that-is-within-you.
But what is this power? Where should you go to locate it? Is it a thing, a place, an object? Has it bounds, form or material shape? No! Then how shall you go about finding it?
If you have begun to realize that there is a power within you, if you have begun to arouse in your conscious mind the ambition and desire to use this power — you have started in the pathway of wisdom. If you are willing to go forward, to endure the mental discipline of mastering this method, nothing in the world can hinder you or keep you from overcoming every obstacle.
Begin at once, today, to use what you have learned. All growth comes from practice. All the forces of life are active — peace — joy — power. The unused talent decays. Open the door —
“Behold I stand at the door and knock; if ANY MAN hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him and he with me.”
So let us make use of this dynamo, which is you. What is going to start it working? Your Faith, the faith that is begotten of understanding. Faith is the impulsion, the propulsion of this power within. Faith is the confidence, the assurance, the enforcing truth, the knowing that the right idea of life will bring you into the reality of existence and the manifestation of the All power.
All
