Your Forces and How to Use Them (Complete Six Volume Edition). Prentice Mulford
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but another name for “magnetic influence.” You have in this the secret of the attraction one person may have for another. The person attracted is actually stimulated while near the other, by the thought absorbed from the one who attracts.
In the condition of mind above stated, a poet may give expression to the thought so brought to and surrounding him after his own taste or tendency as to rhythm and measure. Or the poem in question may be actually dictated to him.
Under similar mental states brought about by the causes above mentioned are novels written and inventions dropped into minds. Artists and sculptors may work under such inspiration. Generals have been similarly prompted and aided in military operations. In the world of business and finance the same law is at work. It is operating on every grade of purpose and motive, be it low or high. There is no great result effected in any department of life, no great effort of thought, no great invention, that comes of the unaided agency of any single mind. We are all parts of the same whole. We are all members of the same body. We can do nothing without co-operation, and the human unit who thinks it does is so thinking in the simplicity of its ignorance.
The poet who has so written under the inspiring power of another or other minds may pass away with a great name. Yet he may not have deserved all the reputation he gained. His writings are largely the result of the thought concentrated upon him by a co-operative association of unseen intelligences. They unloaded their thought upon him, partly to relieve themselves. So relieved, they were then able to climb higher, and absorb of newer, finer ideas. So fast as you give out to others of your present thought and idea, so fast will you receive of the new. If you hold back, you prevent for yourself the absorption of the newer thought. If you are a medium for any of the forces of the universe to pass through and be transmitted to others, you must be careful that nothing prevents the free passage of new thought through you. The moment you hold back any truth, any plan, scheme, or invention, with the idea that it is exclusively your own, you are clogging up that mediumship.
You will be made poorer in every sense by such holding back. If you give freely you will increase in richness, and out of your overflowing richness you can easily retain enough to bring you every needed material aid. The text, “Freely have ye received, freely give,” is based on a scientific fact in the unseen kingdom of thought.
There are re-embodied spirits to-day on the earth, who, during a former and quite recent existence, had a great reputation in some field of effort. There are on earth to-day poets who enjoy but a tithe of their fame in a former existence.
One reason for this is, that much of their source of inspiration has passed away. That is, the troop of spirits who in the former existence came to them of necessity to unload of their richness of thought, no longer labor under such necessity, so far as the mediumship of the impressional is concerned. These intelligences still have need to give of their thought in some place. But the thought they now absorb may be too fine to be received by any on earth.
With some, idea is organic. They are-creators as well as absorbers of thought. These are they who try to live up to their highest ideal, and in the greatest variety of life and occupation. When one sees the necessity of doing this, he brings to himself all that is best in the universe that he can appropriate. He is an absorber of spirit from every side. He puts out this same spirit again, colored with his or her individuality. Every such individual is as a glass reflector tinged with some peculiar shade. The light within, shining through such shade, spreads rays of the same light on every side. The light represents the spirit. The globe or reflector represents the individual the light shines through. The oil in our lamps may all come from the same source. The lights in a series of lamps may be of as many different colors as there are globes stained of different colors. So in a series of individualized persons, though each is fed of the same spirit, yet each reflects a peculiar light of his own.
We can be creative and original as we absorb of any spirit, and make its expression original. You see and admire the method of an actor or artist; then you absorb of his thought. But you will not be a mere copy of his method. His thought combines with your own. There is an actual chemical operation of unseen element. There is a combination of his thought and your own, resulting in the formation, of a new element—your own original idea. The purer your thought and motive, the more unselfish your purpose, the greater the rapidity of such combination, the more original and striking your thought. By such means is thought born in you. The qualities of justice and unselfishness are themselves elements and scientific factors in such birth.
The selfish spirit is content with being the mere borrower. If it appropriates another’s thought or idea, without ever crediting such idea to its rightful owner, or the desire so to credit it, it will always remain a borrower. But people to borrow from will not always be at hand. There must come a time, in this life or another, when such a spirit will be left entirely to its own resources. It will then find itself poor. It will be crippled by the habit of borrowing. It will find that this habit prevents the chemical assimilation and birth of the new element, or, in other words, original or individually shaded idea. You have simply taken another’s property, and passed it off as your own. You have not been a manufacturer. You have been only a receiver of another’s manufactures.
It matters little whether you absorb idea in this way, and use it as your own, from minds whose bodies are visible to you or invisible. You still remain the mere borrower. You hurt thereby the power of making your own peculiar shade of individuality of light.
If spirits finding an impressional organization thrust their thought continually upon it through their own desire for expression, make it a perpetual mouthpiece, talk or write through such person continually, they may do a great injustice and injury. No matter how high or useful their thought, yet this pouring of ideas continually through one mind begets habit and desire of doing nothing else but talk or write or act, or perform some one thing continually. This will cause the person to grow all on one side. The balanced mind, the harmonious and organized adjustment of qualities necessary for the begetting of more and more originality, must come also of seeing and participating in all possible shades and kinds of life, as well as pure and unselfish motive. You need to mingle and sympathize with all manner of people, all manner of employments, all manner of professions, to make your own conceptions characterized by the greatest originality. You will then (unselfish motive being implied) not be a patchwork of borrowed bits from all with whom you come in contact; but a mosaic, of which every idea taken from others and grafted on your own has an individuality peculiarly your own.
V.
THE LAW OF SUCCESS.
Thoughts are Things.
Success in any business or undertaking comes through the working of a law. It never-comes by chance: in the operations of nature’s laws, there is no such thing as chance or accident. The so-called accidental tumbling of the stone from the mountain-side is the result of forces which have been acting in that stone through countless ages.
You and your fortunes are no more the things of chance than is the tree from its earliest growth. You are the product of the elements, and that product through the working of a law. You can, as you find out the law, make of yourself whatever you please.
Your thought, or spirit, and not your body, is your real self.
Your thought is an invisible substance, as real as air, water, or metal. It acts apart from your body; it goes from you to others, far and near; it acts on them, moves and influences them. It does this whether your body be sleeping or waking.
This is your real power. As you learn how this power really acts; as you learn how to hold, use, and control it,—you will do more profitable business, and accomplish more in an hour than now you may do in a week. You will continually increase this power by exercise. This, and only this, was the basis of the miracles, the magic or occult power of ancient times.
Your prevailing mood, or frame of mind, has more to do than any thing else with your success or failure in any undertaking. Your mind is that amount of thought-substance which has come together during countless ages, and after using many physical bodies.