The ancients knew that the secret name of God had power. Now we do.
Defining Prosperity
The individual is his own prosperity. I AM my own prosperity. You are your own prosperity. So let us define what we mean by that term. Prosperity is the freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it. Most people think of prosperity in terms of money. Having all the money you need is very important. However, as you go along, you will find that such things as health, love, and creative ideas also play a part in the definition: Prosperity is the freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it. How do you achieve this freedom? Perhaps your earnings are low or you may even be temporarily unemployed. How do you go about achieving the prosperity that may seem far beyond your reach?
You do it by what I call profitable thinking. By thinking what you want, you stop thinking what you don’t want. Gradually, what you don’t want slips away, and in its place that which you want begins to happen. We know that the subconscious mind takes what you give it, and produces it. One of the great things that we now understand is that the subconscious mind is totally impersonal. Your subconscious mind takes what you give it and assumes that what you give it is what you want. Your deliberate thinking . . what I call your intention thinking . . is a spiritual tool that you use to bring abundance into your life. You use your feelings . . your emotions . . as you think with intent, with purpose, and with plan in order to cause any object or event that you desire to materialize. You can demonstrate only that which you hold steadfastly in your (I AM) consciousness.
This unconditioned consciousness, the I AM, is that knowing reality in whom all conditioned states – conceptions of myself – begin and end, but which ever remains the unknown knowing being when all the known ceases to be. All that I have ever believed myself to be, all that I now believe myself to be, and all that I shall ever believe myself to be, are but attempts to know myself . . the unknown, undefined reality. This unknown knowing one, or unconditioned consciousness, is my true being, the one and only reality. I AM the unconditioned reality conditioned as that which I believe myself to be. I AM the believer limited by my beliefs, the knower defined by the known. The world is my conditioned consciousness objectified. That which I feel and believe to be true of myself is now projected in space as my world. The world . . my mirrored self . . ever bears witness of the state of consciousness in which I live.
God is unity; man is diversity. United, they manifest harmony, the true expression of the Silence. The soul is the constant expression of the I AM. It is the same whether Universal or individual. Heaven and harmony mean the same thing; when we work and think in harmony, all our action is constructive.
We can raise world-thought to a higher level. Not only can we banish within ourselves conditions but we can become as the Master did, banishing that which is in others by the Power of the Word. And what is the Power of the Word? “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh.” That is the Word. The Word was with God, the Word was God and the Word is God and the Word is made flesh. I AM the Word! I AM is the WORD. “I AM shall be My Name for all time. Go and tell my people that I AM has sent you.” “I AM” in God is identical in man. But man does not know it, therefore he has to come to the Fountain before he can drink. And the “I AM” expresses itself in Perfection when the individual realizes perfection and recognizes it as the Infinite Expression in himself and through himself and as the very foundation of his being.
The Consciousness of God is the one Consciousness in all humanity, each and every one of us is an individualization of that Infinite Consciousness. It is therefore perfectly clear that my consciousness and your consciousness have the same source. The Divine Consciousness is our foundation and is perfect. When your consciousness, this silent self, becomes aware of itself then it begins to externalize itself because there is no other Substance except the Substance of God: there is no other Intelligence except the Active Principle of Life which manifests the Divine Image, which is man.
Just imagine yourself surrounded by mind, so plastic, so receptive, that it receives the slightest impression of your thought. Whatever you think it takes up and executes for you. Every thought is received and acted upon. Not some but all thoughts. Whatever the pattern we provide, that will be our demonstration. If we cannot get over thinking that we are poor then we will still remain poor. As soon as we become rich in our thought then we will be rich in our expression. These are not mere words, but the deepest truth that has ever come to the human race. Hundreds of thousands of the most intelligent thinkers and the most spiritual people of our day are proving this truth.
We are not dealing with illusions but with realities; pay no more attention to the one who ridicules these ideas than you would to the blowing of the wind. In the center of your own soul choose what you want to become, to accomplish; keep it to yourself. Every day in the silence of absolute conviction know that it is now done. It is just as much done, as far as you are concerned, as it will be when you experience it in the outer. Imagine yourself to be what you want to be. See only that which you desire, refuse even to think of the other. Stick to it, never doubt. Say many times a day, “I AM That thing,” realize what this means. It means that the great Universal power of Mind is that, and it cannot fail.
Our first step in demonstration is to contact God. We then have the fullness of God’s wisdom, love and truth (or power, substance and intelligence) with us in bringing it forth. Our work is to begin from the I AM in us which is one with the I AM That is in all, and all in all. A leaf on a vine begins its expression at that point within itself wherein it is joined to the whole vine . . its stem. This is the door through which the expression of the vine comes forth into the leaf. Even so within us is the “door,” the Christ within, the I AM in our consciousness which contacts the great I AM That is the life and light of all.
Your expression is to be given forth from within you, even as the leaf unfolds from within itself. Your affairs are to be operated from within you. “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet (the inner sanctuary of the soul) and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” The first and greatest commandment, the Master said, is this important thing of making complete at-one-ment with the Father within.
He gave it in the following words:
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength and with all thy mind.”
Do you not see how you must be centered in the I AM within you, drawing the whole of your good from him, and that every force of your nature is to operate from the divine self? “In the beginning” of all expression is God, the God within, else God could not be expressed, or brought forth.
Through each of us God attains self-consciousness, and each of us is God incarnate. In our lives we accept the limitations of the flesh and the inhibitions of the ego, and thus we fall short of God-consciousness. We ask ourselves where we have come from and where we are going, for we have lost the remembrance of having always been, just as we cannot see that we will always be. The development of our ego thrusts upon us a precarious duality of mind, wherein Conscious Mind over-runs Universal Subconscious Mind, and we come to regard ourselves as ego only, instead of universal Self which we truly are. “How can God possibly be the poor thing that I AM?” a man will ask himself, identifying himself with ego and failing to perceive that he is consciousness only. Free yourself from the bonds of the ego, and you will forget the poor thing that you thought you were, and become one with God.
“My mind is a center of Divine operation. The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression, and this means the production of something beyond what has gone before, something entirely new, not included in past experience, though proceeding out of it by an orderly sequence of growth. Therefore, since the Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must operate in the same manner in me; consequently in my own special world, of which I AM the center, it will move forward to produce new conditions, always in advance of any that have gone before.”
All I AM Quotes From The Power of I AM Volume 2 are from the following Authors
Fay Adams, U. S. Andersen, Raymond Charles Barker, M. MacDonald-Bayne, Joseph Benner, Kate Atkinson Boehme, Thomas Parker Boyd, Louise Brownell, H. Emilie Cady, Robert Collier, Florence Gloria Crawford, Mrs. Dan M. Davidson, Walter Devoe, Franklin Fillmore Farrington, Charles Fillmore, Emmet Fox, John Seaman Garns, Harry Gaze, Neville Goddard, Henry Hand, Shirley Bell Hastings, Ernest Holmes, C. W. Kyle, Christian D. Larson, Elinor S. Moody, Joseph Murphy, Janeski Robenoff, Robert A. Russell, John Milton Scott, Elizabeth Towne, Thomas Troward, Helen Wilmans