The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran
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ways in which this old world of ours can be made a better place to live. Set your mind to work locating some of this treasure, finding some of those ways. Don’t wait for someone else to blaze the trail.
No one remembers who else was on the Santa Maria, but Columbus’ name will be known forever! Carnegie is said to have made a hundred millionaires, but he alone became almost a billionaire!
Have you ever read Kipling’s “Explorer?”
“‘There’s no sense in going further — it’s the edge of cultivation, So they said, and I believed it — broke my land and sowed my crop — Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop. “Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes on one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated — so: ‘something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges — Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!’”
Your mind is part and parcel of Universal Mind. You have the wisdom of all the ages to draw upon. Use it! Use it to do your work in a way it was never done before. Use it to find new outlets for your business, new methods of reaching people, new and better ways of serving them. Use it to uncover new riches, to learn ways to make the world a better place to live in.
Concentrate your thought upon these things, knowing that back of you is the vast reservoir of Universal Mind, that all these things are already known to It, and that you have but to make your contact for them to be known to you.
Optimism based on such a realization is never overconfidence. It is the joyous assurance of absolute faith. It is the assurance that made Wilson for a time the outstanding leader of the world. It is the assurance that heartened Lincoln during the black days of the Civil War. It is the assurance that carried Hannibal and Napoleon over the Alps, that left Alexander sighing for more worlds to conquer, that enabled Cortez and his little band to conquer a nation.
Grasp this idea of the availability of Universal Mind for your daily needs, and your vision will become enlarged, your capacity increased. You will realize that the only limits upon you are those you put upon yourself. There will be no such thing then as difficulties and opposition barring your way.
Exercise
You feed and nourish the body daily. But few people give any thought to nourishing that far more important part — the Mind. So let us try, each day, to set apart a few minutes time to give the Mind a repast.
To begin with, relax! Stretch out comfortably on a lounge or in an easy chair and let go of every muscle, loosen every bit of tension, forget every thought of fear or worry. Relax mentally and physically.
Few people know how to relax entirely. Most of us are on a continual strain, and it is this strain that brings on physical disturbances — not any real work we may do. Here is a little exercise that will help you to thoroughly relax:
Recline comfortably on a lounge or bed. Stretch luxuriously first, then when you are settled at your ease again, lift the right leg a foot or two. Let it drop limply. Repeat slowly twice. Do the same with the left leg. With the right arm. With the left arm. You will find then that all your muscles are relaxed. You can forget them and turn your thoughts to other things.
Try to realize the unlimited power that is yours. Think back to the dawn of time, when Mind first imaged from nothingness the heavens and the earth and all that in them is. Remember that, although your mind is to Universal Mind only as a drop of water to the ocean, this drop has all the properties of the great ocean; one in quality although not in quantity; your mind has all the creative power of Universal Mind.
“And God made man in His image, after His likeness.” Certainly God never manifested anything but infinite abundance, infinite supply. If you are made in His image, there is no reason why you should ever lack for anything of good. You can manifest abundance, too.
Round about you are the same electronic energy from which Universal Mind formed the heavens and the earth. What do you wish to form from it? What do you want most from life? Hold it in your thought, visualize it, and SEE it! Make your model clear-cut and distinct.
1.Remember, the first thing necessary is a sincere desire, concentrating your thought on one thing with singleness of purpose.
2.The second is visualization — SEE ING YOURSELF DOING IT — imaging the object in the same way that Universal Mind imaged all of creation.
3.Next is faith; BELIEVING that you HAVE this thing that you want. Not that you are GOING to have it, mind you — but that you HAVE it.
4.And the last is gratitude — gratitude for this thing that you have received, gratitude for the power that enabled you to create it, gratitude for all the gifts that Mind has laid at your feet.
“Trust in the Lord... and verily thou shalt be fed.”
“Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thy heart.” “Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He Shall bring it to pass.”
Chapter 14 — Your Needs Are Met
You’ve heard the story of the old man who called his children to his bedside to give them a few parting words of advice. And this was the burden of it.
“My children,” he said, “I have had a great deal of trouble in my life — a great deal of trouble — but most of it never happened.”
We are all of us like that old man. Our troubles weigh us down — in prospect — but we usually find that when the actual need arrives, Providence has devised some way of meeting it.
Dr. Jacques Loeb, a member of the Rockefeller Institute, conducted a series of tests with parasites found on plants, which show that even the lowest order of creatures have the power to call upon Universal Supply for the resources to meet any unusual need.
“In order to obtain the material,” reads the report of the tests, “potted rose bushes are brought into a room and placed in front of a closed window. If the plants are allowed to dry out, the aphides (parasites), previously wingless, change to winged insects. After the metamorphosis, the animals leave the plants, fly to the window and then creep upward on the glass.
“It is evident that these tiny insects found that the plants on which they had been thriving were dead, and that they could therefore secure nothing more to eat and drink from this source. The only method by which they could save themselves from starvation was to grow temporary wings and fly, which they did.”
In short, when their source of sustenance was shut off and they had to find the means of migrating or perish, Universal Supply furnished the means for migration.
If Universal Mind can thus provide for the meanest of its creatures, is it not logical to suppose that It will do even more for us — the highest product of creation — if we will but call upon It, if we will but have a little faith? Viewed in the light of Mind’s response to the need of those tiny parasites, does it seem so unbelievable that a sea should roll back while a people marched across it dry-shod? That a pillar of fire should lead them through the wilderness by night? That manna should fall from heaven, or water gush forth from a rock?
In moments of great peril, in times of extremity, when the brave soul has staked its all — those are the times when miracles are wrought, if we will but have faith.
That doesn’t mean that you should rest supinely at your ease and let the Lord provide. When you have done all that is in you to do — when you have given of your best — don’t worry or fret as to the outcome. Know that if more is needed, your need will be met. You can sit back with the confident assurance that having done your part; you can depend upon the Genie-of-your-Mind to do the rest.
When the little state of Palestine was in danger of being overrun by Egypt on the one hand, or gobbled up by Assyria on the other, its people were frantically trying to decide which horn of the dilemma to embrace, with which enemy they should ally themselves to stave off the other. “With neither,” the Prophet Isaiah told them, “in calmly resting