"Ah, Love! Could Thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"
—The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
If you
had a fairy wishing ring, what one thing would you wish for? Wealth?
Honor? Fame? Love? What one thing do you desire above everything else in
life?
Whatever it is, you can have it. Whatever you desire, wholeheartedly,
with singleness of purpose—you can have. But the first and
all-important essential is to know what this one thing is. Before you
can win your heart's desire, you've got to get clearly fixed in your
mind's eye what it is that you want.
It may sound paradoxical, but few people do know what they want. Most
of them struggle along in a vague sort of way, hoping—like Micawber—for
something to turn up. They are so taken up with the struggle that they
have forgotten—if they ever knew—what it is they are struggling for.
They are like a drowning man—they use up many times the energy it would
take to get them somewhere, but they fritter it away in aimless
struggles—without thought, without direction, exhausting themselves,
while getting nowhere.
You've got to know what you want before you stand much chance of
getting it. You have an unfailing "Messenger to Garcia" in that
Genie-of-your-Mind—but YOU have got to formulate the message. Aladdin
would have stood a poor chance of getting anything from
his Genie if he had not had clearly in mind the things he wanted the Genie to get.
In the realm of mind, the realm in which is all practical power, you
can possess what you want at once. You have but to claim it, to
visualize it, to bring it into actuality—and it is yours for the taking.
For the Genie-of-your-Mind can give you power over circumstances.
Health, happiness and prosperity. And all you need to put it to work is
an earnest, intense desire.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, let us go back for a moment to the
start. You are infected with that "divine dissatisfaction with things as
they are" which has been responsible for all the great accomplishments
of this world—else you would not have gotten thus far in this book. Your
heart is hungering
for something better. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness (right-wiseness) for they shall be filled." You are
tired of the worry and grind, tired of the deadly dull routine and daily
tasks that lead nowhere. Tired of all the petty little ills and
ailments that have come to seem the lot of man here on earth.
Always there is something within you urging you on to bigger things,
giving you no peace, no rest, no chance to be lazy. It is the same
"something" that drove Columbus across the ocean; that drove Hannibal
across the Alps; that drove Edison onward and upward from a train boy to
the inventive wizard of the century; that drove Henry Ford from a poor
mechanic at forty to probably the richest man in the world at sixty.
This "something" within you keeps telling you that you can do
anything you want to do, be anything you want to be, have anything you
want to have—and you have a sneaking suspicion that it may be right.
That "something" within you is your 'subconscious self, your part of
Universal Mind, your Genie-of-the-brain. Men call it ambition, and
“Lucky is the man,” says Arthur Brisbane, “whom the Demon of Ambition
harnesses and drives through life. This wonderful little coachman is the
champion driver of all the world and of all history.
“Lucky you, if he is your driver.
“He will keep you going until you do something worth while—working, running and moving ahead.
“And that is how a real man ought to be driven.
“This is the little Demon that works in men's brains, that makes the
blood tingle at the thought of achievement and that makes the face flush
and grow white at the thought of failure.
“Every one of us has this Demon for a driver, IN YOUTH AT LEAST.
“Unfortunately the majority of us he gives up as very poor, hopeless
things, not worth driving, by the time we reach twenty-five or thirty.
“How many men look back to their teens, when they were harnessed to
the wagon of life with Ambition for a driver? When they could not wait
for the years to pass and for opportunity to come?
“It is the duty of ambition to drive, and it is your duty to keep Ambition alive and driving.
“If you are doing nothing, if there is
no driving, no hurrying, no working,
you may count upon it that there will be no results. Nothing much worth while in the years to come.
“Those that are destined to be the big men twenty years from now, when the majority of us will be nobodies, are
those whom this demon is driving relentlessly, remorselessly, through
the hot weather and the cold weather, through early hours and late hours.
“Lucky YOU if you are in harness and driven by the Demon of Ambition.”
Suppose you
have had disappointments, disillusionments along
the way. Suppose the fine point of your ambition has become blunted.
Remember, there is no obstacle that there is not some way around, or
over, or through—and if you will depend less upon the 10 per cent of
your abilities that reside in your conscious
mind, and leave more to the 90 per cent that constitute your
subconscious, you can overcome all obstacles. Remember this—there is no
condition so hopeless, no life so far gone, that mind cannot redeem it.
Every untoward condition is merely a lack of something.
Darkness, you know, is not real. It is merely a lack of light. Turn on
the light and the darkness will be seen to be nothing. It vanishes
instantly. In the same way poverty is simply a lack of necessary supply.
Find the avenue of supply and your poverty vanishes. Sickness is merely
the absence of health. If you are in perfect health, sickness cannot
hurt you. Doctors and nurses go about at will among the sick without
fear—and suffer as a rule far less from sickness than does the average
man or woman.
So there is nothing you have to overcome. You merely have to acquire
something. And always Mind can show you the way. You can obtain from
Mind anything you want, if you will learn how to do it. "I think we can
rest assured that one can do and be practically what he desires to be,"
says Farnsworth in "Practical Psychology." And psychologists all over
the world have put the same thought in a thousand different ways.
"It is not will, but desire," says Charles W. Mears, "that rules the
world." "But," you will say, "I have had plenty of desires all my life.
I've always wanted to be rich. How do you account for the difference
between my wealth and position and power and that of the rich men all
around me?"
The Magic Secret
The answer is simply that you have never focused your desires into
one great dominating desire. You have a host of mild desires. You mildly
wish you were rich, you wish you had a position of responsibility and
influence, you wish you could travel at will. The wishes are so many and
varied that they conflict with each other and you get nowhere in
particular. You lack one intense desire, to the accomplishment of which you are willing to subordinate everything else.
Do you know how Napoleon so frequently won battles in the face of a
numerically superior foe? By concentrating his men at the actual
point of contact! His artillery was often greatly outnumbered, but it accomplished far
more than the enemy's because instead of scattering his fire, he
concentrated it all on the point of attack!
The time you put in aimlessly dreaming and wishing would accomplish
marvels if it were concentrated on one definite object. If you have ever
taken a magnifying glass and let the sun's rays play through it on some
object, you know that as long as the rays were scattered they
accomplished nothing. But focus them on one tiny spot and see. how
quickly they start something.
It is the same way with your mind. You've got to concentrate on one idea at a time.
"But how can I learn to concentrate?" many people write me.
Concentration is not a thing to be learned. It is merely a thing to do.
You concentrate whenever you become sufficiently interested in
anything. Get so interested in a ball game that you jump up and down
on your hat, slap a man you have never seen before on the back, embrace
your nearest neighbor—
that is concentration. Become so absorbed
in a thrilling play or movie that you no longer realize the orchestra is
playing or there are people around you—
that is concentration.
And that is all concentration ever is—getting so interested in some
one thing that you pay no attention to anything else that is going on
around you.
If you want a thing badly enough, you need have no worry about your
ability to concentrate on it. Your thoughts will just naturally center
on it like bees on honey.
Hold in your mind the thing you most desire. Affirm it. Believe it to be an existing fact. Let me quote again the words of the Master, because there's nothing more important to
remember in this whole book. "Therefore I say unto you, what things
soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them."
And again I say, the most important part is the "believe that ye receive them."
Your subconscious mind is exceedingly amenable to suggestion. If you
can truly believe that you have received something, can impress that
belief upon your subconscious mind, depend upon it, it will see that you
have it. For being a part of Universal Mind, it shares that Universal
Mind's all-power. "The Father that is within me, He doeth the works."
Your mind will respond to your desire in the exact proportion in which
you believe. "As thy faith is, so be it unto thee."
The people who live in beautiful homes, who have plenty to spend, who
travel about in yachts and fine cars, are for the most part people who
started out to accomplish some one definite thing. They had one clear goal in mind, and everything they did centered on that goal.
Most men just jog along in a rut, going through the same old routine
day after day, ekeing out a bare livelihood, with no definite desire
other than the vague hope that fortune will some day drop in their lap.
Fortune doesn't often play such pranks. And a rut, you know, differs
from a grave only in depth. A life such as that is no better than the
animals live. Work all day for money to buy bread, to give you strength
to work all the next day to buy more bread. There is nothing to it but
the daily search
for food and sustenance. No time for aught but worry and struggle. No hope of anything but the surcease of sorrow in death.
You can have anything you want—if you want it badly enough. You can
be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish
anything you set out to accomplish—if you will hold to that desire with
singleness of purpose; if you will understand and BELIEVE in your own
powers to accomplish.
What is it that you wish in life? Is it health? In the chapter on
health I will show you that you can be radiantly well—without drugs,
without tedious exercises. It matters not if you are crippled or
bedridden or infirm. Your body rebuilds itself entirely every eleven
months. You can start now rebuilding along perfect lines.
Is it wealth you wish? In the chapter on success I will show you how
you can increase your income, how you can forge rapidly ahead in your
chosen business or profession.
Is it happiness you ask for? Follow the rules herein laid down and
you will change your whole outlook on life. Doubts and uncertainty will
vanish, to be followed by calm assurance and abiding peace. You will
possess the things your heart desires. You will have love and
companionship. You will win to contentment and happiness.
But desire must be impressed upon the subconscious before it can be
accomplished. Merely conscious desire seldom gets you anything. It is
like the day-dreams that pass through your mind. Your desire must be
visualized, must be persisted in, must be concentrated upon, must be impressed upon your subconscious mind. Don't bother
about the means for accomplishing your desire—you can safely leave that
to your subconscious mind. It knows how to do a great many things
besides building and repairing your body. If you can visualize the thing
you want, if you can impress upon your subconscious mind the belief that you have it,
you can safely leave to it the finding of the means of getting it.
Trust the Universal Mind to show the way. The mind that provided
everything in such profusion must joy in seeing us take advantage of
that profusion. "For herein is the Father glorified—that ye bear much
fruit."
You do not have to wait until tomorrow, or next year, or the next world, for happiness. You do not have to die
to be saved. "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." That does not
mean that it is up in the heavens or on some star or in the next world.
It means
here and
now! All the possibilities of happiness
are always here and always available. At the open door of every man's
life there lies this pearl of great price—the understanding of man's
dominion over the earth. With that understanding and conviction you can
do everything which lies before you to do and you can do it to the
satisfaction of everyone and the well-being of yourself. God and good
are synonymous. And God—good—is absent only to those who believe He is
absent.
Find your desire, impress it upon your thought, and you have opened
the door for opportunity. And remember, in this new heaven and new earth
which I am trying to show you, the door of opportunity is never closed. As a matter of fact, you constantly have all that you will take.
So keep yourself in a state of receptivity. It is your business to
receive abundantly and perpetually. The law of opportunity enforces its
continuance and availability. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is
from above and cometh down from the Father of light, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
Infinite Mind saith to every man, "Come ye to the open fountain." The
understanding of the law of life will remedy every discord, giving
"Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness."
Believe that you share in that goodness and bounty. Act the part you wish
to play in this life. Act healthy, act prosperous, act happy. Make
such a showing with what you have that you will carry the conviction to
your subconscious mind that all good and perfect gifts ARE yours.
Register health, prosperity and happiness on your inner mind and some
fine morning soon you will wake to find that
you are healthy, prosperous and happy, that you
have your dearest wish in life.
“The Soul's Sincere Desire”
Do you know what prayer is? Just an earnest desire that we take to
God—to Universal Mind—for fulfillment. As Montgomery puts it—"Prayer is
the soul's
sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed." It is our
Heart's Desire. At least, the only prayer that is worth anything is the
prayer that asks for our real
desires. That kind of prayer is heard. That kind of prayer is answered.
Mere lip prayers get you nowhere. It doesn't matter what your lips
may say. The thing that counts is what your heart desires, what your
mind images on your subconscious thought, and through it on Universal
Mind. "Thou, when thou prayest, be not as the hypocrites are; for they
love to pray standing in the synagogue and at the corners of the
streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have
their reward."
What was it these hypocrites that Jesus speaks of really wanted? "To
be seen of men." And their prayers were answered. Their sincere desire
was granted. They were seen of men. "They have their reward." But as for
what their lips were saying, neither God nor they paid any attention to it.
"Thou, when thou prayest enter into thy closet, and when thou hast
shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father
which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." Go where you can be
alone, where you can concentrate your thoughts on your one innermost
sincere desire, where you can impress that desire upon your subconscious
mind without distraction, and so reach the Universal Mind (the Father
of all things) .
But even sincere desire is not enough by itself. There must be
BELIEF, too. "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that
ye receive them and ye shall have them." You must realize God's ability
to give you every good thing. You must believe in his readiness to do
it. Model your thoughts after
the Psalmists of old. They first asked for that which they wanted,
then killed all doubts and fears by affirming God's power and His
willingness to grant their prayers. Read any of the Psalms and you will
see what I mean. So when you pray, ask for the things that you want.
Then affirm God's readiness and His Power to grant your prayer.
Glenn Frank, in "The Soul's Sincere Desire," gives some wonderfully helpful suggestions along these lines. To quote him:
“For money troubles, realize: There is no want in Heaven, and affirm:
“Our Heavenly Father, we know that
thy Love is as infinite as the sky is infinite, and Thy Ways of
manifesting that love are as unaccountable as the stars of the heavens.
“Thy Power is greater than man's horizon, and Thy Ways of manifesting that Power are more numerous than the sands of the sea.
“As Thou keepest the stars in their
courses, so shalt Thou guide our steps in perfect harmony, without clash
or discord of any kind, if we keep our trust in Thee. For we know Thou
wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he
trusteth in Thee. We know that, if we acknowledge Thee in all our ways,
Thou wilt direct our paths. For Thou art the God of Love, Giver of every
good and perfect gift, and there is none beside Thee. Thou art
omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, in all, through all, and over
all, the only God. And Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the
Glory, forever, Amen.
“For aid in thinking or writing, realize: There is no lack of ideas, and affirm:
“Thy wisdom is greater than all
hidden treasures, and yet as instantly available for our needs as the
very ground beneath our feet.“
“For happiness: There is no unhappiness in Heaven, so affirm:
“Thy joy is brighter than the sun at
noonday and Thy Ways of expressing that Joy as countless as the
sunbeams that shine upon our path.”
This is the kind of prayer the Psalmists of old had recourse to in
their hours of trouble—this is the kind of prayer that will bring you
every good and perfect gift.
Make no mistake about this—prayer is effective. It can do
anything. It doesn't matter how trivial your desires may be—if it is
RIGHT for you to have them, it is RIGHT for you to pray for them.
According to a United Press dispatch of May 3, 1926:
“Prayer belongs to the football field as much as to the pulpit, and a
praying team stands a good chance of 'getting there,' Tim Lowry,
Northwestern University football star, told a large church audience
here.
“‘Just before the Indiana-Northwestern game last year,’ Tim said. ‘we worried
a great deal about the outcome. Then we saw that bunch of big husky
Indiana players coming toward us and we knew something had to be done
quick.
“‘Fellows,’ I said, ‘I believe in prayer and we better pray.’ We did and won a great victory.
“When the next game came, every fellow prayed again.
“You don't need to think that churches have a copyright on prayer."
In "Prayer as a Force," A. Maude Royden compares the man who trusts
his desires to prayer with the swimmer who trusts himself to the water:
“Let me give you a very simple figure which I think may perhaps
convey my meaning. If you are trying to swim you must believe that the
sea is going to keep you afloat. You must give yourself
to the sea. There is the ocean and there are you in it, and I say to
you, 'According to your faith you will be able to swim!' I know
perfectly well that it is literally according to your faith. A person
who has just enough confidence in the sea and in himself to give one
little hop from the ground will certainly find that the water will lift
him but not very much; he will come down again. Persons who have enough
confidence really to start swimming but no more, will not swim very far,
because their confidence is so very small and they swim with such rapid
strokes, and they hold their breath to such an extent, that by and by
they collapse; they swim five or six, or twelve or fourteen strokes, but
they do not get very far, through lack of confidence.
“Persons who know with assurance
that the sea will carry them if they do certain things, will swim
quite calmly, serenely, happily, and will not mind if the water goes
right over them. 'Oh,' you say, 'that person is doing the whole thing!'
He can't do it without the sea!
You might hypnotize people into faith; you might say, 'You are now in
the ocean; swim off the edge of this precipice' (which is really a
cliff). You might make them do it, they might have implicit faith in
you, you might hypnotize them into thinking they were swimming; but if
they swam off the edge of the cliff they would fall. You can't swim
without the sea! I might say to you, 'It lies with you whether you swim
or not, according to your faith be it unto you'; but if the sea is not
there you can't swim. That is exactly what I feel about God. 'According
to your faith be it unto you.' Yes, certainly, if you try to swim in that ocean
which is the love of God your faith will be rewarded, and according to
your faith it will be to you. In exact proportion to your faith you will
find the answer, like a scientific law. There is not one atom of faith
you put in God that will not receive its answer.”
But remember: you would not plant a valuable seed in your garden, and
then, a day or a week later, go out and dig it up to see if it were
sprouting. On the contrary, you would nourish it each morning with
water. It is the same with your prayers. Don't plant the seed of your
desire in your subconscious mind and then go out the next morning and
tear it up with doubts and fears. Nourish it by holding in thought the
thing you desire, by believing in it, visualizing
it, SEEING it as an accomplished fact.
If you ask for my own formula for successful prayer, I would say—
1st. Center your thoughts on the thing that you want. Visualize it.
Make a mental image of it. You are planting the seed of Desire. But
don't be content with that. Planting alone will not make a seed of corn
grow. It has to be warmed by sunshine, nurtured by rain. So with the
seed of your Desire. It must be warmed by Faith, nurtured by constant
Belief. So—
2nd. Read the 91st and the 23rd Psalms, just as a reminder of God's power and His readiness to help you in all your needs.
3rd. Don't forget to be thankful, not merely for past favors, but for the granting of this favor you are now asking!
To be able to thank God for it sincerely, in advance of its actual material manifestation, is the finest evidence of belief.
4th. BELIEVE! Picture the thing that you want so clearly, see it in
your imagination so vividly, that for the moment, at least, you will
actually BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE IT!
It is this sincere conviction, registered upon your subconscious
mind, and through it upon Universal Mind, that brings the answer to your
prayers. Once convince your subconscious mind that you HAVE the thing
you want, and you can forget it and go on to your next problem. Mind
will attend to the bringing of it into being.
