Thoughts
are Things
Prentice Mulford
The spiritual or more
enlightened mind says: “If you would help to drive away sickness, turn your
thought as much as you can on health, strength and vigour, and on strong,
healthy, vigorous material things, such as moving clouds, fresh breezes, the
cascade, the ocean surge; on woodland scenes and growing healthy trees; on
birds full of life and motion; for in so doing you turn on yourself a real
current or this healthy life‐giving
thought, which is suggested and brought you by the thought of such vigorous,
strong material objects.
“Your real self may not at
times be where your body is” says the spiritual mind. It is where your mind is‐‐in the store, the office,
the workshop, or with some person to whom you are strongly attached, and all of
these may be in towns or cities far from the one your body resides in. Your
real self moves with inconceivable rapidity as your thought moves.
Neither the material mind
nor the material body is to be won over and merged into the spiritual by any
course of severe self-censure or self-denial, nor self-punishment in expiation
for sins committed, nor asceticism. That will only make you the more harsh,
severe, bigoted and merciless, both to yourself and others.
It is from this perversion
that have come orders and associations of men and women who, going to another
extreme, seek holiness in self-denial and penance.
If in your mental vision you
teach yourself that you are “utterly depraved” and a “vile sinner,” you are
unconsciously making that your ideal, and you will unconsciously grow up to it
until the pain and evil coming of such unhealthy growth either makes you turn
back or destroys your body, For out of this state of mind, which in the past
has been much inculcated, comes harshness, bigotry, lack of charity for others,
hard, stern and gloomy and unhealthy views of life, and these mental conditions
will surely bring physical disease.
Your brothers or sisters may
not be like you at all in mind, taste, and inclination. You may associate with
them because they are members of the family, but were you not to know them as
brothers, sisters, or other relatives, or were you to see elsewhere their exact
counterparts in character, you might not like such counterparts at all.
Physical or “ blood relationship” has very little bearing on the real or mental
relationship. It is possible for a brother or sister, a father or mother to be
very closely allied to you in thought and sympathy. Again, it is possible for a
father or mother, brother or sister, to be very remote from you in thought and
sympathy, and to live in a realm or atmosphere of thought very unlike yours.
You can live neither
healthfully nor comfortably, unless with those whose thought‐atmosphere (a literal
emanation from them) is similar to your own. Physical relationship may or may
not furnish such at atmosphere.
No force is more subtle in
its workings, nor more powerful to bring results for good or ill than the
steady output of thought from one or several minds combined, on one person to
effect some desired result, and whether this is done intelligently and
consciously, or blindly, the force works the same result.
The term “ought“ has no
application to the nature of love. Love goes where it will, and to whom it
will, and where it is attracted. You cannot force yourself to love anything or
anybody. There have been parents who had no real love for their children, and
children who had no real love for their parents.
You did not make that son or
daughter’s character. It was made long before that spirit had the use of its
last new body. What traits, what imperfections were very prominent in its last
existence, will appear in its next. If that was a thieving spirit before, it
will probably show thieving tendencies now. If it was gross, animal and
gluttonous, then similar tendencies will show themselves now. You, if grown to
a more refined plane of thought, may do much to modify and lessen these
tendencies. But all that you will do in this respect will be done through the
silent force and action of your superior thought on your child’s mind. It will
not be done through a great deal of verbal counsel or physical punishment or
discipline.
No person is really reformed
by another, in the sense such a term is sometimes used. Reform must come from
within. It must be self‐sustaining.
It must not depend wholly on another’s presence or influence. If it does, it is
only a temporary reform. It will fail when the influence of the person on whom
it depends is removed.
But one person having the
superior mind, can, if in a very close and long‐continued association with one weaker, give
temporarily to the weaker their very life and force, if their desire it very
strong to help the weaker.
… he relapses and sinks into
his real self, unless he is resolved to be self‐sustaining, and evolve force out of himself
instead of using another’s. If she continues to supply him, she is only
sustaining his temporary character, which cannot last when its source of supply
is removed, and in such continuance she will certainly in time exhaust herself…
Travel in first‐class style, put up at first‐class hotels and dress in
apparel “as costly as your purse can buy,” without running into the extreme of
foppishness. In these things you find aids to place you in a current of relative
power and success.
If our minds are, from what
is falsely called economy, ever set on the cheap – cheap lodgings, cheap food
and cheap fares, we get in the thought current of the cheap, the slavish and
the fearful. Our views of life and our plans will be influenced and warped by
it. It paralyzes that courage and enterprise implied in the old adage “Nothing
ventured nothing gained.”
Absorbed in this current and
having it ever acting on you, it is felt immediately when you come into the
presence of the successful and causes them to avoid you. They feel in you the
absence of that element which brings them their relative success. It acts as a
barrier, preventing the flow to you of their sympathy. Sympathy is a most
important factor in business. Despite opposition and competition, a certain
thought current of sympathy binds the most successful together.
The mania for cheapness lies
in the thought current of fear and failure. The thought current of fear and failure,
and the thought current of dash, courage and success will not mingle nor bring
together the individuals who are in these respective streams of thought. They
antagonize, and between the two classes of mind is built a barrier more
impenetrable than walls of stone. Live altogether in any one idea, any one
“reform” and you get into the thought current of all other minds who are
carrying that idea to extremes.
When people come together
and in any way talk out their ill‐will
towards others they are drawing to themselves with ten‐fold power an injurious
thought current.
The thought current so
attracted by those chronic complainers, grumblers and scandal mongers, will
injure their bodies. Because whatever thought is most held in mind is most
materialized in the body. If we are always thinking and talking of people’s
imperfections we are drawing to us ever of that thought current, and thereby
incorporating into ourselves those very imperfections.
If you dwell a great deal on
your own faults you will by the same laws attract more and more of their
thought current, and so increase those faults. It is enough that you recognize
in yourself those faults. Don’t be always saying of yourself, “I am weak or
cowardly or ill‐tempered
or imprudent,” Draw to yourself rather the thought current of strength,
courage, even temper, prudence and all other good qualities. Keep the image of
these qualities in mind and you make them a part of yourself.
Cowardice is rooted in
hurry, the habit of hurry or lack of repose. All degrees of success are based on
courage – mental or physical. All degrees of failure are based on timidity. You
can cultivate courage and increase it at every minute and hour of the day.
You can do this by the
cultivation of deliberation – deliberation of speech, of walk, of writing, of
eating – deliberation in everything.
There is always a bit of
fear where there is a bit of hurry. When you hurry to the train you are in fear
that you may be left, and with that comes fear of other possibilities
consequent on your being left.
This habit of thought can,
through an unconscious training, grow to such an extent as to pervade a
person’s mind, at all times and places, and bring on a fear of loss of some
kind, when there is absolutely no loss to be sustained.
When we dress, eat, walk or
do anything with mind placed on something else, we are making the present act
irksome;
To bring us what all want
and are seeking for, namely‐happiness,
we need to have perfect control of our mind and thought at all times and
places.
We need to keep always our
mind present with us. We want it always on the spot ready to use in any direction.
Our thought moves from one
thing to another with more than electric speed, and we can unconsciously train
this quickness to be ever darting from one thing to another until it becomes
almost impossible to keep it on one thing for ten consecutive seconds. On the
contrary, through cultivation of repose and deliberation in all things we can
train ourselves to mass and fasten our thought on anything as long as we please,
to throw ourselves into any mood of mind we please, and to throw ourselves at
will into sleep or a semi‐conscious,
dreamy state as restful as sleep.
Awkwardness, lack of
address, lack of tact are all due to this lack of command of mind caused by
lack of deliberation, or in other words, a trained incapacity for taking time
to think or plan the proper thing to do.
To train then for courage is
to train for deliberate movement in all things, for that is simply training to
mass and hold your force in reserve and let out no more than is needed for the
moment.
You will remember that
anything which is done in mind, expends quite as much force as if done with the
body, so that the persons who linger abed in the morning and think with dread
of the breakfasts to be cooked, or the rooms to be swept, so far as expenditure
of force is concerned, will be doing those acts then and there while lying on
their backs.
Cultivate deliberate act and
movement in all things, and you lay more and more the solid foundation for
courage, either moral or physical. But deliberate act does not always imply
slowness. Just as thought moves with electric rapidity, so may it move the body
when occasion requires, but the thought must be clearly planned, seen and
outlined in mind before it is allowed to act on the body.
A “self‐ contained” man is never in
a hurry; and a self‐contained
man keeps or contains his thought, his spirit, his power, mostly on the act or
use he is making at the present moment with the instrument his spirit uses, his
body; and the habitually self‐possessed
woman will be graceful in every movement, for the reason that her spirit has
complete possession and command of its tool, the body; and is not a mile or ten
miles away from that body in thought, and fretting or hurrying or dwelling on
something at that distance from her body.
When we dread a misfortune,
or live in fear of any ill, or expect ill luck, we make also a construction of unseen
element, thought,‐‐which,
by the same law of attraction, draws to it destructive, and to you damaging,
forces or elements. Thus the law for success is also the law for misfortune,
according as it is used;
Of whatever possible thing
we think, we are building, in unseen substance, a construction which will draw
to us forces or elements to aid us or hurt us, according to the character of
thought we think or put out.
… when we concentrate our
mental force or thought on any plan or pursuit or undertaking, we are setting
at work the attractive force of thought‐
substance to draw to us the means or agencies or forces or individuals to carry
out that plan…
Never in thought acknowledge
an impossibility. Never in mind reject what to you may seem the wildest idea
with scorn; because, in so doing, you may not know what you are closing the
door against. To say anything is impossible because it seems impossible to you,
is just so much training in the dangerous habit of calling out “Impossible!” to
every new idea. Your mind is then a prison full of doors, barred to all
outside, and you the only inmate. “All things” are possible with God.
God works in and through
you. To say “Impossible!” as to what you may do or become is a sin. It is
denying God’s power to work through you. It is denying the power of the
Infinite Spirit to do through you far more than what you are now capable of
conceiving in mind.
To say “Impossible!” is to
set up your relatively weak limit of comprehension as the standard of the
universe. It is as audacious as to attempt the measurement of endless space
with a yard‐stick.
There are thousands of
things, events and scenes in your past life which it is more profitable to
forget than to remember. By so forgetting you allow entrance for new idea,
which is new life. By remembering you prevent the coming to you of such new
idea and life.
By “forgetting,” I mean that
you should avoid living in unpleasant past scenes and remembrances.
… you should cultivate the
power of driving from your mind and putting out of sight whatever makes you
feel unhappy or whatever you discover that is unprofitable to remember.
All experiences are valuable
for the wisdom they bring or suggest. But when you have once gained wisdom and
knowledge from any experience, there is little profit in repeating it,
especially if it has been unpleasant, You do actually repeat it when you
remember it or live it over again in thought. This is what people are doing who
brood over past misfortunes and disappointments.
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