The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran
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only cause, then the only effect must be like the cause. “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.”
Don’t be content with passively reading this. Use it! Practice it! Exercise is far more necessary to mental development that it is to physical. Practice the “daily dozen” of right thinking. Stretch your mind to realize how infinitely far it can reach out, what boundless vision it can have. Breathe out all the old thoughts of sickness, discouragement, failure, worry and fear. Breathe in deep, long breaths (thoughts) of unlimited health and strength, unlimited happiness and success. Practice looking forward — always looking forward to something better — better health, finer physique, greater happiness, bigger success. Take these mental breathing exercises every day. See how easily you will control your thoughts. How quickly you will see the good effects. You’ve got to think all the time. Your mind will do that anyway. And the thoughts are constantly building — for good or ill. So be sure to exhale all the thoughts of fear and worry and disease and lack that have been troubling you, and inhale only those you want to see realized.
Chapter 8 — The Law of Supply
Have you ever run a race, or worked at utmost capacity for a protracted period, or swum a great distance? Remember how, soon after starting, you began to feel tired? Remember how, before you had gone any great distance, you thought you had reached your limit? But remember, too, how, when you kept on going, you got your second wind, your tiredness vanished, your muscles throbbed with energy, you felt literally charged with speed and endurance?
Stored in every human being are great reserves of energy of which the average individual knows nothing. Most people are like a man who drives a car in low gear, not knowing that by the simple shift of a lever he can set it in high and not merely speed up the car, but do it with far less expenditure of power.
The law of the universe is the law of supply. You see it on every hand. Nature is lavish in everything she does.
Look at the heavens at night. There are millions of stars there — millions of worlds — millions of suns among them. Surely there is no lack of wealth or profusion in the Mind that could image all of these; no place for limitation there! Look at the vegetation in the country round about you. Nature supplies all that the shrubs or trees may need for their growth and sustenance! Look at the lower forms of animal life — the birds and the wild animals, the reptiles and the insects, the fish in the sea.
Nature supplies them bountifully with everything they need. They have but to help themselves to what she holds out to them with such lavish hand. Look at all the natural resources of the world — coal and iron and oil and all metals. There is plenty for everyone. We hear a lot about the exhaustion of our resources of coal and oil, but there is available coal enough to last mankind for thousands of years. There are vast oil fields practically untouched, probably others bigger still yet to be discovered, and when all these are exhausted, the extraction of oil from shale will keep the world supplied for countless more years.
There is abundance for everyone. But just as you must strain and labor to reach the resources of your “second wind,” just so you must strive before you can make manifest the law of supply in nature.
The World Belongs to You
It is your estate. It owes you not merely a living, but everything of good you may desire. You’ve got to demand these things of it, though. You’ve got to fear naught, dread naught, and stop at naught. You’ve got to have the faith of a Columbus, crossing an unknown sea, holding a mutinous crew to the task long after they had ceased to believe in themselves or in him — and giving to the world a new hemisphere. You’ve got to have the faith of a Washington — defeated, discredited, almost wholly deserted by his followers, yet holding steadfast in spite of all — and giving to America a new liberty. You’ve got to dominate — not to cringe. You’ve got to make the application of the law of supply.
“Consider the lilies how they grow.” The flowers, the birds, all of creation, are incessantly active. The trees and flowers in their growth, the birds and wild creatures in building their nests and finding sustenance, are always working — but never worrying. “Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.” “And all these things shall be added unto you.”
If all would agree to give up worrying — to be industrious, but never anxious about the outcome it would mean the beginning of a new era in human progress, an age of liberty, of freedom from bondage. Jesus set forth the universal law of supply when he said — “Therefore I say unto you, be not anxious for the morrow, what ye shall eat, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed — but seek first the kingdom of God, and all those things shall be added unto you.”
What is this “Kingdom of God?”
Jesus tells us — “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It is the “Father within you” to which He so frequently referred. It is Mind — your part of Universal Mind. “Seek first the Kingdom of God.” Seek first an understanding of this Power within you — learn to contact with it — to use it — “and all those things shall be added unto you.”
All riches have their origin in Mind. Wealth is in ideas — not money. Money is merely the material medium of exchange for ideas. The paper money in your pockets is in itself worth no more than so many Russian rubles. It is the idea behind it that gives it value. Factory buildings, machinery, materials, are in themselves worthless without a manufacturing or a selling idea behind them. How often you see a factory fall to pieces, the machinery rusts away, after the idea behind them gave out. Factories, machines, are simply the tools of trade. It is the idea behind them that makes them go.
So don’t go out a-seeking of wealth. Look within you for ideas! “The Kingdom of God is within you.” Use it — purposefully! Use it to THINK constructively. Don’t say you are thinking when all you are doing is exercising your faculty of memory. As Dumont says in “The Master Mind” — “They are simply allowing the stream of memory to flow through their field of consciousness, while the Ego stands on the banks and idly watches the passing waters of memory flow by. They call this ‘thinking’, while in reality there is no process of thought under way.”
They are like the old mountaineer sitting in the shade alongside his cabin. Asked what he did to pass the long hours away, he said — “Waal, sometimes I set and think; and sometimes I just set.”
Dumont goes on to say, in quoting another writer: “When I use the word ‘thinking,’ I mean thinking with a purpose, with an end in view, thinking to solve a problem. I mean the kind of thinking that is forced on us when we are deciding on a course to pursue, on a life work to take up perhaps; the kind of thinking that was forced upon us in our younger days when we had to find a solution to a problem in mathematics; or when we tackled psychology in college. I do not mean ‘thinking’ in snatches, or holding petty opinions on this subject and on that. I mean thought on significant questions, which lie outside the bounds of your narrow personal welfare. This is the kind of thinking which is now so rare — so sadly needed!”
The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Thought, of Achievement, of Health, of Happiness and Prosperity. “I came that ye might have life and have it more abundantly.”
But you have got to seek it. You have got to do more than ponder. You have got to think — to think constructively — to seek how you may discover new worlds, new methods, new needs. The greatest discoveries, you know, have arisen out of things, which everybody had seen, but only one man had NOTICED. The biggest fortunes have been made out of the opportunities, which many men had, but only one man GRASPED.
Why is it that so many millions of men and women go through life in poverty and misery, in sickness and despair? Why? Primarily because they make a reality of poverty through their fear of it. They visualize poverty, misery and disease, and thus bring them into being. And secondly, they cannot demonstrate the law of supply for the same reason that so many millions cannot solve the first problem in algebra. The solution is simple, but they have never been shown the method. They do not understand the law.
The essence of this law is that you must