Introduction. What Is Success?
The force of that mysterious, but irresistible power – Humanity’s common and concentrated Thought. – Senator Beveridge. In what does success consist? Many persons desire to know how to be successful…
Section I. The “Why” Of The Book
Present power requires concentration on the moment and the thing to be done. – Emerson. I swear I see what is better than to tell the best, It is always to leave the best untold. – Walt Whitman. …
Section II. Concentration Is Natural
If the first rule is to obey your native bias, to accept the work for which you were inwardly formed, – the second rule is concentration, which doubles its force. – Emerson in Greatness The power …
Section III. Paying Attention
Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius and art. – Cicero. Let us labor for an inward stillness, An inward stillness and an inward healing. – Longfellow. Not in the clamor of…
Section IV. Some Channels Of Waste
Work while you work and play while you play; That is the way to be happy and gay. – My Old School Reader. Too many irons in the fire. Jack of all trades and master of none. – Old Proverbs. Laurel…
Section V. I Am Life
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. – Jesus. The infinite always is silent, ’tis only the finite that speaks. – John Boyle O’Reiley. The granite rocks disorganize To feed the hungry Life they b…
Section VI. How Shall I Concentrate
Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. – Jesus. Whatsoever things are lovely and of good repute, think on these things. – Paul. No man can choose what coming hours may bring To him of need, of joy…
Section VII. The Will
The education of the Will is the object of our existence. – Emerson. O living Will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock. – Tennyson. The mind of a human organism can, by effort …
Section VIII. Habits
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself into one. – Anon. We must build the ladder by which we rise And climb to its summit, round by round. – J. G. Holland. …
Section IX. “In The Silence.”
The Soul contains in itself the event that shall befall it. – Goethe. You are in the silence now. The only way to realize it is to get still, physically and mentally. It takes time and practice to …
Section X. Compensation Of Concentration
Though no human eye behold thee Odin sees and hears each word. – Fridthjorfs Saga. Hush! the sevenfold heavens to the voice of the Spirit Echo: – He that o’er cometh all things shall inherit. – Owe…
Section XI. With Eyes, See Not
Let us aspire to that heaven where all is eternal and where corruption never comes. – Ancient Aztec King. I speak to them in parables because having eyes they see not and having ears they hear not. …
Section XII. The Ideal
Among thy sons O God! let me be one. – Edward Egleston. To live divinely is man’s work. – Theodore Parker. The thing we long for that we are For one transcendent moment, E’er yet the present poor…
The Ideal. Continued
Concentration means holding the chosen mental picture to the exclusion of all others till your objective life becomes the picture. I AM THAT WHICH I THINK MYSELF TO BE! The Ideal Life is the Real Li…
Section XIII. Prayer
Prayer is the Soul’s sincere desire. – Hymn. Men pray cream and live skim-milk. – Beecher. Prayer is a form of concentration. Men pray to their ideals. – Theodore Parker. Uttered not but compreh…
Section XIV. Desire Versus Wish
Want fewer things but want those few things more. – Elizabeth Towne. Hunger goes selfishly thinking of food; Evil lies painfully yearning for Good. – John Boyle O’Reily. I only ask a will resigned…
Section XV. Mental Poise
My peace I leave with you. – Jesus. But when the heart is full of din, And doubt beside the portal waits, They can but listen at the gates And hear the household jar within. – Tennyson. Right is Ri…
Section XVI. Methods Of Concentration
Resolve to be thyself; and know that he Who finds himself loses his misery. – Matthew Arnold. No longer forward nor behind I look in hope or fear; But grateful take the good I find, The best of no…
Section XVII. Directions For Practice
Like a beautiful flower full of color but without fragrance are all the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly. – Dhammapada. Time was, I sat out Truth to find. Heart-sick, foo…
Section XVIII. How To Do It
It is the same Force in the human breast, That makes us gods or demons. If we gird Those strong emotions by which we are stirred With might of will and purpose, heights unguessed Shall dawn for us. Or…
Section XIX. Some Practical Suggestions
We may question with wand of science Explain, decide, discuss, But only in Meditation, The Mystery speaks to us. – John Boyle O’Reiley. He always wins who sides with God. To him no chance is lost…
Section XX. Self-Study And The Law Of Life
Buddha appealed himself only to what we should call the Inner Light. – Max Muller. Do your work, respecting the excellence of the work, and not its acceptableness. This is so much economy as that, r…
Section XXI. Special Desires Vs. Principle
God alone can make the work complete, Give to Cause its perfect ending. – The Kalevalla. An honest heart, O Helga, of pure endeavor With Odin’s runes is written, misleading never! – Fridthjof’s Sag…
Section XXII. My One Rule-Agreement
Resist not evil but overcome evil with good. – Jesus. The foolish have one master, that is fear. – Old Proverb. If you wish to become acquainted with Nature you must deal with her sincerely. – Pr…
Section XXIII. Love
A new commandment give I unto you: That ye love one another. – Jesus. Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is Love – Love is the fulfilling of the Law. – Paul. …
Section XXIV. Opinions And Concentration Methods Of Others
In order to discover truth we must be truthful ourselves and must welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who approve our discoveries. – Max Muller. Seeking happiness as our aim,…
Introduction. What Is Success?
The force of that mysterious, but irresistible power – Humanity’s common and concentrated Thought.
– Senator Beveridge.
In what does success consist? Many persons desire to know how to be successful. How to win success. Before this question can be answered there must be an understanding as to what they mean by success, and what success stands for in this Book. I asked a correspondent what he meant by success, and his answer was, “I am in business, and I wish to make money from it!” Another wishes to win an office. Another to outstrip a rival. Another to succeed in her book. And here are two young ladies writing me, one wants to pass an examination in school and the other to learn to ride a bike. This is called success. But it is success without Principle. Success that leaves Life out of count. It is the success of some undertaking. This is not success. One may succeed in any and all these and similar undertakings and yet be a failure.
Success must be measured by a larger standard. Can we call these U. S. Senators under indictment for breaking the laws; these men of whom Graham Phillips is telling in his “Treason in the Senate;” can we call these millionaires who are under the indictment of public opinion, and these society women who are passing through operations from their doctors, Successes? Can we call the student broken in health, though he wins the valedictory, a success? Success in things may mean failure in Life.
“How may I succeed in Life?” is the only question that any conscientious metaphysician can answer. He will not answer the questions as to success in any enterprise. Those who attempt this are not metaphysicians but charlatans. The Greatest of Metaphysicians gave us the rule for SUCCESS, any other is a mere temporary advice or makeshift. Here is the only possible way to SUCCESS, that is written with capitals – “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” A simple and scientific Law. It simply means. – Live by Principle and not by detail! It is as if the professor of electricity when asked, “How shall I make a battery?” should answer, “First study upon electricity till you learn its principle of action, then you will know how to make any apparatus.”
Let us analyze this law as laid down by Jesus. First where am I to seek for the Kingdom? Answer, “The kingdom of God is within you!” What does kingdom mean. Kingdom stands for Power. Here then is the Law, Seek the Power that is within your SELF, then you will add to yourself things you desire. Success thus lies in the consciousness of Power to do whatever I wish to do. Success lies in the consciousness that one can meet any situation with satisfaction to himself. The manifestations of success are Health, Happiness and Supply.
He is a failure who finds that his body will not allow him to do what he wishes to do. He is a failure who must depend upon another to do that which is necessary to be done for the accomplishment of his plans. A successful man, though he may employ a thousand men, will feel that were it necessary he could carry out his purpose alone. The leaner is a failure. The successful man is filled with joy. The “kingdom of God” is “the kingdom of heaven,” and heaven is happiness. Therefore any condition in life which does not bring happiness is failure, and happiness is the subjective cause of health. There can be neither health nor happiness till wants are supplied; therefore poverty is failure. I care not how honest, generous or noble a person is, if he wants any of the necessities of life, he is a failure. For the Power of God in the Soul when once found will see that Supply ever is at hand. He who has found this Power will find the ability to draw to himself Supply. But Supply does not mean anything to hoard or to lay by for a rainy day.
Therefore in Soul Culture the definition of Success is: – The consciousness of ability to meet every occasion in life and convert it into Health, Happiness and Supply. The way to this consciousness is first: – Believe it; then affirm it till you become it. This is the Affirmation of Success: I AM POWER TO BE AND TO DO THAT WHICH I WILL TO BE AND TO DO.
Section I. The “Why” Of The Book
Present power requires concentration on the moment and the thing to be done.
– Emerson.
I swear I see what is better than to tell the best, It is always to leave the best untold.
– Walt Whitman.
“Another book upon this subject?” the reader may exclaim. Yes; because concentration is the secret of human power in action. Waste is prevalent everywhere and the consequences are poverty, illness, unhappiness, and failure. It is a libel on nature to think that any person should be in any kind of want because there is not supply and ability in him to appropriate it. The unconscious perception of this fact has pushed man onward to present civilization. A more or less clear perception of the Law and the Way has given rise to many schools of Human Culture. Each generation has had its seers who have studied the operation of the Power within man and discovered the Law, so simple, that all may intellectually grasp it. But because the ordinary person goes no further than to have a mere general perception of Truth, this book is added to the great metaphysical stock and others will necessarily come after mine. I am but one among the million. This book is but one stone cast on the cairn that authors are building to the worship of the God of Success.
Concentration is not something to be learned as one learns mathematics. It is a mental habit which is to be acquired just as the habit of solving problems in geometry is to be acquired by practice. Concentration is that mental attitude attained by practice, that characterizes the book-keeper and the mechanic, who know not that others are about, and who do their work almost automatically and unconsciously.
Concentration is that mental state, acquired only by practice, which enables the actor to forget self in the part he is playing, or the author to forget self in the thought he is writing. Only practice and more practice, can produce it. For this reason text-book after textbook will be needed, and the thought must be reiterated, “line upon line,” and enforced example by example, till the habit of concentration is formed.
Because of this I feel it a duty to give my testimony and to help those still struggling as once was I. But I have another reason. My magazine and books have caused a large clientele to look to me for assistance along the lines of soul unfoldment; they turn to me with questions, and I must answer. From this feeling and this need, this book is born. It has not been of predetermined growth. It arises from my articles in magazine, from my lessons in class, from letters and conversations. Because I feel these persons have made inquiries that others are asking; these others will find what so many have already found in my thought; so I let the matter stand just as first given, knowing that the sometime repetition of the same thought in a little different way, will through suggestion strengthen the idea. I simply talk to you, my reader, just as I should in writing you a letter, or in answering your questions, were you in my room. In fact much of the thought of the book comes from my class conversation. I trust you will feel the inspiration from which the instruction sprung.
I wish most in these first pages to emphasize the fact that it is a mental habit you are to cultivate. I am not giving you a treatise for merely intellectual comprehension. It is a book of conduct, rather. Any book can help you only in so far as you put what you are told into practice. As soon as you grasp an idea, lay down the book and think upon it and begin, then and there, to practice what you have learned. Repeat it over and over as an Affirmation. Tell yourself that you live that. Practice this till you unconsciously, through habit, think in that line. It will ultimately become a habit for you thus to think and you will live from that Affirmation. This alone is Concentration.
When I was a boy I was an omnivorous reader; read every book no matter of what kind I could obtain, from Sunday School, library, or neighbor. I thus created a habit of reading anywhere and of paying no attention to whatever was about me. Often has mother shaken me with the words, “Henry, where is that armful of wood you promised to get me?” Or, “Henry, when will you get that pail of water?” “Why mother,” I would reply, “I never heard you call me!” “My son,” she would say, “I have spoken several times, and you have answered me, ‘yes, Mother, right away!’ and now I can wait no longer.” But I had not heard her. So at least I thought then. Now I know that my hearing was then perfect, but that I paid no attention to what I heard. I did not let the sound then cause me to think. I was deaf because I did not use my power to convert sound to thought. The old saying is true; “Deaf people hear when they wish to!”
How many of my readers have this habit of abstraction or of absent mindedness? And yet they are the very ones who tell me they “cannot concentrate.” Please change this expression to this form, and it is true: “I do not concentrate upon that which I desire! I let myself drift through habit!” Study this last sentence till you get the meaning. It will help to develop the power of conscious concentration.
All I am trying to do in these conversations is, to bring you to consciously do that which you are doing unconsciously and automatically every day. I wish you to rise from habit formed through neglect or necessity, to a habit formed because you desire and choose it. In the first place you are a slave of, and in the last place you are the Master of, habit.
Note – Since Concentration is only paying attention to right thoughts, I have prefaced, each section with extracts from best literature, and recommend that the reader memorize them, as they are Power-thoughts and will, when meditated upon, lead to Success.
Section II. Concentration Is Natural
If the first rule is to obey your native bias, to accept the work for which you were inwardly formed, – the second rule is concentration, which doubles its force.
– Emerson in “Greatness”
The power of concentration is one of the most valuable of intellectual attainments.
– Horace Mann.
Judging from letters and questions of pupils, no part of the Mental Science causes so much difficulty as the demand that there be Concentration. I propose to take from this demand all that is difficult, and remove all obstructions from the mind so that there will be a clear understanding of what is meant by “Concentration,” and what by the phrase so much in use, – “In the Silence!”
There is no break in the methods of nature. Truth is identical whether uttered by ancient or modern teacher, by eastern priest or modern Mental Scientist. He who finds Truth, finds it by Nature’s one method. There are no patent rights upon any of her secrets, and no corners upon any method of arriving at the perception of Truth.
The cave man found it just as Moses did, and Moses just as Socrates, and Socrates as Jesus, and A. J. Davis as Jesus, and Mrs. Eddy as Davis, and Henry Harrison Brown as they did. Therefore, unless we are to admit the claim of special revelation and arbitrary selection on the part of a Creator, we are to analyse our own mental action, and from the way we have come to Truth, realize that all in like manner come. From the study of our own unfoldment, we are to deduce ways for still more extended progress, just as we have by study of nature’s methods in other lines of manifestation, learned to assist her in her unfoldment.
As man, by interrogating nature has learned to become a factor in the evolution of the material world, as he has, by the same process learned to be a factor in his own evolution, mentally, artistically, esthetically; so by the study of our mental conditions we are to learn to be a conscious factor in the evolution of a control over ourselves.
The child and the savant learn by the same means. The slave and the king develop by the same process. The workman and the poet win success by obedience to the same law. The victor and the vanquished are results of the one instrument. Nature is no respector of persons. All the old conception of any special revelation; of any peculiar method; of any newly invented process; of any specially prepared series of directions; of any collections of teachings, or of any prepared formulas, being of value, must pass away. You are to realize that in you abides the same power; in you lies latent, the same intelligence; in you awaits the same germ, that all other men possess, to be brought into unfoldment by the same methods. You are to declare, – “What man has done I can do! When I know how others achieve I also can achieve. When I have learned the Law, I can use it! When I find the Way I can walk in it. When I see the Light I can follow it. When I know the Truth I can demonstrate it.”
So long have the old ideas held sway that it is important that you see that all of the old growths of error, of self depreciation, of beliefs in the supernatural and in the special are rooted out of your mind. Too many are trying to come into the New Thought and hold on to the old thought at the same time. For such, Jesus spoke, when he admonished Us not to put new wine in old bottles. New perceptions of truth will not fit old statements, and new perceptions must not be limited to old methods. Truth is never old and her methods of revelation, the processes of awakening to the perception of Truth, are ever the same. Do not confound human perception of Truth with Truth itself, nor fix it at the ancient limitation. Lowell tells us that: –
God sends his teachers unto every age, To every clime, and every race of men, With revelations fitted to their growth And shape of mind, nor gives realm of Truth Into the selfish rule of one sole race.
Do not make one and the same, the thing and the maker, the seer and the perception. The methods of seership are always the same; the methods of applying the truth perceived to the objective life are as various as are organizations and the lives of the seers. No one can either perceive Truth or live it for you; therefore while you perceive Truth by the absolute law of Mind, you will apply Truth by the special law of your own individuality. Thus Truth common to all ages and all men is so differently stated, and so differently applied that there are thousands of sects and schools. But under all these, lies the one Substance named God, Brahm, Allah, Joss, Force, Mind, Energy, Christ, Spirit, etc, etc. And no matter what the rite, form, ceremony, formula, method, law, rule, or regulation proposed or imposed, all these have their base in the same natural phenomena. Therefore no matter what claim is made for any system you are to understand that no system ever was, or ever can be, made that will embody all possible methods of attaining any desired unfoldment. No system can be made that will exhaust the possibilities of infinite Principle. Systems, forms, and rules arise in the observance of details. When you rise to Principles you will make your own rules or have none.
Reliance upon Principle and reliance upon rule, make the difference between a master and a slave; between a leaner and one self-controlled. To rest upon forms, formulas, rites and rules is the custom of church, state and public opinion. To rest upon Principle is the demonstration of – Individuality.
A clear conception of this point is necessary because so many teachers, leaders and founders, are springing up, claiming to speak with authority, or to have devised, or found, some plan by which one may attain unfoldment, success, health, or happiness by some new and original road. Know this: all such claims are based upon some merely individual perceptions of the one and the same law which every person has obeyed who ever attained success. There is but one way, because Life, Truth, Principle, and Law are unchangeable. The Spirit of Truth through Jesus said – “1 am the way!” So It says through every Human Soul. “I am the way!” says Life. “I am the way!” said Nature to the scientist, and seeking out her way, it is now his way. In New Thought we only interrogate Nature; seek her way! When we find her way we shall have the only way. And since all Truth is simple; since every discovery man has made of Nature’s way is simple; we are to infer that when we find the way to health, success and happiness it will be so simple that we shall be surprised that we did not always know it.
I admonish you at the beginning of any study, to put aside all systems that have anything strange, difficult, mysterious, occult, or supernatural; anything hard to understand, or peculiar to do. They are not Nature’s way and will never be yours. Mistrust everything you find difficult to understand. Only so far as any system conforms to your own simple life, does it have any value to you. When you are inclined to take up any method of self-culture, ask, “Is this Nature’s simple way? Have all men in all ages found success through obedience to this Principle? If so, I will adopt it.”
Again, I advise you to refuse to deal with any teacher, or system, that proposes to do all for you; to make it easy for you. There are no easy, no royal roads. Though the New Jerusalem “lieth four square with gates on each side;” there are no chariots on either side to carry you in. You must get in by your own unaided efforts.
“Where did you come from, Topsy?” “I growled!” Each person must grow into any condition he desires. Teachers may do what the gardener does – make conditions for growth. This book and any good book or teacher, can make conditions for you to grow, by teaching you how mankind has ever grown.
I would that you bring very closely to yourself this thought – “All men are created equal!” In this consciousness concentrate your forces in the thought. – “What man has done, I can do! What men know, I can know. When I know what they know, I can do as they do!” This is the only possible rational, self-respecting mental attitude. It is the only one under which I wish to claim you as a pupil or as friend. In this mental attitude we shall win. In any other we shall fail.
In other words I have been during all this lesson, advising you to concentrate upon FAITH IN YOURSELF. This is the keynote to the Arch of Character and its presence or absence constitutes success or failure.
The key to success in the line of all mental and spiritual achievement, is CONTROL OF THE ATTENTION. The ability to concentrate and hold the attention upon any given point at will, and resist all diverting tendencies and desires, is an absolute necessity to high attainment and rapid progress. Happily this is an art that all may acquire by resolution and persevering effort. The very practice itself is a wholesome and efficient mental discipline. – Dr. J. H. Dewey in “The Way, the Truth and the Life”
Section III. Paying Attention
Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius and art.
– Cicero.
Let us labor for an inward stillness, An inward stillness and an inward healing.
– Longfellow.
Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumphs and defeat.
– Longfellow.
In the study of metaphysics, the awful bugbear of “The Silence” has been let loose upon you. As you have been thinking of what I have written and paid no attention to anything else, you have been “In the Silence!” As you have “paid attention” to the thought of these pages, you have been “concentrating,” and the difficult task you have feared is accomplished; the condition you thought so hard to reach, is gained.. How? By not thinking of it! By forgetting you have done that which you wished to do. Never yet did a person concentrate while thinking, “I am going to concentrate:” or, “I wish I could concentrate!” or, “0, how hard it is to concentrate!” As long as you think of what you wish to do, you will never do it. As soon as you forget your wish to do, in the doing, the thing is done. It is this continual thought of concentration, that troubles so many of my students, readers, and correspondents. “I have been a New Thought student for years and cannot concentrate,” is a frequent expression. But there is, nevertheless, in the expression, the concentration sought. It shows that the person has concentrated, not upon the thought desired, but upon the wish to concentrate. This is concentration.
I have said that we must win by that method by which mankind has ever won: That there is but one method. Study the life of any successful person in any age and along any chosen line; seek one among your friends or acquaintances; what is the dominant mental quality that gave him success? Be he gambler or poet, find the trait which gave him power. Find among your friends those who have failed and see what thought caused their failure.
Lady Macbeth said to her husband:
But screw your courage to the sticking place and we shall not fail!
We have the proverb – “Too many irons in the fire!”
This is diffusion.
“One thing at a time, and that done well Is as good a rule as I can tell!” is an admonition I learned as a lad. Success is his who concentrates; failure lies in diffusion. “Concentration is power; diffusion is weakness,” says Emerson. Study persons of strong character among your friends. They are not the fickle ones, not those who jump from topic to topic in conversation. They are those who can tell a coherent story, and who are not easily thrown off their poise.
Men who succeed are those who attend to their business, that is: – pay attention to business. The rule for success in every department of life, be it desire for health, happiness, success, or prosperity is – MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. First, have a business. Then, mind it. That is, put your mind into your business. Think of your business. Keep your thoughts upon your business. MIND – PAY ATTENTION TO, which is merely saying, “Concentrate upon what you are doing.” Men whose minds are off wool gathering when they should be attending to business, are men who fail. Men whose minds are full of fears, anxieties and doubts, fail. Minds, uncontrolled, are like horses uncontrolled; neither arrive at any desired end. They fly the track, they put no eye on the goal. Winners see the goal; keep that end in view all the time.
Concentration is an ever-present element in all human success and if you wish to succeed in applying the Affirmations of “Soul Culture,” you must do as all successful persons have done, i. e., concentrate upon them. In the simplest and strongest terms, make these Affirmations your business, and mind your business. M. Y. 0. B., (mind your own business) must be your watchword of success. These letters are of value equal to those to which men attach so much value, those granted by college or king. Following the name of every successful person, I see the invisible M. Y. 0. B., which is God’s insignia of nobility – “A successful man!”
New Thought is but bringing prominently and simply into view, the good old admonition, “Have something to do and do it.” Jesus gave the same when he said, “Not everyone who saith to me ‘Lord! Lord!’ But he that doeth the will of my Father!” No doing without thought, and that thought is concentrated thought. Powder flashed in the pan never sends a ball to any mark. Powder concentrated by the chamber of the cannon does the work; tons can only destroy recklessly without the chamber.
The lesson – Powder in pan has the same power as that in cannon. So with men – All have equal power, “All men are created equal,” in life, power and possibilities of Spirit. Some concentrate and win; others scatter and lose. Some make a lot of noise, and go off with a whiz, like a Chinese pin-wheel; others work silently like the fuse of the sappers and miners, till the moment of action, then you hear them. Do you take this all in ? You do not as long as you hold any person or condition or circumstance to blame for your success or failure. As long as you thus hold circumstances responsible, you will never cure life’s ills. You have as much life, as much power, and as good conditions as any other person. We are not all alike in desires, tendencies, or loves; but for us, as we are, the whole universe is ours. We have only to use the power we are. Circumstances are opportunities through which we are to express the power we are. Emerson says: “The great heart will no more complain of the obstructions that make success hard, than of the iron walls of the gun which hinder the shot from scattering.”
From this, understand that Concentration is the universal Law governing the manifestations of Power in any line. In what is known as physics, concentration is the secret of power. Mechanics lies in power to concentrate the stream, wind, lightning and thus make it possible to bring it under direction and control. Diffused power cannot be directed or controlled and is therefore subject only to the laws of the Absolute and the uses that it has in the Universal Mind. Winds that blow without any human direction, streams that flow without being controlled in some channel, have use in the economy of Nature, but are not directly of use to man.
As soon as man begins to concentrate, not only these invisible forces, but also to concentrate the visible like fusing or forging the minerals, he increases their power.
Concentration is the secret of directed power, wherever man has made it available. Emerson tells us that Napoleon’s success lay in concentration, his only rule.
He says: – “On any point of resistance he concentrated squadron after squadron in overwhelming numbers until it was swept out of existence.”
When man shall learn to still more concentrate power he will master aerial navigation. Storage batteries and small dynamos and small engines are opening the way.
Therefore, when you are learning concentration, you are learning to use Power, in the same manner as man has learned to use those powers he has harnessed to his machinery.
Mental concentration is the application of the one method through which all nature applies her forces to any particular end.
You are ever to remember that you are living in a universe; that all force is one and is subject to the one law; that methods of the law’s operation in the visible universe are parallel with methods in the unseen universe. Says Emerson: “The laws below are sisters of the laws above!” Mrs. Browning tells us: “There is not a flower on earth, but has its counterpart on the Spiritual side.” They are reflections in the slower vibrations of what is actual and permanent in the higher. As the picture in a mirror is a reflection of the object, so every so-called material circumstance is, but the reflection of a mental reality, or if yon prefer, a spiritual reality. All laws are spiritual laws. Or it may please you better if we say, all Laws are Laws of Mind. Mind is all, and All means ALL. It does not leave out Man or rock, angel or energy. ALL means God, and God means ALL. You are thus first of all in your demonstration to concentrate the thoughts you have had of Existence into the ONE Substance that fills the Universe. You are to affirm Unity until it becomes a mental habit to think from Unity. Think of God as not far away, but as being ever-present and IN you. To think of your life as God’s life; your thought as God’s thought; your strength as God’s strength; your action as God’s action.
You must create this habit of concentrating God, yourself, and your friends into the All. You are to accustom yourself never to think of anything, or any manifestation as separate from the All. It is the All that manifests; it is the All that thinks, loves, acts, works, hates, grows, blossoms, ripens, and decays. You will soon grow to FEEL God, as you think of IT (or HIM) as present in yourself; and to think of yourself as present in Him, and of your thought and deed as being His thought and deed. You will soon realize that the idea of separateness between yourself and the All is the beginning of all your ills.
Paul held and taught this conception of Unity. He said:
I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God!
Section IV. Some Channels of Waste
Work while you work and play while you play; That is the way to be happy and gay.
– My Old School Reader.
Too many irons in the fire.
Jack of all trades and master of none.
– Old Proverbs.
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts And power to him who power exerts. Hast not thy share? On winged feet Lo, it flyeth thee to meet!
– Emerson.
While happiness is to be desired and is the source of health and power, being the subjective side, the cause side of these, it is often confused with mere excitement, – especially the excitement of change, – or of stimulant, and also with mere pleasure. Pleasure arises in the sensations of the physical body and while it is to be encouraged as a means and as such becomes a source of power, whenever sought as an end it is diffusive of power, destructive of happiness, through the reactions that follow, and thus productive of failure in line of health and a successful life. Rational pleasures are to be sought temperately. With Self-Control they are healthful. Intemperate use is diffusion, weakness. All emotions not controlled – all intemperance in any form, – is the opposite of that concentration, which is the “Road to Success.” It is the concentration of mere physical enjoyment, and since all power is Mind, (or Spirit) and not body, to concentrate upon the physical in any form, is to close, to a greater or less degree, the channels of inspiration of Spirit, which is life. The physical is the animal side of Man. And until he attains mastery over the flesh, it is as natural to concentrate upon physical enjoyment as do the lambs and colts. This is the exuberance of animal life.
Man can keep this exuberance down to what is termed old age will he be temperate, and the word means – Self Controlled. Under right thought, all this animal spirit is curbed, and reined, and guided by the Master – Soul. Through this mastery it is possible to avoid disease, unhappiness, poverty and even physical death by ripening out of physical conditions through some form of de-materialization.
It is not because there is anything inherently wrong in this, that I refer to the fads, follies, fashions and social excitements. Only so far as they are indulged in to kill time; are taken up because they are in the air; indulged in to emulate or to vie with others; enjoyed with no serious purpose; and allowed to absorb time, attention and labor that, would we win Success, – would lead to Success. I am writing only for those who are willing to purchase success.
“Laurel crowns cleave to deserts” and no one ever won the crowning success who did not buy it with a price.
And no one wins social distinction, or place in the fashionable, political, or athletic world, who did not pay for it by losing success in other fields.
“In the devil’s booth all things are sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.”
“It is natural to concentrate upon pleasure,” it is said, and also: – “It is natural to concentrate under excitement!” Yes: but is it well? Has not man a higher motive? Anger, jealousy, envy, hatred, avarice and kindred passions are concentrative and belong naturally to man; but unfolding man leaves these behind and finds happiness, power, prosperity in concentrating upon their opposites.
It is because, all forms of concentration that have not behind them noble ideals, are diffusive of power and weakening to character; because they are a form of intemperance; because they are manifestations of a lack of self-control, of self-sufficiency, that, for those who have a desire to nobly win, I mention them here. Society has much “busy idleness.” The ladies crochet, make crazy quilts, take up china painting and kindred fads to “kill time.” Not with any serious purpose, but because they don’t know what else to do, or seek them to show their productions for the approval or envy of neighbors. There is much dissipation in what is termed “Art.” “Art is man added to Nature,” but there seems to be no purpose “to add” in much that today passes by that name. The test? Only a few years and all these productions are relegated to the lumber room. The productions of real Art, live. True, some unfoldment comes to those who really enjoy; who really love the work; who truly have a real desire; but when it is done only because others are painting; because “I must do something” it is a diffusion of power and an element of weakness.
To follow this course is to take the road to failure. Concentration upon any occupation means success in it. Have a purpose in what you do and work with a will.
Whatever is done to kill time; to help one forget one’s self, because it is the fad, or because society demands it, is weakness. “Conformity is weakness/’ says Emerson.
Companionship, social intercourse, exchange of affectionate and love expressions are sources of power. Man is a social being and needs to mingle with his kind, but what are known as “social functions” are diffusive and interfere with Success, as determined in “Introduction.” What is termed “society” is dissipation; a loss of opportunity and power and leads to ill health and failure. Many who feel compelled to live lives in conformity to social demands have said to me, both men and women, “Society is hell!” Physicians tell me so and the records of sanitariums and homes echo, – “Hell!” Why? Because it is the opposite of Peace – Rest – Happiness – Health.
Concentration upon pleasure for its own sake, kills. Games are right and necessary in their place. They are means of relaxing; a means of rest from our over strenuous life. But the tendency is to carry the same strenuousness into the game, and instead of enjoying the game, enjoy the winning. And there is no more nerve wearing and diffusive means than gambling in any form, be it at stock board, roulette table or at any thing where there is striving to win. Let me tell you something: – when you become so interested in winning as to lose the enjoyment of each step of the game – stop! I will not play a second game with any one who “crows” over his winnings, or who feels bad over his failures. And I would prefer he would, like myself, forget to name who won the evening before. To play in any other thought than that of enjoyment of expression at the time, is not to make the game restful, but only to change the kind of excitement. To change from concentration of business to concentration in winnings is not to change the principle, is not rest.
The same is true of athletic contests. The motive determines the benefit. Herbert Spencer loved to relax at billiards. A young man once played with him who showed great skill and declared that he was champion at the game. – “I am sorry to hear it,” said the philosopher. Time, skill, effort and life wasted for that which represented no power, no real success.
President Livermore said to us at Meadville: “Young men, you cannot devote yourselves to society and at the same time attend to your studies!”
“Choose this day whom you will serve,” says nature. You cannot have success on a high ideal plane and at the same time in a lower one. Cannot win in business, art, politics, literature, or any chosen field, and dissipate your time, thought and power in other fields. Concentrate upon some chosen ones and use all others as a means of relaxation and rest.
“Too many irons in the fire!” is the old proverb. Have one purpose. Concentrate and stick, is the soul of success.
I recently heard a young man in conversation with a young lady say – “No, I had to give up night school; I had too much to do!” and a few moments later I overheard him say: “I was at the theatre a few evenings ago, and with skating rink and theatre I shall be out every night this week.” The probabilities are that in a few years he will complain of his “luck,” because others get promoted over him. He had concentrated upon pleasure, the sensations of the physical man. Gossip, the daily papers, latest novel, the new dance, and other trifles occupy too much time for health and success. I have listened to conversations between men on some political trifle and between women on some society gossip for over fifteen minutes that was not worth a passing thought. This loss of life means loss of health and success.
Yet these people will tell me they cannot concentrate. True they have not learned the law of mastery – concentration at will, – but they naturally concentrate upon the thought that comes under present desire, or habit. What shall these do? Follow the advice given in Matthew: – “Repent,” – for the kingdom of God is at hand!” Repent; – turn about; – do the opposite. Think the opposite. “At hand.” Yes, reach forth and take it. It is waiting for you – is the realization of your Ideal of happiness and success.
Section V. I AM Life
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
– Jesus.
The infinite always is silent, ’tis only the finite that speaks.
– John Boyle O’Reiley.
The granite rocks disorganize
To feed the hungry Life they bear!
The very moss drinks daily Life, From out the viewless air.
– J. L. McCreary.
I am the Way, the Truth and Light;
In me all Being flows. I’m one with rock and star so bright.
God’s spark within me glows.
– Sam Exton Foulds.
There is but one Life and I am that Life. This thought you are to hold and thus concentrate Life into One and not as in the past diffuse and limit it in amount. ALL the one life is mine. With this thought you cannot either lose or waste. All life is yours and you may use it as you choose. You have no less life at any moment than you had at first. You have as much at 80 years as you had at birth. Under the old thought habit of scattering and diffusing Life, you were at times weak, weary, or ill. Under the New Thought you are never thus, but are at all times One with the All-Life. Learn to think from this thought of life. Concentrate upon it. Do not let your mind wander off into old channels, but keep your attention fixed always upon some aspect of the ONE.
It is an excellent practice to image yourself as an inlet of an infinite ocean of Life. Imagine a current setting into you as a bay, just as it comes through our beautiful Golden Gate; and as it fills this magnificent bay, so see Life fill you. Say to yourself, – “I am a bay filled through the Golden Gate of Love from the Infinite ocean of Life. The tide never ebbs. I am at all times full. I have but to let Life flow through me into expression, and as fast as I let it flow out, I am filled again. Thus I have life only as I give it expression. O Life; Healthful Life; Beautiful Life. Mine now and forever!” Be this your constant song.
Constantly keeping a chosen thought uppermost is Concentration. As you practice it will grow easier, till you will have formed the habit of thinking of God, of Life as One, and then think of yourself as God and as Life in manifestation. You will grow to think of the fullness of life, just as you have been accustomed to think of your want of life.
Mental habits are the only habits you should cultivate or allow. There are good mental habits but there are no good habits in the objective life. To think rightly is to allow fullest liberty in the objective life, because Thought cannot take the same objective form through you to-day, as it did when you were five years old, or as it did when you were ten, or twenty or thirty years of age. As you change, your environment changes; you will find your thought of Unity taking a new physical manifestation. For instance – You may to-day, under the thought of the Infinity-of-Life, find it to your happiness to attend theatre or attend the sick, and be up all night, but your ordinary habit is to retire early. But when you make it a habit to retire early you fetter yourself, and will feel the loss when you do not.
Create the mental habit of doing what you think is best at the time and for the occasion and you will either retire or remain up with equal physical comfort. Mental habits are formed from Principle, from love of right; physical habits are formed from attention to details. Principles have millions of applications. Create a habit of temperance and you will need no pledge, and any pledge will fetter you when you wish a larger liberty. A mental habit of thinking no evil will keep you from fault-finding and criticism, while a habit of overlooking the faults of others will shut you out from seeing them and open the better to your vision. Mental habits are results of demonstration along certain thought lines. “I don’t demonstrate!” Why? Because you have created a mental habit of letting the mind run at random. Create a new habit. How? By doing as you always have done save to choose your thought. There is no change in law or method. It is a simple thing to choose other thoughts where you have been thinking unpleasant ones. This requires will and effort till you create the habit and then the right thought will think itself.
Automatism is to be made of conscious use; habit is automatism.. By a course of right thinking we change nerve tissue; build cells which like storage batteries hold the thought and, when cells enough have been created, they do the work without our conscious volition. We materialize our thoughts and our will into muscle and nerve. Gray matter is secreted in the ends of the fingers of the blind, and in the fingers of the pianist and the deft artisan. The fingers do not think, but the thought out of which they have been made, does the work. So is it in any line of labor; the body becomes materialized so that the less of conscious thought is put upon it the better work it does. This is done under the universal Law of Concentration. You are consciously to obey the Law to a chosen end, as you have in the past involuntarily and unconsciously obeyed it, to an end chosen for you by necessity. In the old thought and labor you were slave; in the New Thought you are Master through Self-direction.
You do not surfer from lack in concentration, for without concentration nothing is done. Every step you take and every word you speak is the result of concentration. What you complain of arises from a lack of proper thought choice. People differ in the power to concentrate at will upon a chosen thought and their power to hold by will to a chosen thought for any definite time. Some people have persistence and consecutiveness while others are fickle, veering, and easily discouraged. But discouragement, fear, grief, pain, sorrow, worry,, anxiety, jealousy, anger, and weariness are all like their opposites, the results of concentration. What is the difference? Is it because some persons possess less will? Can one person have more Life than another? Each one has All Life and can draw at will. Can a person then have less will than another? The All-Will belongs to each, and each has all of the All-Will that he or she wills to use. There is no such thing as a weak or a strong will, any more than there is a strong or a weak life. There may be a strong or weak manifestation of life and will through the same individual. No person exercises the will in the same way at all times.
The very fact that we notice the difference between the exercise of will on occasion, is evidence that will is limitless and we can use all we desire. Therefore it is not a valid excuse for a person to say of another, “He has a stronger will than mine!” because each person has a will of equal strength. It is merely a question of how you will to use the Ego as Will.
Section VI. How Shall I Concentrate
Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.
– Jesus.
Whatsoever things are lovely and of good repute, think on these things.
– Paul.
No man can choose what coming hours may bring To him of need, of joy, or suffering; But what his soul shall bring unto each hour To meet its challenge – this is his power.
– Priscilla Leonard.
It is profanation for you to ask how Life will do its work tomorrow. It is sacrilegious after telling Life, the Omnipotent and the Omniscient what you desire, for you to put your finger into the work. You are to let the One in the sub-conscious materialize your ideal. Every time you interfere with Life, you get burnt fingers. Your entire business is to build in the Ideal. When you have created the mental image you are to concentrate upon that image and LET the MASTER BUILDER – LIFE (GOD), do the work while you enjoy the conditions that come to you.
I think this advice is plain; Concentrate upon the mental image and let that image, through the operation of mental laws, direct the Soul in the manifestation. Simply do your work in imagination; do your work by thinking. God will through necessity do the rest. Thinking is all you can do. Therefore watch your thoughts and when they are inclined to stray away from the chosen image, bring them back. Soon the Will by that faculty must body itself forth in the physical becomes so trained to the fact that it must hold to the chosen picture, that it will keep your thoughts from straying. This is the ultimate of Concentration; it brings REALIZATION”; then you and the mental image become one.
I give you in this connection a fine mental picture to hold of your power, from Edwin Arnold’s “Light of Asia!” Concentrate upon it till it becomes your thought of yourself, as body, as Will, and as Infinite Life.
Look upon Spirit as the rider! take The body for the chariot and the Will As charioteer! Regard the Mind as reins; The senses steeds, and things of sense The ways they trample on. So is the Soul The Lord that owneth spirit, body, will, Mind, senses, all. Itself unowned.
Thus think the wise! He who is unwise, drives with reins Slack on the neck o’ the senses, then they romp Like restless horses of a charioteer. He that is wise, with watchful mind and firm, Calms these wild fires, so they go fair and straight Like well-trained horses of a charioteer.
The imagination is the real creator. The pictures it creates become objective realities. Henry Wood deserves a much greater recognition than he has yet received for the Principle he lays down in his “Ideal Suggestion.” This form of Suggestion controls the life. The ideal is the real in Spirit and that which is spiritually created must take objective form. As every picture was first a mental image in the mind of painter, and painted itself; as each statue was first a mental picture in the mind of sculptor; as palace, hut, or stable in the mind of architect was once a mental picture; so every form of human expression is in the inception a mental image, created upon, or by, or through, the Imagination. What is once impressed upon the mind universe. Pictures created by Affirmations become, according to the fidelity with which they are held imaged forth in the body. “According to the fidelity with which they are held.” Note this well. Rest here and give the thought time to affect the body. Rest an hour and it will have an hour’s effect.
Make a mental habit of holding this thought constantly as a picture, to the exclusion of all pictures that mar, and it becomes reflected in the body as does the mental image in mind of artist or workman. “Let your yea be yea.” This is why you are at all times to keep before yourself the picture of health, happiness, and success. “Think on these things.” These pictures are to be held as realities in Principle; not to be wrought out in detail, save as day by day, the need of detail comes. As soon as mentally created, they are Powers and Realities in the Soul Realm. There alone you have creative power. Details are the objective conditions with which you are to deal with reason when the time for reasoning comes. “NOW is the accepted time” for you to deal with Principle. Principle will take care of the detail that now is, and with other details, when the evolution of the mental image brings them into the present. Make not the mistake of planning the how, and the way, in which this mental image will objectify. That is not your business. Do not think on these things. Give to Life the outline of what you desire and trust Life. Let Life carry out your desire. Life is omnipotent and is the only builder. Life will decide when to give the picture objective form.
Hold the picture in your mind and trust. Be yourself the architect; Life is the workman. Keep your hands off. The only work for you is: – Think, Concentrate, and Trust.
Section VII. The Will
The education of the Will is the object of our existence.
– Emerson. O living Will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock.
– Tennyson.
The mind of a human organism can, by effort of will, properly directed, produce measurable changes in the chemistry of the secretions and excretions; in the vasor motor blood supply to areas and organs, and in the temperature selected areas, and so on. All of this goes to prove that the mind has a direct effect upon the functioning of the cells that compose an organ, and that if we can properly train the mind, we can produce definite effects upon any physiological function.
– Professor Elmer Gates.
An educated Will then is the first necessity to happiness, health and prosperity. The Will should be as subject to desire in us as are the muscles of the gymnast to his will. This can be done by creating right mental habits through voluntary concentration. The mechanic educates his hand to hold the saw; the engineer his to hold the throttle; the pianist, his fingers to play; till it is now “second nature” for them to obey. In like manner can the Will be cultivated in other directions. Its function is to obey; to carry out the orders of the judgment. When it has been trained to stick to a thought, it is easy, and we say, “A person of trained will!” But if the thought wanders then we say, “Weak will!” But the Will is equally strong in both cases. It takes as strong a Will not to do as it does to do; as much Will to sit in the chair as it does to get up; as much to stop walking as to start; as much to refrain, as it does to perform. “I can!” “I can’t!” and “I won’t!” require an equal expression of Will. But when we have trained the Will to our decision, “I can’t!” then it is easy, “natural,” for us to say “I can’t.” When we have trained it to our decision, “I don’t,” that is also easy; but when we have trained it to say, “I can,” it is equally easy to say “I can,” and to do.
The trouble with the majority of persons is that they never have been trained into habits of self-reliance and self-assertion. Lacking these it is natural, because it is habit to say, “I can’t.” In fact, it says itself, so accustomed are they to say and to think, “I can’t.” “I can’t” is really “I won’t try!” “Can’t” means, I will not will to do. Therefore when you tell me that you do not concentrate because you “lack Will,” this is not the fact. You really tell me that you have created a habit of letting yourself as Will drift without conscious direction. All you have to do to win your desires is to train yourself as Will through Affirmation, till it is as natural and easy for you to say “I can!” as it is now for you to fear, doubt and say, “I can’t.” This Affirmation, “I CAN!” is born of the consciousness of ability to do because you possess All-Life and All-Will, and may use as much as you desire. You do use at all times as much as you have trained yourself by thought to use. Would you possess the power of self-direction, you must have power to choose your thought, and to hold it as long as you choose; have power to shut out all thoughts that weaken or interfere; that make sick or timid; must have the power as trained Will to hold, because you choose, pleasant thoughts of health, success and happiness.
VOLUNTARY CONCENTRATION is the secret of personal power; is the secret of all who have won in life’s battles. These victors decided to think success, and nothing but success, and to never give up, thus from the very jaws of defeat, to win the mead of victory.
Concentration is but sticking as Will to the thought you have chosen. It is thinking “I will.” I am asked, “Shall I affirm all the time?” I answer, – Should you spend all your time thinking or saying “I can!” and “I will,” you would do nothing else. Think “I can,” and “I will” whenever opposite thoughts would enter the mind. Sit quietly a few minutes each day, by yourself with the chosen thought and hold it because you choose to hold it. While you thus concentrate voluntarily, keep all other thoughts out of your mind by willing them out. I will to think thus. This is not easy. You little realize how you have encouraged tramp thoughts, unwelcome thoughts, uncalled thoughts, “calling” thoughts, superficial thoughts, until you begin to direct your mind. You then find how unstable you are as Will. You find as one of my pupils said when she first tried to enter the Silence, “Every other thought, I ever had, came calling!” We have not been trained to choose our thoughts, and are too much of the time subject to wandering, vagabond, tramp thoughts that finding us undirected, pick us up and abide with us. It is important that you fully comprehend what is meant by “Going into the Silence!” It is voluntary concentration. It is willful concentration. It is concentration upon a chosen thought.
It is doing voluntarily and with a determined purpose that which you have been letting yourself do involuntarily all your life. You have learned that when you decide to do a thing and get up your grit, – will to do it, – you can do it. Now what you do, in case of necessity, or under the stress of “must,” or when you develop a positive determination, you are to create into habit of doing consciously all the time. By this time you will have preceived that what you are learning is not something for occasions, but something for all time. You are changing your manner of life, through this change of mental habit and learning, through thinking in the New Thought method, to live New Thought.
Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power; an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight. And though a man cannot return to his mother’s womb and be born with new amounts of vivacity, yet there are two economies which are the best succedanea which the case admits. The first is the stopping off decisively our miscellaneous activity and concentrating our force on one or a few points: as the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap into one or two vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into a sheaf of twigs.
Section VIII. Habits
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself into one.
– Anon.
We must build the ladder by which we rise And climb to its summit, round by round.
– J. G. Holland.
If my mind is not engaged in the worship, it is as if 1 worshiped not.
– Confucius.
We are creatures of habits, most of which we have formed involuntarily, or at best in ignorance of the Law. Now we are beginning to learn and to live in conscious and intelligent use of the Law. Under necessity the bookkeeper concentrates upon his column of figures and hears not the noises about him. Under necessity the workman learns to concentrate upon his machine, his tools, his material, and to hear and to think of nothing else. Under necessity the musician and the artist concentrate upon their task. Under the same necessity the mother attends to her duties unheeding what is going on about her. So with all successful business men. They learn to mind their business; to concentrate their thought upon it. So with us, when we are interested in music, in a play, or conversation, or in the communion of love’s expression. Concentrated upon the thing in hand, we think of nothing else. This condition you are to cultivate. It is the rapt condition of the saint; the condition of prayer; the condition of hysteria; the condition of meditation; the condition of absent-mindedness. All these we enter into instinctively. You are to learn to enter them at will, and to understand the method and the purpose. Drifting is not navigation.
Neither are these instinctive conditions, – even though they are productive of good, – self-control. All instructions under the New Thought name lead to self-control, which is the culmination of all true education.
Paul enumerated the “fruits of the Spirit” thus, – “Love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance.” Temperance is also given in the margin of the revised edition as “self-control,” which is the pure meaning of the word. Therefore temperance is the realization of spiritual consciousness. Temperance is self-control; is man’s coming into his inheritance of power; is man taking possession of that kingdom which is his. He can never take it until he shall realize that he is one with Infinity.
This is accomplished only by hammering and forging the Self into the expression desired. “Man is a bundle of habits,” says Emerson. Whence come they? Many by inheritance. Are they mine or do I belong to them ? Only that which I appropriate from heredity by choice, belongs to me. All the rest if I continue to manifest it, I belong to. Heredity owns me till I convert it to my desire. That which I do not thus choose and which yet remains in me, is uncontrolled tendencies which bear me on as wind bears the leaf and as hunger bears the wolf. I yield to them and when the habit of yielding is formed, I excuse myself by saying: – “Heredity. I can’t master.” When the fact is, I have not tried.
Without attempting to stem the current, or to direct the bark of my life, I have been content to drift. This habit of submission to tendencies is non-human. It belongs to the brute. Man has not yet left heredity behind. My humanity consists in my power to choose. My power to move, to think. He who does not exercise his power of choice is losing his opportunity of selfhood.
Habits are unconsciously formed. They grow while we are sleeping. They are born of our thoughts, and thoughts we take into our sleeping hours are most potent in controlling our lives.
For this reason mental habits have power over us. Mental habits are the only ones to cultivate, are the only habits that are good. Any habit of physical expression is bad, because it becomes a fetter. But a correct mental habit is based upon Principle, and leaves the individual free to act as he feels is right under all conditions.
Cultivate the habit of thinking pleasant thoughts and you will wear, as a habit, a smile. Take a pleasant thought to bed with you and you will smile all the next day.
The rain falls upon the newly plowed hill and makes a little streamlet down the field. The next shower fills the little channel and cuts it deeper. So does the next and the next, until the traveler of a later generation than the plowman, finds a deep gufty or ravine. The water was trained to a habit of flowing in one place. So with thought. Thought is Power. The same thought repeated creates brain and nerve conditions, thus like the rain-fall, preparing for itself a physical memory. Application of this principle gives the fingers of the pianist and the typist, such automatic power. In like manner every thought creates the nerve cells through which to express itself. Fear, worry, anger or any passion becomes a mental habit and creates for its expression the right machine. Grey matter is already secreted for that purpose through previous thoughts of fear, and worry. Each time an Affirmation is made there are nerve cells created that make it easier for the Affirmation to control the body the next time. And the next time the Affirmation is made, a thrill passes through the whole system, as the prepared cells respond to the thought.
Thus through Affirmation, after a little while, we have a new mental habit, with a new physical memory written in our nervous system, through which that habit finds easy expression. The sympathetic nerve is like my father’s old horse. Father rode around the country buying produce, and the old horse would stop at every farm-house where he had been accustomed to stop, no matter whether we were on a purchasing tour or a picnic. It is necessary that we guard our thoughts, and especially our words, for the vibrations of our voice create nerve conditions through which the thought will work automatically, like the old horse. Have you never had a tune ring in your head all night, or some song, or word of friend? The listening had made a nerve-condition that keeps up automatic action. Much of fear and worry continues in this way. Stop it by will.
Understanding that nerve cells vibrate from habit without our conscious thought, it behoves us to be careful of the thought habits we form; to be careful of what thoughts we express; careful of what thoughts we hold but do not express, for the silent holding, creates also nerve-conditions that later compel expression. From unpleasant thoughts, people so create their bodies, that they find it impossible to live in them, and move out through disease.
Out of the chasm of a bad mental habit, we can build the ladder on which to climb, only of pleasant thoughts. Each time the Affirmation is made, a fung is placed in the ladder. Repetition will create the habit of concentration, so that soon nerves will readily respond, and the habit of health and happiness be formed. Whoever says to me, “I can’t concentrate!” is simply repeating the cry of an old habit. I reply, “You can, but you don’t! When you will to, you will concentrate/’ The habit of willing soon becomes a pleasure; becomes chronic. You learn that you can, when you think you can. Concentration depends upon the habit you create. Therefore, to tell me you cannot, is to make conditions so that you do not.
If you really wish to concentrate; wish to enjoy the Silence, you must make it a habit to do so, by giving thought, will, effort and love to it, till it becomes as natural to concentrate then, as now to fear. You know how habits of any kind are formed. Do with a chosen Affirmation as you have been doing with Affirmations of fear, worry, and illness, and soon you will find yourself living in the Silence; for the habit of concentration, of paying attention, to a chosen thought, will have been formed. This habit will grow upon you till you realize that you can think whatever you choose to think. And be whatever you choose to be.
Section IX. “In The Silence.”
The Soul contains in itself the event that shall befall it.
– Goethe.
You are in “the silence” now. The only way to realize it is to get still, physically and mentally. It takes time and practice to do it, and there are no short cuts except as aspiration, faith and suggestion help to quiet your mental chattering. But the spiritual and mental and material rewards of such practice are enormous. Eye hath not seen nor ear heard the glories that are free in the silence.
– Elizabeth Towne in “Nautilus.”
In the silence of the Spirit,
In the higher realms above, In the deeper life within me,
In the world of perfect love; I have found my Father’s kingdom
And His righteousness divine; I have sought and found my heaven.
And all else is ever mine.
– C. J. Larsen. I will be silent in my Soul,
Since God has girt me round With His own Silence in which
There is no space for sound. Only His voice perchance may drop
Like dew upon the ground.
– Anna Hempstead Branch.
Thus far I have dealt directly with the Philosophy of Concentration; now I shall give what has been called out by pupils and patients. If some thoughts are repeated, it is because I feel it is necessary to repeat for power, and that conclusions be reached from as many points of view as possible. My notes cover answers to many questions and each reader will find here, I trust, answers to those he is asking.
This phrase, “In the Silence,” so much in use does not mean any peculiar condition. Often it is expressed thus, “Going into the Silence!” There is no “going.” The Soul lives in Silence. We are there constantly. Silence is that mental attitude which shuts out the external world through lack of attention. We come en-rapport with the external world through the five senses. Closing these, we listen to that which we hear in the silence of the soul. I like best to use the phrase, “Listening to the Silence.”
The noise and turmoil of the objective, which is the physical life, never reaches the Soul. The Real Man – the Soul – is never disturbed. It is the conscious part of our Being that is disturbed; made unquiet; taken out of ease and placed in that condition we term disease. The Soul is like God, always at rest; always at peace; always silent. The Self-Consciousness of Man alone knows worry, fret, pain, trouble, disease, and death. The Soul never dies; no more can it suffer any inharmony. These conditions of un-rest are merely disturbances in the manifestation, and not in that Reality which manifests. The man who runs a machine may be quiet and peaceful, yet the machine may run with racket and in disorder. So with the Soul; all the disorder is in the mental part of our Being and is but the necessary education for our unfoldment. We shall ultimately reach that serene condition, “Where we neither wish nor will;” where we shall, in the words of Emerson, “Trust the current that knows its way.” These disturbed conditions are but the preparation the ignorant man makes for that later condition of spiritual maturity, where in Faith and Trust he “Lets the light shine;” the “Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” The Intelligence that is latent in the Soul, the Power of the God-in-man is awakening into Conscious expression.
When there is sufficient unfold-ment conditions of inharmony pass away and there is At-one-ment; our will is one with the Absolute, the Universal Will. In this condition, one is led as the Quaker and all saintly persons are, by the Inner Voice. Whittier says of that time when mankind shall recognize this Inner Voice, that above the harsh and discordant noises of the present,
A sweeter song shall then be heard, The music of the world’s accord, Confessing Christ, the Inward word! That song shall swell from shore to shore, One Hope, one Faith, one Love, restore The seamless robe that Jesus wore.
This same poet also makes this excellent prayer for us all: –
Cease not Voice of holy speaking,
Teacher sent of God, be near, Whispering through the day’s cool silence,
Let my spirit hear.
The Hindoo, the priest, the seer, the poet, the inventor, all have learned to listen in the Silence and what is there spoken they proclaim. In this knowledge of the Silence we are only making common property of the ancient secret of Concentration, meditation and prayer, which has ever been the methods of psychic unfoldment. An ancient occult saying is “Silence is Power I” Silence is the condition in which all power exists, and in which all power operates. Power is silent. The Hebrews spoke of God as dwelling in Silence. No one hears the rustle of the robes of Gravity as it draws earth and sun into equilibrium. There is no noise as the sun each day lifts billions of tons of water. Electricity makes no sound as it ceaselessly works amid the spheres. “When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy/’ the objective world was silent; only the ear that hears in the silence heard the song of joy. The Trappist monks have this saying – “It is silence that shuts out new ideas, worldly topics and controversy.
It is silence that enables the soul to contemplate with singleness and mortification the infinite perfections of the Eternal!”
During my youth I learned this extract which has been an inspiration to me. I know not the author.
“In silence mighty things are wrought – Silently builded, thought on thought,
Truth’s temple greets the sky; And like a citadel with towers The Soul with her subservient powers
Is strengthened silently.”
The Bible contains many passages upon the power of silence and none more valuable than the admonition of Jesus to “Enter the closet,” which I interpret, from my experience, to mean, “Close the external senses and listen to the Silence and what you hear there you shall manifest in your life.” All the possibility of Demonstration in all lines of mental science must lie in the unfoldment that comes through meditation – Silence. The Hindoo mystic does this when he sits under the Bo-tree and hears nothing. Concentration in Silence is the only road to inspiration, in any of its forms of Life, Love, Truth and Power.
The Power of Silence and the Power in silence are the most important lessons the present century has to learn. Prof. William Crooks estimates that “a cubic foot of ether which fills all space has locked up within it 10,000 cubic-foot tons of energy which have as yet escaped notice. To unlock this boundless store and subdue it to the service of man is the task that awaits the scientist of the future. The later researches give well founded hopes that this store house of power is not hopelessly inaccessible!” Thus reasons the physicist; but the power he sees is both in, and of, the Silence. All these foot-tons, and all the varieties of power the scientist knows, do not exhaust the possibilities of God as Power. Science is but bringing the old conception of God into more intelligible terms.
The physical scientist is not the one who reveals God as power. The metaphysician does this, and harnesses this power to human Ego as Will. Prentice Mulford, an early New Thought teacher, said: –
The source of all strength of muscle is in your mind. Your amount of physical strength depends upon your capacity to call force to act upon whatever part of the body you choose. Forever, Spirit, Thought, means for us the same!
But all action of Mind is in silence. Not till thought finds objective expression is there any sound. Through Mind we are in touch with the Omnipotence working in silence. Through this union man possesses all, because he is but a manifestation of All, and the All is indivisible. In Silence man can learn how to use, through his intellect, the All of which he is but the conscious manifestation, directing this sub-conscious manifestation in his life. Considering that we have all of God for a reservoir, we can well ask the question with John White Chadwick: –
“Where such a wealth of perfect things How dare we ask for more.”
Carlyle understood the value of Silence when he wrote to Emerson: – “Silence is the greatest thing I worship at present; almost sole tenant of my Pantheon! Let a man know rightly to hold his peace. I love to repeat to myself, ‘Silence is of Eternity!”
To attain the power to listen at any time, and at all times, to the Silence, is to have unraveled the secret of the Sphynx. In her, Silence is deified and made vocal. All who have learned the secret of living through Concentration, have lifted the “Veil of Isis!” I recommend you to memorize this little poem of mine that it may lead you to Life, through Meditation.
Unity
I stood by Sphynx in desert lone.
Impassive and cold her face of stone;
Stolid and dull those ancient eyes;
Her lips refused me any tone;
Her ears were deaf as stone on shore;
Heart still as in eons before.
In awe I bowed to material guise,
Nor deemed for me the great surprise,
To greet me from those stony eyes.
Musing, I said, “All are divine!
Kin art thou to this Life of mine!
We’re children both of the Infinite One!”
Then vocal became those lips of stone;
Her ear had caught my gentlest tone;
From eyes a flame of Love-light shone;
Heart beat as once to priest of yore!
I was lone no more on desert sand –
A companion held my hand.
I’d solved the riddle of all time –
The SOUL of Sphynx was one with mine.
Section X. Compensation Of Concentration
Though no human eye behold thee Odin sees and hears each word.
– Fridthjorfs Saga.
Hush! the sevenfold heavens to the voice of the Spirit Echo: – He that o’er cometh all things shall inherit.
– Owen Merideth.
You laugh at monotones, at men of one idea, but if we look at nearly all heroes we may find the same poverty; and perhaps it is not poverty but power. The secret of power, intellectual or physical, is concentration, and all concentration involves of necessity a certain narrowness. – If you ask what compensation is made for the inevitable narrowness, why, this, that in learning one thing well you learn all things.
– Emerson.
“How shall I concentrate?” “I can’t concentrate. Will you help me?” “Please tell me how to concentrate!” “I have been a student of the New Thought for years but have not mastered concentration. Will you give me directions?” These and many more questions are among the letters on my desk. Yes. I will help you all by as simple illustrations as possible. But I have already said that you all do concentrate, though upon wrong thoughts.
Every art is the common property of mankind. No faculty can be created. No new power is ever manufactured. If what you desire really exists, then you possess it in common with all persons. The chances are that you have held in connection with your desire, some thought of the mysterious, or the supernatural. If Concentration is “the secret of power,” then wherever you find power it must be the result of concentration. Man uses power. You in your Life are Power. Did you not concentrate you were power-less and to the extent that you have voluntarily exercised power, you have to that degree concentrated. So much power in manifestation, so much concentration.
The motto for Concentration is, “One thing at a time!” Concentration is only paying attention. How many times did we as children hear parent or teacher say when our mind was wandering – “Pay attention!” The cat watching at the hole for the mouse and the pointer dog on scent, are types of concentration. Follow na ture’s evolution from cat and dog to Newton and Darwin and you find that Success is but materialized attention. Newton expressed it as – “Intending the mind!”
A person naturally concentrates. The mind develops through concentration. The child concentrates but he can hold himself to one thought but a few moments. Upon this fact the kindergarten teacher instructs. Changes are frequent in the school day of her pupils. Parents forget this inability of immature minds and set too hard tasks for children; demand too much of them and then complain that they are not quiet, are restless, fretful, fickle; that they are inattentive and forgetful. All this is true. The wise parent would not have it otherwise lest the child have no childhood, and be old before his time. Wisdom recognizes this native condition and takes advantage of it by not overtaxing the child. As the powers of mind unfold, this power of concentration should increase, but the chances are one hundred to one that it is lessened by false training. The child concentrates at play. Every boy concentrates at his games. Watch how every muscle is tense and every faculty alert in the game of ball; when he is on his skates; or when sliding; or when riding on his bicycle. How still – concentrated – is even the baby when he is “in mischief,” which to him is as much business as is the bank, or shop to his father.
Concentration is the one method of accomplishment, and the power to concentrate at will, is the sign of mature mind. The masses of people still have child minds. They have little power to hold to a thought and thus wander in conversation; change constantly the premise in argument and lack logical acumen. The scientist has power over his mind; the pseudo-scientist reaches conclusions that are false because he lacks this power of concentration and cannot hold to all the facts till the result is truth.
The need of present humanity is revealed in this lack of power to concentrate upon chosen and desired thoughts. Few have the power to concentrate at will. The great majority are led through involuntary concentration to illness, failure and misery. They let thoughts pick them up, instead of picking up the thought they wish. They are children in man’s guise and estate. Therefore when you tell me you can’t, or don’t, concentrate you are merely telling me that you are in mental babyhood; are not self-directed; but are the creature of any thought that circumstance happens to throw in your path. For this reason it is expected that beginners in Soul Culture will find difficulty in voluntary concentration. Every New Thought cult is but a method of bringing the individual into more perfect expression of his power of self-control. And the manifestation of this control lies in the power to choose, and to hold, the chosen thought.
Present conditions of mental chaos, weakness, fickleness, sensationalism, wandering and unsettled physical conditions are the result of a false home, school and social education. Too much is attempted; too many things merely skimmed; too much superficial attention given to too many studies. “Beware of the man of one book” is a wise proverb. Too much compulsion is put upon children. They are driven by force, or through competition, as in prizes, at school and Christmas trees, by hopes of promotion, and in college by degrees. The motive is ignoble, selfish, diffusive. The child is not drawn by the love of a noble ideal. What is done by compulsion weakens character. What is done through love strengthens it. The child to become educated should LOVE his school, his teachers. He will then go, drawn by his ideal. He should love to read, to study. The whole duty of parents and teachers is to create this love, to inspire this love of growth, in the child. There is no lack of attention where there is love, no diffusion then over many things. It is the one loved thing. Notice the child at play; the man at congenial task; the man in love with his mistress.
Where this love is not, then through effort, under necessity, a habit of concentration is formed for some particular thing; and the man becomes a machine. There is an equally weak condition of character as balance.
One of the best bookkeepers I ever knew was so perfectly concentrated while at his work that nothing ever disturbed him; but he was one of the most fretful and nervous of men at home and in society. A merchant of my acquaintance, most genial and concentrated upon business in his store, was cross and fickle at home. A professor among my friends, is completely self-posess-ed and absorbed in his study and class, but is a most timid and nervous man elsewhere. I have a friend so concentrated in his base-ball game that he knows no pain when injured, but possesses so little indurance at other times that a cut on his finger while at his work unnerves him. I knew a surgeon most cool and impassive when at the operating table, that would walk the floor all night before an important operation. I know of actors so concentrated upon their part that they do not remember anything that has transpired during the play, but who are so nervous at other times that they break down in insomnia. I had a friend, a most successful orator, so concentrated when talking that he would not sense his body, who was in his home and office the most restless and sensitive of men.
I know a woman who is so fretful and fickle with her children that she spoils them, but who will play croquet with perfect abandon, forgetting everything.
This is the case with many gamesters at cards, and habitues of race-courses. These are all examples of concentration under necessity or habit. This condition is a dangerous one for health and happiness, because uncontrolled. All excitement is concentration, where the person has completely lost self-control. For this reason Emerson says, “When you become interested in a book put it away.” Proper development gives one at all times, the power to concentrate in any chosen line and at the same time keep self-control. Understand me, it is not that condition where we call a person cold and unsocial. That is not concentration, but constraint, repression, and is equally dangerous to health. Self-possession is very different from self-repression. This latter is common to find and is the result of a fashionable education and of social etiquette. Because of repression doctors and undertakers are reaping a rich harvest. “Except ye become as little children!” is the true thought of concentration. The only natural concentration is under desire; is in the line we love. The only proper way to concentrate is at will, and not because we have to.
Let there be no “Have to!” in your life, would you be self-centered and self-directed. A friend often replies when asked why he does not do a certain thing, – “I don’t have to!” An industrial and social condition that compels a man to do that which he does not love, and which civilization has not taught him to love, which has not inspired him with an ideal that lifts him above the thought of necessity or starvation; is not entitled to the name of civilization. It needs Edward Carpenter’s book used upon it as a surgeon. He entitled his book – “Civilization, its Cause and Cure!” Present civilization needs to be cured. The prophet’s cry is applicable to the present condition. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me!”
Heartlessness must be the case where necessity rules. Never a child loved its parent because it was driven to. No husband ever loved his wife because she demanded, “I am yours and you shall love me!” This demand kills what love there was in the marriage. As water flows down hill, so, naturally, do we concentrate upon that which we love.
The first thing to do as one comes into this New-Thought-life, is to do what he loves – or love what he does. He must abolish the thought of must, of necessity. Any method of concentration is lost upon one who will not cultivate a love for present conditions and let that love lead him out of unpleasant ones. Because every thought of antagonism is a concentration born of weakness and of unhappiness, learn to love present conditions and you will naturally concentrate upon the right thought. Learn to love the Affirmations that lead you out to health and happiness and you will naturally concentrate upon them. Learn to love your neighbor as you love yourself and you will concentrate upon thoughts of helpfulness. Love that which you are trying to do and your love will lead you through concentration to BE that which you desire.
Section XI. With Eyes, See Not
Let us aspire to that heaven where all is eternal and where corruption never comes.
– Ancient Aztec King.
I speak to them in parables because having eyes they see not and having ears they hear not. * * * * Their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they shall hear with their ears and shall see with their eyes and should understand with their hearts!
– Jesus.
These words reported of Jesus have been shortened into the proverb, “None so blind as those who will not see; and none so deaf as those who will not hear!” This fact is a common one. A person does not see or hear that to which he gives no attention. But within this fact lies the deeper fact, that one does not see and hear, because one wills not to see and hear. That is, each person has the power of choice and may see and may hear that which he chooses, and may not hear and may not see that which he does not choose to hear and to see. To exercise this choice is to be the master of fate. This choice is the prerogative of humanity alone. It is the patent-right of manhood; the entail of God’s heritage to Man. To the degree in which we exercise this choice we have outgrown the animal in us; have made it subservient to the Human.
To see is to pay attention to. To hear is to listen to. To understand with the heart, is to so concentrate upon what is about you, to so think upon what is heard, seen and felt, that you shall know the meaning it has in your life.
Concentration is the simplest thing to understand when you realize that it is thinking upon that which you do;’paying attention to what is about you. It is a habit that can be acquired, but one so often neglected in childhood. It is the fault of teachers and parents that children do not grow up conscious of their power to choose and hold to the thought chosen. Wandering minds are formed from uncongenial tasks. Study the children at any school and see how uncon-genial are the tasks to many of them. It is a common thing to see children pretending or trying to study, but often glancing from the book, watching what is going on. This cultivates insincerity, pretence, hypocrisy, affectation, fickleness; all of which arises from a lack of attention.
Concentration means that we shall be absorbed in the task of the hour. The biographer of Agassiz tells us that he would bring his work into the parlor of an evening when it was filled with young company and devote a portion of the time to social converse and enjoyment and at the next moment turn with complete abandon to his study, oblivious of those about him. In this he showed complete control of his mind, – of himself. Tennyson tells a friend in a letter, that he practiced concentration before his literary labors by centering his mind upon his own name; then allowed no interruption.
To affirm that you can’t concentrate is to affirm lack of faith in yourself, for the first necessity of success and happiness is faith in your possibilities. Where this faith is not, there is very little accomplished in the way of character-building. Therefore the first step you need to take is to cultivate this faith in yourself. Practice affirming the infinite possibilities of the Human Soul. Think of yourself as an incarnation of God with all the possibilities of the God-head in you. Meditate upon the words of Jesus, “The kingdom of God is within you!” till you feel able to accomplish anything you desire. This meditation is concentration. As you meditate upon this thought you will grow into the power of expression. Affirm – “I, as spirit (or mind) possess all power I need to accomplish my desires.”
The thought of “Can’t” is born in recognition of the power of circumstances. As long as you think they have power you give them power. Circumstances in themselves have no power for either good or evil. The thought you have of them determines their effect upon yourself. If you fear them, you give them power to harm, that is, you are harmed by the thought you put into them. You may think whatever you choose of any circumstance or condition, and it becomes to you that which you think it is. Let me take a simple illustration. When I was a boy we planned a picnic one summer. The morning arose rainy. I felt so badly over it as an evil, that I cried, but others of the family rejoiced, for a drought was broken. They were happy, but I went to bed with a sick headache. The fact was, but a rainy day, and it became to each one that which his thought made it. Fire, defeat, loss of property are mere circumstances; one, by them, is stimulated to greater effort, another is crushed into lethargy. Coneentration in the fear of things and of conditions, creates anxiety, worry and defeat.
Concentration in Faith in the All Good, upon things and conditions, causes cheer, clearness of vision and success.
How you shall consider any circumstance, is for you to decide and as you decide, that circumstance is to you.
But having made your decision, stick to it. Concentrate upon the thought which you have decided as the right one to hold in relation to that circumstance. Through this concentration you will make your decision a fact in the objective life, because by your decision you have already made it a fact in the Cause-Life.
I wish to emphasize this fact because it is most important. You need not see or hear, need not feel or recognize, anything you do not desire to sense. You can make any circumstance bear to your objective life, whatever relation you desire, by deciding in your mind what that relation shall be, and by then concentrating upon that decision. Why do I affirm this? Because I am doing it every day, and because I know others who are doing it. What one person does, all can and may do. This fact was impressed upon me years ago by the experiments in Suggestion. As soon as you become convinced that the position I take in my little book, “Not Hypnotism but Suggestion,” is correct, and it is the position of all expert practitioners of the Art, you will understand, that by thinking a coin is hot, when held in the hand, the thought will produce a blister. By thinking a drop of water is a drop of Croton oil, a blister is formed; by thinking a door knob is the pole of an electric battery, a shock is received; by thinking a handkerchief is perfumed, an odor is perceived, and by thinking a bread-pill is medicine, one is cured. From these facts you can draw only one conclusion: – All have like effect upon the body and environment.
To hold a candle before a mirror is to cause a reflection in the mirror; in like manner to hold a mental picture is to cause its reflection in the body. To change that picture every moment is to cause a change in the bodily reflection. To hold a picture continually in the mind is to keep its reflection constantly in the body. This Concentration does: – it holds the candle of desire before the mirror of flesh until the flesh reflects permanently that picture. Concentration carves in the marble of the material, the model held by Imagination, the creator, who builds through thought. From this fact is reached the conclusion which I state in these Affirmations – I am blind and deaf to all that is unpleasant, ill, painful, weak, or that carries failure. I recognize only that which I wish to recognize. I pay attention only to chosen ideas. I see only that which I wish to see. I hear only that which I wish to hear.
You can gain this power by deciding and training yourself as Will by practice. Practice lies in the use of Affirmation. Concentration is the incubating process which brings the seed thoughts into physical expression. See that you place in the incubator only those thoughts which you wish to run about in the garden of your life. “None so blind as those who will not to see.” Be thus blind through will and you will open your eyes to see only the Good, the Beautiful and the True.
Section XII. The Ideal
Among thy sons O God! let me be one.
– Edward Egleston.
To live divinely is man’s work.
– Theodore Parker.
The thing we long for that we are
For one transcendent moment, E’er yet the present poor and bare
Can make its sneering comment. Still through our paltry stir and strife,
Glows the wished Ideal, And Longing moulds in clay, what Life
Carves in the marble Real.
– Lowell.
I have suggested in previous sections that it is the picture in the mind that is of importance; that the Imagination is the creative power. I wish now to intensify this thought. All things are but material reflections of mental images. You realize this in the statue and the painting, the temple and the machine. On my wall hangs a most beautiful painting, “The Coming Light.” The light is breaking through brilliant clouds, “In hues that envious make the pearl-shell, gem and flower.” This picture is but a faint representation of the picture that was in the Soul of the painter. He did his best to catch it with canvas and brush. Had it not existed for him before the brush was in his hand, it would not have become my joy. There stands a statue in yonder museum that I love to gaze upon. Story saw that “Greek Slave” long before he took marble and chisel; but when the Idea possessed him It carved itself. A mental picture then; now it stands a marble dream, for the delight of man for ages.
Which is the real and which ideal? Which is transitory and which is permanent? Which is Truth and which illusion? Which is the thing, and which is the reflection? Fire, flood, age, neglect, may destroy the picture and the statue, but the idea cannot be destroyed. The eternal thing is the Idea; the transitory is its reflection in the sense-material. That which eternally exists is the unseen and the permanent; is the Ideal, created by the Human Mind from Divine Ideas. I wish you to memorize that most beautiful extract at beginning of this section from Lowell. It is scientific and better yet, it is Truth. And Oliver Wendell Holmes has something only a little less perfect which is also worth remembering:
Deal gently with us, ye who read!
Our largest hope is unfulfilled – The promise still outruns the deed –
The tower but not the spire we build. Our whitest pearls we never find;
Our ripest fruit we never reach; The flowering moments of the mind
Drop half their petals in our speech. These are my blossoms; if they wear
One streak of morn or evening’s glow, Accept them; but to me more fair,
The buds of song that never blow.
This is but repeating in Holmes’ beautiful way, the adage, “Men preach better than they practice!” And this is the most important fact I have for you in this lesson in Concentration. No progress without this Idealism. No practice without preaching proceeds it.
To see the buds mentally is to create them, and they will bloom not only in the eternal realm but also in the objective life. They lose beauty only when compared with their reflection in the realm of decay and death. Dr. Holmes and James Russell Lowell will find the greatest joy in creating, now they are freed from this sense-limitation of expression. The creator – Mind – is superior to the created – things – and the creation is, that the creator may still more perfectly create. We are now devotees to appearances, to creations, to things,
Emerson tells us: –
Things are in the saddle And ride mankind.
He tells us also that this “Law for Things,” “Doth man unking,” and adds: –
And what if Trade sow cities
Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad,
With railway ironed o’er? They are but sailing foam-bells
Along Thought’s causing stream, And take their shape and color,
From him that sends the dream.
And again he says of England’s abbeys and the pyramids: –
Out of Thought’s interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air.
I add to these words of Emerson these other words from him, prefacing them with that great line of Richard
Realf s : –
Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator!
Emerson looking to the “Over-soul,” says of human creations:
These wonders grew as grows the grass,
Art might obey but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o’er him planned!
Mazzini, the Italian patriot and statesman, said to his countrymen: –
Love and reverence the Ideal; it is the country of the Spirit; the city of the Soul!
In no other country can the Human Mind live. The Imagination is the “home of the Soul.” No happiness save the Ideal. Hope dwells there and Peace makes the Ideal her habitation. From that realm come all the manifestations of Thought. Man, through thought, is creator. His workshop is the unseen. His material, divine ideas. His tool, the Imagination. The product, Ideals. Amid Ideals, we live. They are our only companions. No man buys, wears, marries, or buries aught but his Ideals. He lives among them always and enjoys or suffers only through the creations of his mind. Life, world, men, conditions, the hereafter are to me what I think them; are to me what my Ideals of them are. It is important that you realize this, for your health, happiness, and success depend upon your realization of your creative power.
To realize that you possess, and that you do, either consciously or unconsciously, create every condition, is for you to become a conscious creator at all times, so that by creating Ideals to your desire and concentrating upon them, they become material actualities. Concentration is the only mental attitude under which Ideals shape themselves into the physical life. As long as you hold an Ideal before you, that long is it shaping itself in your body, your business and your social life. When you change your Ideal, then the new begins to shape itself. What has been your practice? Have you, like the sculptor, held to one Ideal till it “Carves itself in the marble real?” Or have you taken the Life-block and placed it in the hands of an Ideal to-day, changing to another to-morrow, and then to another, till you have had as many Ideals as there are days? Have you not changed the details of the work every hour? You decided in the morning you would have a statue of Health, but before noon you changed it to Pain, at midday to Grief, at mid-afternoon to Success, and at sunset to a Satyr laughing at Failure, and at bedtime to Remorse, and awaken at morn with a statue of Hope? Is not your life a composite of all these and a thousand more? And this because you have not held one picture before it long enough for the picture to become fixed as a mental habit.
The Ideal. Continued
Concentration means holding the chosen mental picture to the exclusion of all others till your objective life becomes the picture. “I AM THAT WHICH I THINK MYSELF TO BE!” The Ideal Life is the Real Life and this unseen Ideal Life is the one that alone concerns us. The laws of matter, are the Laws of spirit. They are but reflections of the unseen Laws, because Nature is one. No line can be drawn between the Here and the There; between the present and the past, or the future; between Cause and Effect. The Universe is a Unit, and as such we are to live It. Not to live in it, but to live It, for we are It. This Life of the body that has so troubled us, is the life of appearance, and with appearances hereafter we are not to deal; will deal with eternal verities, i. e. with Ideals which cause these appearances. The goal of every endeavor is Ideal, and that Ideal is REALITY OF SPIRIT. Let this Ideal manifest in perfect faith, by letting it alone, save to hold to it as Will. The Ideal will carry you to the goal of its own mani-festation.
“A thread of Law runs through thy prayer
Stronger than iron cables are;
And Love and Longing towards its goal
Are pilots sweet to guide the soul.
So Life must live, and Soul must sail
And Unseen over Seen prevail
And all God’s argosies come to shore
Though ocean smile or rage and roar.”
And you are to remember that this voyage of unfold-ment is eternal and you are to be happy every rod of the way. The joy of life is in creating, in unfolding, in going on.
I must turn to the poets at this stage of the discussion, for they are the truest philosophers, sages and seers, because they live in and report the Ideal, which is Truth.
I close this section with a little poem by an unknown author, prefacing it with extracts from Sam Walter
Foss and from Kipling. Foss says: –
There is no bourn, no ultimate. The very farthest star, But rims a sea of other stars extending just as far. There’s no beginning and no end. As in the ages gone The greatest joy of joys shall be – the joy of going on.
Kipling says of the Ideal: –
Our face is far from this our war,
Our call and counter-cry, I shall not find Thee quick and kind
Nor know thee till I die. Enough for me in dreams to see
And touch Thy garment’s hem; Thy feet have trod so near to God
I may not follow them.
But all these poets fail to give us the practical lesson which I wish you to draw from their lines and that is – by worshiping the 1deal, we become that Ideal. Therefore there is no better practice for you than to concentrate upon beautiful extracts of Great Thinkers and saintly persons. You can easily find them. The Twenty-third Psalm and other poetic, and therefore wise passages of scripture are familiar, so I do not quote them. But I will give you these “boiled down” expressions from the poets for memorizing, that the mental pictures they create may become in you physical manifestations. This little poem tells you that the realm in which you really live is never perfectly reflected in the objective life. So regard it a lesson how to live the Ideal here and now.
“I think that the song that’s sweetest, Is one that is never sung – But lies at the heart of the singer, Too grand for mortal tongue, And sometimes in the silence Between the day and the night, He fancies that its measures Bid farewell to the light.
A picture that is fairer, Than all that have a part, Among the master-pieces, In the marble halls of art, Is one that haunts the painter, In all his golden dreams, And to the painter only A real picture seems.
The noblest grandest poem, Lies not in blue and gold, Among the treasured volumes The rosewood bookshelves hold; But in bright and glowing vision It comes to the poet’s brain, But when he tries to grasp it, He finds his efforts vain.
A fairy hand from dream-land Beckons us here and there, And when we strive to grasp it It vanishes into air. And thus our fair Ideal Floats always just before, And we in love and longing, Reach for it ever more.”
– Anonymous…..
I wonder if ever a song was sung
But the singer’s heart sang sweeter! I wonder if ever a rhyme was sung,
But the thoughts surpassed the meter! I wonder if ever a sculptor wrought,
Till the stone echoed his ardent thought! Or if ever a painter in light and shade
The dream of his inmost heart conveyed.
– J. G. Harney.
That haunting dream of better, forever at our side, It tints the far horizon, it sparkles on the tide. The cradle of the present too narrow is for rest.
The feet of the Immortal leap forth to seek the Best.
– Lucy Larcom.
In my first little book I gave the Law thus, and I have never been able to improve upon it. Let it close this section:
Affirm that which you desire as a present reality.
Live as if it were already manifest.
And you shall find it manifest.
I will here, in view of what has been said, translate it thus: –
Create an Ideal.
Live that Ideal; and
You will become that Ideal.
Concentration upon, and consecration to, the Ideal, brings it into manifestation.
Section XIII. Prayer
Prayer is the Soul’s sincere desire.
– Hymn.
Men pray cream and live skim-milk.
– Beecher.
Prayer is a form of concentration. Men pray to their ideals.
– Theodore Parker.
Uttered not but comprehended Is the Spirit’s voiceless prayer.
– Longfellow.
More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of.
– Tennyson.
And so I sometimes think our prayers
Might well be merged in one, And nest and perch, and hearth and church,
Repeat “Thy will be done!”
– Whittier.
O Indra! have mercy upon me and give me daily bread! Sharpen my mind like edge of iron! Whatever I now utter longing for thee, do thou accept it! Make me possessed of Thee.
– Rig Veda. (Quoted by Max Muller.)
The influence of a calm trust and faith expressing itself in prayer, uttered or unexpressed, over the functions of organic life, cannot be over-estimated. It is a spiritual and potential influence and force brought to bear upon the hidden spring of disease. It is one of the most potent prophylactic agencies against the inception and cause of all morbid conditions. * * *
– F. W. Evans.
Among the many forms and methods of concentration, prayer is the most common and the most potent. The secret of the religious world has been that by prayer at altar, with prayer-book, through hymn, ritual, rite, and environment, it has led the soul to contemplation of holy thoughts, and through concentrating upon them, the thought thus sown in the mind has influenced the life for good. You can learn valuable lessons from any church service. Any form, any rite, any book, any ritual, written prayer, or hymn has a value to the one who concentrates upon it as Truth, or as a way to Truth It is not through form or book, but through the thought – through the attitude of the Mind that benefits come. There Power lies. We would partake of the charity and humility of Whittier when he says: –
A bending staff I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away
The error that some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.
All these religious institutions grew out of human needs and minister to human needs, because they are but methods of concentration under holy thoughts; to the extent they are accepted in faith, they produce results in holy living. For this reason noble characters are found in every clime and under every creed. They concentrated upon their Ideals in religious services. The Ideal element in each draws, inspires and holds. Paul gave the Philippians a most excellent rule, when he said: – “That ye may approve things that are excellent ; that ye may be sincere and void of offence.” Sincerity is the only condition of receptivity and that Ideal which we sincerely accept, we cling to till it manifests. But prayer is the “Soul’s sincere desire!” we pray from the Ideal and to the extent that we are persistent in our prayer, it becomes realized in the objective life. “Pray without ceasing!” can only mean, “Concentrate upon the desire expressed in your prayer.” Again we are told, “Whatever things ye desire, when ye pray believe that ye have received them and ye shall have them!” This is the statement in another form of the principle of Affirmation. Affirm that you are the Ideal and through that Affirmation you create conditions through which the Ideal shall manifest.
Thus there is but one Principle, uniform in all its operations in all religions and in no religion. Without understanding men have unconsciously obeyed the Law. That Law is found in the Principle of Concentration in sincerity upon the ideal. This is but another way of saying “I AM THAT WHICH I THINK I AM!” I pray, thinking I have received, and lo! I have received. Thus prayer is a common and instinctive method of arriving at health, happiness and success through Concentration. Tennyson tells us “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of,” because through prayer the Principle of Concentration is applied to daily living. When the Law is understood and practiced by you, you will have found the only way in which conscious man has directed his development. He has wrought through the concentration as Will. upon that thought which is born of desire. Any form of prayer which one sincerely uses, will work the end which is desired in the Thought expressed. Thoughts are materialized into life through prayer.
Therefore the selfish and the generous, the proud and the humble, the ill and the well, the failures and the successes, may all use the same formulas, utter the same prayers, but the results in each life will be as different as are the feelings awakened by the petition; for the objective results are decided by the real desires of the heart and not by the words. Since most of the prayers are selfish and personal, looking to some outside power for help, asking for something which the petitioner really possesses, but is not conscious of possessing, the answers, like the petitions, are selfish and limited to temporary and personal likes. Should a person of quick temper pray sincerely to be cured of the habit, he will be cured as he says: – “Lead me not into temptation.” But should he pray through fear of the pain which an outburst of anger brings, he will find relief from present pain, but not from the cause, which will remain to bring pain again through another outburst of anger. So with sickness; a prayer for health will be answered according to the faith in which the prayer is uttered. “Lord! Save or I perish!” will bring salvation according to the thought embodied in the words expressed, and not according to the Power really dwelling within any person, potentate, or God, outside the Soul of the one who prays.
God-In-You answers His own prayer. He cannot answer till you give him opportunity by making conditions by faith.
Prayer is the best method of cultivating faith, for through it one learns to “Cast his burdens” off his conscious mind and allow the thought born of the Ideal to fall into the sub-conscious, there to become the director of the conscious expression. Prayer is the state of forgetfulness of the present and of the objective self; a state of concentration and is entered into with some dominant thought which has the power of an Auto-Suggestion. This Auto-Suggestion is received by the Sub-conscious and creates the spiritual condition desired, and that condition produces the desired objective results. Therefore when one says, “I cannot concentrate,” I reply – Each time you sincerely desire you are concentrated. Each time a wish becomes desire you are praying; you are concentrating. The thought of this section is beautifully expressed by a poem translated from the Arabian, by James Freeman Clarke:
“Allah! Allah!” cried the sick man, racked with pain the long night through, Till with prayer his heart grew tender, and his lips like honey grew. But at morning came the tempter, said, – “Call louder, child of pain! See if Allah ever answers, Here am I, again’.” Like a stab the cruel cavil through his brain and pulses went. To his heart an icy coldness, to his brain a darkness sent. Then before him stands Elias, says, “My child why thus dismayed? Dost repent thy former fervor? Is thy soul of prayer, afraid?” “Ah!” he cried, “I’ve called so often; never heard the ‘Here am I!’ And I thought, ‘God will not pity! Will not turn on me his eye!'” Then the grave Elias answered, “God said, ‘Rise Elias, Go; Speak to him the sorely tempted; lift him from his gulf of woe. Tell him that his very longing, is itself my answering cry. That his prayer, ‘Come gracious Allah!’ is my answer,
‘Here am I’ Every inmost aspiration is God’s answer undeflled;
And in every ‘O, My Father!’ slumbers deep a ‘Here my child.'”
The End