TO set about getting rich in a
scientific way, you do not try to apply your will power to anything outside of
yourself.
You have no right to do so, anyway.
It is wrong to apply your will to other
men and women, in order to get them to do what you wish done.
It is as flagrantly wrong to coerce
people by mental power as it is to coerce them by physical power. If compelling
people by physical force to do things for you reduces them to slavery,
compelling them by mental means accomplishes exactly the same thing; the only
difference is in methods. If taking things from people by physical force is
robbery, them taking things by mental force is robbery also; there is no
difference in principle.
You have no right to use your will power
upon another person, even "for his own good"; for you do not know
what is for his good. The science of getting rich does not require you to apply
power or force to any other person, in any way whatsoever. There is not the
slightest necessity for doing so; indeed, any attempt to use your will upon
others will only tend to defeat your purpose.
You do not need to apply your will to
things, in order to compel them to come to you.
That would simply be trying to coerce
God, and would be foolish and useless, as well as irreverent.
You do not have to compel God to give
you good things, any more than you have to use your will power to make the sun
rise.
You do not have to use your will power
to conquer an unfriendly deity, or to make stubborn and rebellious forces do
your bidding.
Substance is friendly to you, and is
more anxious to give you what you want than you are to get it.
To get rich, you need only to use your
will power upon yourself.
When you know what to think and do, then
you must use your will to compel yourself to think and do the right things.
That is the legitimate use of the will in getting what you want--to use it in
holding yourself to the right course. Use your will to keep yourself thinking
and acting in the Certain Way.
Do not try to project your will, or your
thoughts, or your mind out into space, to "act" on things or people.
Keep your mind at home; it can
accomplish more there than elsewhere.
Use your mind to form a mental image of
what you want, and to hold that vision with faith and purpose; and use your
will to keep your mind working in the Right Way.
The more steady and continuous your
faith and purpose, the more rapidly you will get rich, because you will make
only POSITIVE impressions upon Substance; and you will not neutralize or offset
them by negative impressions.
The picture of your desires, held with
faith and purpose, is taken up by the Formless, and permeates it to great
distances-throughout the universe, for all I know.
As this impression spreads, all things
are set moving toward its realization; every living thing, every inanimate
thing, and the things yet uncreated, are stirred toward bringing into being
that which you want. All force begins to be exerted in that direction; all
things begin to move toward you. The minds of people, everywhere, are
influenced toward doing the things necessary to the fulfilling of your desires;
and they work for you, unconsciously.
But you can check all this by starting a
negative impression in the Formless Substance. Doubt or unbelief is as certain
to start a movement away from you as faith and purpose are to start one toward
you. It is by not understanding this that most people who try to make use of
"mental science" in getting rich make their failure. Every hour and
moment you spend in giving heed to doubts and fears, every hour you spend in
worry, every hour in which your soul is possessed by unbelief, sets a current
away from you in the whole domain of intelligent Substance. All the promises
are unto them that believe, and unto them only. Notice how insistent Jesus was
upon this point of belief; and now you know the reason why.
Since belief is all important, it
behooves you to guard your thoughts; and as your beliefs will be shaped to a
very great extent by the things you observe and think about, it is important
that you should command your attention.
And here the will comes into use; for it
is by your will that you determine upon what things your attention shall be
fixed.
If you want to become rich, you must not
make a study of poverty.
Things are not brought into being by
thinking about their opposites. Health is never to be attained by studying
disease and thinking about disease; righteousness is not to be promoted by
studying sin and thinking about sin; and no one ever got rich by studying
poverty and thinking about poverty.
Medicine as a science of disease has
increased disease; religion as a science of sin has promoted sin, and economics
as a study of poverty will fill the world with wretchedness and want.
Do not talk about poverty; do not
investigate it, or concern yourself with it. Never mind what its causes are;
you have nothing to do with them.
What concerns you is the cure.
Do not spend your time in charitable
work, or charity movements; all charity only tends to perpetuate the
wretchedness it aims to eradicate.
I do not say that you should be hard
hearted or unkind, and refuse to hear the cry of need; but you must not try to
eradicate poverty in any of the conventional ways. Put poverty behind you, and
put all that pertains to it behind you, and "make good."
Get rich; that is the best way you can
help the poor.
And you cannot hold the mental image
which is to make you rich if you fill your mind with pictures of poverty. Do
not read books or papers which give circumstantial accounts of the wretchedness
of the tenement dwellers, of the horrors of child labor, and so on. Do not read
anything which fills your mind with gloomy images of want and suffering.
You cannot help the poor in the least by
knowing about these things; and the wide-spread knowledge of them does not tend
at all to do away with poverty.
What tends to do away with poverty is
not the getting of pictures of poverty into your mind, but getting pictures of
wealth into the minds of the poor.
You are not deserting the poor in their
misery when you refuse to allow your mind to be filled with pictures of that
misery.
Poverty can be done away with, not by
increasing the number of well to do people who think about poverty, but by
increasing the number of poor people who purpose with faith to get rich.
The poor do not need charity; they need
inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in
their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an
hour or two; but inspiration will cause them to rise out of their misery. If
you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become rich; prove
it by getting rich yourself.
The only way in which poverty will ever
be banished from this world is by getting a large and constantly increasing
number of people to practice the teachings of this book.
People must be taught to become rich by
creation, not by competition.
Every man who becomes rich by
competition throws down behind him the ladder by which he rises, and keeps
others down; but every man who gets rich by creation opens a way for thousands
to follow him, and inspires them to do so.
You are not showing hardness of heart or
an unfeeling disposition when you refuse to pity poverty, see poverty, read about
poverty, or think or talk about it, or to listen to those who do talk about it.
Use your will power to keep your mind OFF the subject of poverty, and to keep
it fixed with faith and purpose ON the vision of what you want.
See ‘Further Use of theWill’ in the next post.
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