The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran
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mental and spiritual equipment for the great struggle he is to enter upon in the conquest of the conditions and limitations of life.
Then he must gain by reflection, study and experience a clear and lofty ideal of the type of character he would reach, the style of man he must become if he would succeed in the race for wealth, in the battle he would fight to rise from the “cabined, cribbed and confined” conditions of poverty to the enjoyment and power of great wealth.
He will doubtless find himself in possession of qualities of mind and traits of character not only useless but positively detrimental to success in life. These he must no matter how great the effort or long the struggle eliminate. Then he will find other mental qualities and characteristics essential to success conspicuous by their absence, or by very faint expression in his life. These he must develop, nourish, exercise and call into Strength and Beauty.
So the work of making one’s self over is a three-fold work: a thorough diagnosis of our own mental, moral and spiritual equipment for the battle before us; elimination of undesirable ideas, characteristics, habits, etc.; and the cultivation of the undeveloped germs of mental and spiritual qualities essential to success.
This three-fold work of preparation is as rational and essential to one seeking wealth as the careful study of the mental qualities, the physical endowment and the rigid training of the athlete before a contest as necessary as the discipline, training and equipment of the soldier in war.
The man who thinks himself qualified without this three-fold mental discipline to enter upon the fierce competitions and tremendous difficulties in his struggle for his share of worldly good, is as truly a fool as the man who, untrained, wages war with the athlete in the arena.
No one but a fool expects the harvest without toil and seed-sowing. Only the fool expects results without adequate cause. Right ideas, views of life, right conceptions of your own powers, right ideals and purposes, the right courage and will and the right hope and spirit, constitute the adequate cause for the result we call success. They are the fruitful seed of the harvest you wish to reap.
The student cannot be too deeply impressed with the necessity of this mental and spiritual preparation. In this making-over process, time, money, effort and zeal are well expended. Every teacher who can give you a fruitful idea, every book that can bring a real inspiration, every exercise of mental gymnastics that can strengthen the will, every ray of light that can give you clearer vision of true ideals, is of priceless value to you.
Poverty Is a Mental Disease
Of course there are exceptional cases where from some misfortune or wrong doing of others, Poverty seems forced upon an individual, either by uncontrollable circumstances in his own life, or by the action of others. Yet in the vast majority of cases the Poverty of man’s material condition is the natural and inevitable result of Poverty in himself in his thought realm of reasoning, emotion and volition. The mental Poverty is mother and father of the Poverty of his material conditions. The outward conditions of a man’s life are a reflex of his thought world. This view of the case will help the student in his resolve to thoroughly diagnose the condition of his thought realm and to bring his mental machinery into such a state of efficiency that his whole character will assume a nobler type, and with the natural result that his outer conditions shall reflect his improved mentality.
Eliminate Wrong Ideas, Ideals, Moods
Among the erroneous notions which it may be necessary to root out of the mind is the thought (traceable to false religious teaching) that the possession of much money is not in harmony with true religion.
It is quite true that the love of money is a root of evil, and that many who have great wealth are under great temptations to neglect their spiritual interests. But note this fact that while money loved and worshipped, and money hoarded by miserly avarice, are great evils and a source of great temptation, poverty on the other hand, has its peculiar evils and temptations, and that no position in life is free from possible temptation, while every blessing in life, by abuse, many become a curse. Note also that the evident design of nature is abundance and not poverty so that while we may say God is the author of Beneficence and Abundance, and nature’s law is certainly Opulence no one can say God is the author of Poverty.
The end nature aims at is Abundance for All and if we must find an origin for Poverty we can never trace it to divine design.
The notion that sickness, suffering and poverty are in any way necessarily related to a religious life, is one of the falsest teachings ever given out in the name of religion. God is the author of Health, Happiness, Wealth and Wisdom, and sickness, misery, poverty, ignorance, are incidents of our undeveloped condition or results of our own neglect. No life under the blighting influence of poverty can prove the “abundant life,” the full-orbed, symmetrical and beneficent life, which every rational man desires.
The Worry Fiend and his Allies must be routed if you are to secure that peace and inward calm so essential to efficient thinking and working. Psychology today in trumpet tones declares that no one can enjoy health who is a victim of worry, anger, jealousy or fear. Along with these, we should put irresolution, timidity, depression, lack of confidence in one’s self all of them Negative Emotions, utterly unfitting us for the conflict of life!
These emotions exhaust the life energy and leave a man only fractional strength for the stubborn ordeals of life. People suffer more real exhaustion and loss from the evils they fear but which never happen than they do from evils that actually materialize in their lives. At an old man’s funeral it was said of him: he had a multitude of troubles in life, most of which never happened. What an infinite pity that the time and strength which might be utilized in grand achievements for ourselves and the world, are too often wasted in worry, fear or envy with the one result of weakness and suffering and lost opportunities of usefulness?
Fear has been called truly “the great hob-goblin of the race.” It magnifies our foes and minifies our friends. It is always saying: “There is a lion in the way!” Its cry is the cry of the coward servant of Elisha: “Alas! my Master, what shall we do?” It sees the foes, difficulties and magnifies them into gigantic proportions. “The tearful and the unbelieving” both go to the same doom according to Scripture.
The whole progress of humanity nationally and individually is a progress from the dominion of fear to the realm of faith.
Fear has a strange magnetic power a thought-creative power of materializing into our outward life the very objects feared! It seems to be a magnet with great force, drawing into the orbit of the life the very object feared by the mind. “The thing that I “feared,” said the sacred writer, “is that which came upon me.” Faith, on the other hand, says with Elisha: “They that are for us are greater than those that be against us.” Faith sees the angelic hosts ready to assist us in time of need. Let the student remember the axiom: “thought takes form in action and being.”
The Way to Drive Out Worry, Fear, Etc.
In place of centering our thought upon the Worry, Fears, Doubts and Irresolution, which constitute man’s mental poison, the proper method is to forget that these have controlled us, and put all our mental effort into the cultivation of their antidotes:
Peace, Trust, Faith, Resolution, Courage. The expulsive power of a new and contrary idea or affection is recognized by all psychologists, and from the standpoint of mental science we should not allow the mind to dwell upon undesirable qualities or things. Think health, not sickness; success, not failure; courage, not fear; faith, not doubt; the increasing good coming into your life, not the evil.
Especially is it necessary to enlarge and strengthen Faith, which is not a mere belief or assent of the understanding to certain statements but as Edward E. Beals expresses it: “Faith is the trolley pole which one raises to meet the Great Forces of Life and Nature, and by means of which one receives the inflow of the Power which is behind, and in all things, and is enabled to apply, that Power to the running of his own affairs.” The illustration is most apt and forcible. Faith is the vital bond of connection between the soul of man and its Infinite Source of supply. It is more. It is the great awakener of the latent forces in the soul of man. To the sick it uncaps the fountain